Conference attracts top talent to Hangzhou

Around 3,900 high-end professionals from home and abroad attended the 2018 Zhejiang Hangzhou International Human Resources Exchange and Cooperation Conference in Hangzhou recently. 

The conference has attracted over 37,000 participants, including 148 foreign professionals and 582 top-flight overseas students, and 6,036 people have reached cooperation intentions with companies, mainly covering Information Technology, bio-medicine, advanced equipment manufacturing and financial services.

Around 800 innovative and startup projects from overseas students will look for potential partners in eight sub-venues.

This year, participants from 33 countries and regions exhibited projects in areas such as information technology, biomedicine, new energy, new materials, environmental protection, advanced manufacturing, cultural and creative industries, modern agriculture and modern services.

About 790 companies offered 19,000 jobs, attracting graduates from Hangzhou universities. Local enterprises including e-commerce giant Alibaba and beverage industry tycoon Wahaha were among those recruiting. 

The first conference was held in 2009. In the past nine years, 4,424 overseas professionals and over 200 overseas Chinese student teams have attended, presenting more than 4,700 projects. Among them, 1,143 projects have been carried out with a combined registered capital of 15.2 billion yuan (US$2.18 billion).

The conference is an international human resources platform in China and helps recruit skilled professionals from around the world. Talent from home and abroad bring their innovative ideas to seek investment, while enterprises and local government departments offer preferential policies to attract promising projects.

Hangzhou is already an attractive city with plenty of green space and beautiful scenery. However, the government believes it can sweeten the deal by offering subsidies to individuals and teams. 

On site, local authorities from districts and counties spared no effort to attract their favored projects.

Xiaoshan District, location for the main venue of the G20 Summit in 2016 and the 2022 Asian Games, believes it offers an unparalleled environment.

To make the district a leading labor market and innovation center in Hangzhou, it offers subsidies of up to 15 million yuan for promising projects. 

“The previous plan was only for returned overseas people, now it opens to domestic talent. And the original 10 million yuan of subsidy has been augmented to 15 million yuan,” said Lou Lingna, vice director of Hangzhou Bay Smart Valley, which is in Xiaoshan.

“Formerly, a project could be subsidized for only one time. Now, it could apply for a second financial support if qualified,” Lou added. “ If a person is listed in the Recruitment Program of Global Experts by central government, he or she will be granted another 6 million yuan.”

Today, every county and district in Hangzhou is competing for talent and offering its preferential policies related to almost every facet of startup business. However, Lou believes Xiaoshan still has the edge, including booming privately owned companies and Xiaoshan International Airport.

In addition to local authorities, other organizations, academies and institutes also had booths at the conference. 

Westlake University, which was established early this year and is dedicated to developing natural sciences and frontiers of engineering, was expecting to recruit lecturers and professors from the conference. As a key project in Xihu District, talent could enjoy government preferential support if employed.

Since average salaries of Hangzhou office workers moved up from 8th place to fourth after Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, more and more graduates are choosing to work in the city.

According to the latest statistics, the influx rate of Internet talent in Hangzhou ranks first in the country. Meanwhile, the city tops an attractiveness index list conducted by Liepin.com this year, surpassing Beijing for the first time.

In recent years, the Hangzhou government has issued a series of guides on talent recruitment. New policies such as providing permanent residency to experts have attracted a number of high-caliber professionals.

Apart from Hangzhou, other cities in Zhejiang Province also provided promising projects with preferential policies to lure professionals from home and abroad at the conference.

Ningbo provides talent with housing subsidies benefits that vary according to different levels from 200,000 yuan to 600,000 yuan. Prominent talent will be rewarded from 600,000 yuan to 1,000,000 yuan. A leading innovative team will be given 4 million yuan.

The Ningbo government preferred cross-border e-commerce and manufacturing projects. It has already carved out a pilot zone for intelligent manufacturing in the city, with the aim of expanding the zone into a major innovation center in east China.