A High-Tech Overseas Talent Recruitment Mission (HiRecruit) led by Liang Kuo-hsin, Taiwan’s vice economics minister, arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area to put on a jobs fair at the Biltmore Hotel. The day-long jobs fair sought to fill 1,205 job vacancies in Taiwan.
This year, 235 people signed up for the one-on-one job interviews on November 5. Participating companies included, TSMC, UMC, AU Optronics Corp., MediaTek, Delta Electronics, Davicom Semiconductor, Macronix International, Silicon Motion, Oplink, E Ink, Arcom, AcBel, AAEON, LuxNet, Portman Security, AB Biosciences, EverFocus, plus many others. Job opportunities were available in process engineering, manufacturing, pharmaceutics, pharmaceutics chemistry, pharmacokinetics, chemical engineering, medical chemistry, cloud computing, functional textile R&D, solar cell engineering etc.
In comparing the advantages of working in Taiwan, China or Silicon Valley, Liang said that the South Bay has the advantage of innovation and China has a huge market and serves as the world’s factory. Taiwan, however, provides a complete business structure offering legal protection, strong R & D capabilities and a living environment on a par with international standards. In addition, there is a bilingual school at Hsinchu Science Park, and a friendly community that attracts both ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese alike.
Liang said due to cultural similarities between Taiwan and China, many international enterprises treat Taiwan as a springboard to China. There are also advantages in partnering with Taiwan, for example, the success rate of Japanese investment in China is 10 percent lower than that of joint ventures between Taiwan and Japan that invest in China.
According to Liang, international conglomerates have noticed Taiwan’s strengths lie not only in its R & D capability, but also in how quickly Taiwanese businesses are able to commercialize R & D into a finished product. He said, Taiwanese companies have the ability to mass produce touch screens for Apple’s iPhones very quickly. Many multinational companies have set up facilities in Taiwan to take advantage of that capability. Yet, while only a few years ago very few companies were interested in moving into Nankang Software Park, now the park it is fully occupied, with the third phase still not providing enough space.
This investment is not just happening in the north of the island. Industrial parks in Taichung and other areas are also fully occupied because a lot of Japanese and American companies have moved in, plus many overseas Taiwanese are returning to the island, causing an investment frenzy.
Since 2003, HiRecruit has successfully recruited 3,672 professionals to work for Taiwanese companies. Although the number of companies participating in this year’s recruitment delegation was slightly down on the record tally of 40, 30 companies did take part. After visiting Silicon Valley, HiRecruit continued on to Boston.