A jobs fair was held at Heilongjiang Vocational College of Biology Science and Technology in Harbin, Heilongjiang province on May 30.

More than 3,200 college students from over 20 colleges took part in the event, with more than 1,800 positions available. Nearly 700 students made provisional employment agreements.

Also, the government of Harbin New Area signed a framework agreement with the provincial university students’ guidance center of employment and entrepreneurship to explore ways of attracting skilled workers to the area. A total of 13 companies also stated their intentions to cooperate

The jobs fair offers an excellent opportunity for us to find the staff that we are looking for, said Dong Kai, a training officer of Tian Qing Stem Cell.

The recruitment fair is a result of Harbin New Area’s model of cooperation between schools, businesses and government to close the area’s skills gap.

Since the beginning of 2018, a committee in Harbin New Area has worked with university careers advice centers to host events to match employers with the skilled workers that they need. The new agreements reached will mean that students will get the opportunity to visit companies, and company managers will come to give talks in colleges and universities.

According to statistics, by the end of 2017, a total of 177,000 skilled workers were employed in Harbin New District, including famous experts such as Sun Pengfei and Tan Liying, four academicians, two Changjiang Scholars and six individuals from the Thousand Talents Program (The Recruitment Program of Global Experts), and 12,400 highly-skilled innovative workers.

The workforce is currently growing at an annual rate of 7 percent and includes workers skilled in areas such as equipment manufacturing, new generation information technology, organic food, biomedicine and new materials.