Tech firms ramp up AI talent recruitment

Alibaba Group is also intensifying efforts to attract AI talent.

The company has kicked off its spring recruitment program, offering more than 3,000 internship openings for fresh graduates, with nearly half of these positions centered on AI.

More than 80 percent of positions offered by Alibaba Cloud — Alibaba's cloud computing arm — are AI-focused. The AI-related positions from Amap, the mapping and local services business under Alibaba, account for about 65 percent of its total.

The recruitment plan targets students graduating between November 2025 and October 2026, with internships spanning multiple business units including research and development, algorithms, technology, security and planning, Alibaba said.

"As a technology company committed to exploration and innovation, Alibaba is ramping up efforts to attract and cultivate AI talent," said Jiang Fang, chief people officer of Alibaba. "We hope to provide outstanding young professionals with broad development space to jointly embrace the immense opportunities in the AI era."

During the spring recruitment period, Alibaba Cloud, in collaboration with the Tongyi Lab, will continue to advance its global talent recruitment initiative. Notably, fresh graduates will have the opportunity to participate in the cutting-edge R&D of large language models, jointly promoting advancements in artificial general intelligence.

"Leading Chinese tech companies have played a vital role in expanding employment and bolstering technological innovation, especially in AI, which will be conducive to enhancing production efficiency and bolstering industrial upgrading, thus driving economic growth," said Jiang Han, a senior analyst at market consultancy Pangoal.

As new business models and evolving consumption patterns have popped up, new types of occupations related to AI have emerged in China and have become key sources of job creation, Jiang said.

These companies should strengthen talent cultivation and introduction, and equip the next generation of tech leaders with the skills and experience needed to drive innovation in the rapidly evolving AI field, Jiang added.

The Chinese authorities have taken various measures to support the employment of fresh college graduates and youth this year through policy and financial incentives to employers, and skills training initiatives and job services for students.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Finance in April jointly issued a circular on expanding employment opportunities through multiple channels, such as increasing market-driven job creation and stabilizing public-sector employment. Organizations and enterprises have been encouraged to hire this year's graduates as well as unemployed youths who have graduated in previous years.

Apart from enhanced efforts to recruit fresh graduates, Chinese platform enterprises, which mainly leverage digital platforms to provide services such as e-commerce, short videos and livestreaming sessions, are ratcheting up resources to create new job positions for the traditional labor force and expand employment space for disadvantaged groups.

According to a report released by the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the number of merchants on Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo is about 14.2 million, and the platform has provided direct employment opportunities to about 18.6 million people.

Pinduoduo has cumulatively created 55.32 million jobs in China in four aspects — direct employment driven by merchants, employment in warehousing, distribution and logistics, employment of platform staff and indirect employment, the report said.