Shandong has become increasingly attractive to college students in recent years due the province's increased efforts to pool talents and facilitate high-quality development, local authorities said.

"In recent years, Shandong has been promoting the shifting of old growth drivers to new ones, boosting its top 10 industries and improving its business environment, which creates more jobs that appeal to college graduates," said Xia Luqing, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security.

Shandong is home to many universities and more than 2.3 million college students, ranking second in China. The number of college graduates reaches more than 600,000 per year, accounting for about 7.5 percent of the country's total.

Official data showed that since 2017, the overall employment rate of college graduates in Shandong has been above 85 percent, among which the proportion of graduates choosing to stay and work in Shandong has been around 80 percent.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the employment rate of college graduates in Shandong was slightly lower than that of last year.

By the end of July, the rate of fresh college graduates choosing to stay in Shandong had reached 82.56 percent, significantly higher than that of the previous three years.

Shandong has launched a series of employment measures for job-hunting graduates amid the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xia said that Shandong will hold 100 recruitment fairs at famous universities within this year.