The careers department heads of about 20 well-known Chinese universities visited the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, recently, calling on various companies in the city’s high-tech zone and engaging in a wide range of cultural experience activities.
The visit on July 10, during Suzhou International Elite Entrepreneurship Week, included representatives of Renmin University of China in Beijing, Nanjing University and Chongqing University.
One of the main aims was to increase the recruitment of college graduates and young talent, and in this regard improve the collaboration between educational institutions and companies.
The zone’s authorities closely follow the needs of local industrial development, and they have analyzed the activities and employment needs of 887 key employers in the area as and effort is made to identify and recruit vibrant new talent for the zone.
Over the past three years there has been a significant increase in demand for graduates with degrees in information technology, mechanical engineering and computer science. In fact, demand for information technology graduates has now surpassed that for mechanical engineering graduates.
Among the institutions the high-tech zone looks to in its search for high-aptitude talent to set up businesses are Nanjing University, Chongqing University and Jilin University in Changchun.
Several months ago the zone conducted campus talent attraction activities in 52 universities, setting up recruitment points that covered the top 10 universities in terms of recruitment intentions and the top 10 universities in terms of graduates recruited by companies. The zone is thus continuously upgrading the quality and quantity of its talent pool.
In addition to attracting talent, the zone promotes collaboration between educational institutions and the commercial and industrial worlds.
“Through face-to-face communication, companies and universities can better understand each other's needs and advantages, facilitating effective resource integration and providing students with more internships and job choices,” one university official said.
Since the beginning of this year the zone’s Talent Recruitment Special Train has visited more than 30 well-known universities, organizing matchmaking activities involving educational institutions and more than 20 local companies. Two campus recruitment trend analysis seminars have been held, bringing together representatives of 18 universities and 52 companies to discuss strategies for improving campus recruitment, talent attraction and educational and professional development.
The zone draws on resources from alumni associations of local universities, taps into resources from well-known alumni and partnerships between educational institutions and companies, appoints campus talent attraction ambassadors, sets up talent attraction workstations and builds industrial talent incubation bases. All this helps expand the circle of friends to provide strong talent support to help the regional economy continue to thrive.
The high-tech zone has set up 13 talent attraction workstations at universities such as Nanjing University, Dalian University of Technology in Liaoning province and Tsinghua University in Beijing, as well as 10 industrial talent cultivation bases. It has also appointed 20 talent attraction ambassadors, industry supervisors at universities such as Nanjing University and Xi'an Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province and set up undergraduate industrial teaching bases to improve communication and exchange between schools and businesses.
Through practical action the zone builds what it regards as nests and bridges for talent, allowing golden skills seeds to grow into trees of mutual development.
Since the beginning of this year the zone has promoted the organic connection of the education chain, talent chain, industry chain and innovation chain, efficiently attracting outstanding young talent.
Forty-one recruitment events have been held, including the New Year Talent Exchange Meeting, spring campus job fairs, Sending Talents to Enterprises’ government-school-enterprise collaboration, and the Stay in Suzhou Talent Night Market. Thirty school-enterprise collaboration forums have been staged, providing 28,300 internships and jobs in a total of 873 companies, with more than 2,300 people recruited.
Suzhou High-tech Zone will continue to expand the circle of friends for collaboration between educational institutions and companies, deepen its human resources pool and to attract talent on a wide scale.
