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Taiwan Model

The global pandemic has brought the unique chance for Taiwan… to truly go global!

The global pandemic has brought the unique chance for Taiwan… to truly go global!

Source:Philippe Tzou & John Murn

The pandemic is driving talents from all over the world into Taiwan to take refuge, taking the quality and expertise of Taiwan’s foreign professional community to levels not known in decades, if ever. But is Taiwan ready to take advantage of this opportunity?

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The global pandemic has brought the unique chance for Taiwan… to truly go global!

By Philippe Tzou
web only

Last Saturday, Nov. 21st, as Taipei’s biggest startup exhibition, Meet Taipei, was entering its third and final day at Taipei Expo Dome, exhibiting the best Taiwan has to offer in entrepreneurship, tech innovations and digitalization, another fair attracting a very different crowd was taking place within a five-minute walk. 

The non-profit organization All Hands Taiwan organized its second International Job Fair at the atmospheric EcoARK with the support of the Talent Circulation Alliance, bringing together 25 Taiwan-registered companies as exhibitors looking for talent of all kinds, ranging from software developers, marketing experts, digital data analysts, overseas sales, even pastry chefs. 

This event may have looked on paper another local job fair bringing together job seekers and employers, but as a volunteer who worked on one of the exhibitors’ booth the whole day, I saw a unique event where a truly international crowd boasting broad skillsets was matched with a group of employers who actually understood what ‘going global’ really means. 

Unfortunately, today, despite our very export-oriented industries, many Taiwanese companies still haven’t fully committed to the untold opportunities that come with taking a global mindset and building into that a global workforce. 

All Hands Taiwan was established in 2019 by a group of young expat professionals working in tech, education, marketing and human resources who saw a gap in the domestic economy: there was no real connection between local employers and the growing crowd of foreign residents with unrecognized talents. This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic having ravaged the globe, but sparing only a happy few countries such as Taiwan, there is an even more apparent need to bridge this gap.

As reported by CommonWealth Magazine in its article “As the World Shuts Down, Is this the Time for Taiwan?”, the island is soaking up the return of award-winning movie producers, culinary chefs, musicians, and other talented professionals with Taiwanese roots. 

In the past year, as a communications professional with dual citizenship (Taiwanese and Belgian) working for a French-Taiwanese startup in Taipei, I have met young talents from Los Angeles, New York, Liege, Paris, Singapore, Bern and Moscow with experience in international marketing, professional US football, European Union data privacy law, mathematical modeling, United Nations & conflict resolution NGOs, and international arts curation. All moved to Taiwan either because this is where they want to live, or because COVID pushed them to come here. 

At the All Hands Taiwan Job Fair, as I worked the whole day at the French Tech Taiwan booth, I met with young talents from France, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, India, Switzerland, Nicaragua and many other countries, boasting an even larger variety of skillsets. Each time I greeted these talented foreign professionals, the biggest worry they expressed about Taiwan is that they are unable to find employers that recognize their skill sets as potential assets. 

This disconnect is more apparent – and more important – than ever this year, because as the world is suffering a serious economic crisis due to the pandemic, most Taiwan employers do not seem to appreciate two very evident factors:

Selling our Made in Taiwan products and services abroad will require additional resources and new efforts due to the crisis in commerce and trade brought on by the pandemic.

The pandemic is driving talents from all over the world into Taiwan to take refuge, and this deluge, combined with other recent initiatives - like the Taiwan Employment Gold Card – have increased the quality and expertise of Taiwan’s foreign professional community to levels not known in decades, if ever. 

When I look at most Taiwanese companies that run import-export-related business (I’ve worked as a strategic consultant for clients in over 40 industries in Taiwan for the past 6 years), they mostly rely on young graduates with foreign language skills from top language universities in Taiwan. Yet when I meet the rare and successful local startups who do business around the world, their international businesses are managed by foreign professionals who have personal and business networks, experience and skills IN those targeted foreign markets. 

So this year, as I continue to meet more young foreign born Taiwanese at different events, I can’t help but notice that while Steve Chen (founder of Youtube) and Kai Huang (Guitar Hero) and the likes are recognized by the NDC and central government as the Silicon Valley’s “Taiwan Mafia”, I still have to ask: when are we going to recognize the returning Taiwanese graduates from Stanford, Berkeley, LSE and INSEAD? When will the market see the robust foreign talent living right here in Taiwan? If not now, when?

(Edited by John Murn)


About the author:

Philippe Tzou is the director of the Wallonia export agency in Taiwan (AWEX Taipei). He was recently known as the ecosystem and public relations director of UnaBiz, a Taiwanese-French startup." He is an active volunteer for the French Tech Taiwan community and has worked extensively on projects connecting the Taiwan and French startup ecosystems. 


About the editor:

John Murn is the executive director and co-founder of All Hands Taiwan, a non-profit devoted to bridge the gap between foreign talents and Taiwanese companies. He is a natural-born marketer at ease with digital, traditional and content marketing, a Milwaukee native and has been living in Taiwan for over nine years.


Have you read?

♦ 2020 An Emotional Roller Coaster
♦ Taipei's Survival Story: Our Battle Against COVID-19
♦ Taiwan’s Impressive Response to COVID-19: A Personal View

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