A two-day online career fair hosted by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s talent-attraction arm last week logged over 26,000 visits and received around 3,000 resumes, delivering a significant boost to the city’s global talent-trawling effort.
The Hong Kong Talent Engage (HKTE), a government body providing one-stop support services for incoming talents, said on Wednesday that over 50 prominent local companies joined the virtual fair on May 7-8, offering more than 700 positions in accounting, finance, consultancy services, legal compliance, engineering and other sectors to global job seekers.
During the fair, an online interview session helped facilitate about 4,800 direct conversations between job seekers and employers, with participated companies dropping hints about follow-up discussions with half of these initial contacts, the HKTE said.
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The event lured high-caliber aspirants from over 12 countries and regions who harbor ambitious plans to tap personal development opportunities in Hong Kong. Among the countries and regions represented were the Chinese mainland, Singapore, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Malaysia, France, and Canada. Among them, about 62 percent of the applicants were reportedly master’s-degree holders, the HKTE said.
The online fair served as an additional window for Hong Kong enterprises to directly connect with the mainland, and for overseas professionals who want to relocate to Hong Kong, following a promotion event HKTE jointly held in Malaysia with enterprises in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in April, a HKTE spokesman said.
The online recruitment approach deserves wider application, as it effectively breaks geographical barriers, said lawmaker Jesse Shang Hailong, also the founding president of the Hong Kong Top Talent Services Association.
It is more cost-effective compared to on-site events as organizers can save the venue and traveling expenses, Shang said.
“For professionals eyeing Hong Kong’s job opportunities, the online fair serves as an ample pathway to gain a preliminary understanding of Hong Kong's industries. For instance, to familiarize themselves with more company names with relatively low or even no cost,” Shang said.
“It can certainly encourage the private sector to engage with this innovative mode and initiate more, similar online recruitment attempts,” Shang said. This is particularly important as many Hong Kong enterprises are now jostling for a more global profile to echo the city’s strategic positioning as a superconnector between the mainland and the rest of the world, he said.
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Some participating firms said they learned through the fair that many international professionals were interested in coming to Hong Kong, and it also enhances nonlocal professionals’ understanding of the structure and recruitment process of Hong Kong enterprises, the HKTE said.
The HKTE pledged to organize more online career fairs tailored to different regions worldwide, as well as to various industries and professions’ demands, in a bid to help potential relocators gain insights into Hong Kong’s job market and development momentum.
Moving forward, the SAR government could better integrate resources boasted by the HKTE, the Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises, and Invest Hong Kong to form a more sound interdepartmental talent-drawing collaboration, Shang said.
Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com
