Chengdu a growing hub for international talent

As a representative of China's "new first-tier" cities, Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, has become an ideal place for international professionals. It is making efforts to attract more international professionals by launching overseas recruitment events.

The events include overseas tours, which are part of the Chengdu Tianfu Talent Recruitment Activities, a large-scale annual group recruitment drive sponsored by the Chengdu Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone's administrative committee and co-organized by the technology and human resources bureau at the zone and Chengdu Tianfu Software Park.

Since 2016, the overseas tours have covered Silicon Valley in the United States, Seoul in South Korea, Frankfurt in Germany and Toronto in Canada, among many other cities and regions. They have helped bring in more than 300 high-level professionals to Chengdu and established nine innovation and entrepreneurship centers for overseas professionals in the city.

A delegation made up of about 10 Chengdu companies, covering electronic information, the new economy and other sectors, will continue to take overseas tours in the second half of this year.

"As a crucial part of the global electronic information industrial landscape, the Chengdu high-tech zone is making efforts to create a world-class electronic information industrial ecosystem, and therefor, it has great demand for high-level information technology professionals," said a local official who is in charge of the zone's overseas recruitment.

This year's recruitment will focus on the electronic information sector, he added.

Wang Baoli, recruitment manager of Sichuan Changhong Electric, said that overseas tours provide ideal opportunities for local companies to seek high-level professionals.

The company has high demand for research and development professionals in the big data, artificial intelligence and software sectors, Wang said.

Wang added that as a regular to the annual overseas tours, Changhong has managed to hire the right employees from abroad. This year, the company plans to recruit some high-level R&D professionals for its AI, information safety and new energy material laboratories.

Chengdu Corntree Technology, a mobile game developer, also participated in overseas recruitment events before and employed data analysis professionals from the US. This year, the company said it hopes to recruit professionals for product operation and R&D departments.

Zhan Hong, administrative director of human resources at Corntree, said the company has attached great importance to this year's overseas recruitment event. In addition to regular recruitment, the company will hold meetings with their overseas peers to exchange insights.

During this year's overseas tours, the Chengdu high-tech zone will establish more innovation and entrepreneurship centers for overseas professionals to continue recommending and introducing overseas professionals and projects to the city and help foster startup projects abroad.

The centers are the zone's successful attempts to draw overseas professionals and allow the professionals to work in Chengdu and enjoy the city's human resource policies.

The Chengdu Tianfu Talent Recruitment Activities focus on attracting high-level experts from overseas, experienced professionals in other Chinese cities and fresh graduates. Under the campaign, some 100 recruitment activities are held a year on average, serving more than 200 companies and attracting more than 4,000 professionals to the zone.

Chengdu a growing hub for international talent

As an important hub of innovation development in the new generation IT industry in western China and a main gathering area of innovation and entrepreneurship in the region, the zone has attracted many renowned companies and Fortune Global 500 companies, including US high-tech company IBM, German software and cloud giant SAP, and leading Chinese internet companies Alibaba and Tencent.

Chengdu Tianfu Software Park has an entrepreneur cultivation plan covering capital, professionals, market and training. It has cultivated many leading companies and brands, including online healthcare startup Medlinker, intelligent projector manufacturer Xgimi Technology and mobile app Cotoon.

To date, the park has developed several clusters of software services outsourcing, software product R&D, telecom technology, digital entertainment, mobile interconnectivity and sharing services. It has become a key part of strategic expansion plans in China for well-known software and information service companies from home and abroad.

The park has provided professional recruitment, training and consulting services for local companies for years. In addition to hosting overseas recruitment events, the park has set up workstations in Silicon Valley in the US and Cambridge in the United Kingdom this year, expanding its services abroad.

The Tianfu Software Park Silicon Valley Workstation, set up by Chengdu Tianfu Software Park and Changhong North America branch, was put into operation at the beginning of this year. The Cambridge one, established in cooperation with London-headquartered high-tech incubator Business Global Technology Accelerator, began operation in June.

The workstations provide services for companies and teams from the Chengdu high-tech zone working overseas for a short time, such as free offices and facilities, hotel reservations, airport pickups, overseas business consulting and customized services according to their needs.

An official from Tianfu Software Park said that in the future, local companies will partner with leading industrial players to build public technology and industrial incubation platforms, and online docking platforms between startup projects and global capital, in a bid to accelerate the construction of the zone into a national central development hub and international innovation center.

caoyingying@chinadaily.com.cn