A youth program showcasing Qingdao to students and a youth talent night market was recently held at the Dabaodao Blocks as part of the Qingdao International Beer Festival concluded successfully. With the Qingdao International Beer Festival as its central platform, the initiative used the youth talent night market to bring together urban study tours, night-market recruitment and livestreamed job matching to integrate talent services into the city’s vibrant everyday life, thereby opening up a new channel for attracting talent.

The event offered a relaxed experience where young people could enjoy the festival while exploring career opportunities. Three dedicated zones were set up for job promotion, policy consultation and interactive activities where young talent could learn about vacancies at key companies, salary packages and career prospects as they explored the Beer Festival and strolled through the cultural and creative streets, at the same time also receiving one-stop advice on employment subsidies, rental housing and household registration, and entrepreneurship support. They could also take part in the various interactive activities and receive exclusive cultural and creative gifts featuring Shibei District’s talent policies. By delivering services in a more youthful, lifestyle-oriented way, the initiative brought talent services closer to young people and transformed job hunting from a straightforward employer-candidate matching exercise into an immersive urban experience.

As part of the program, students were given the opportunity to visit the Qingdao Textile Museum where the interplay between century-old industrial heritage and contemporary fashion and cultural-creative industries offered a glimpse into the evolution and upgrading of traditional sectors. They strolled through the Dabaodao Blocks cultural and leisure district, exploring the strong prospects and entrepreneurial opportunities in the distinctive cultural and tourism industries, and visited the Qingdao (Shibei) Flexible Employment Market to see the comprehensive support services and well-developed ecosystem for workers in new forms of employment.

Capitalising on the buzz surrounding the Qingdao International Beer Festival allowed the district administration to upgrad its online livestream recruitment program to create a dedicated virtual job fair that combines live event coverage, policy briefings, direct corporate recruitment and interactive Q&A. Livestream hosts followed the night-market route to give online viewers an immersive look at the lively atmosphere and streetscape of the festival venue at the Dabaodao Blocks with talent-service officers occasionally joining the livestream to break down employment and entrepreneurship benefits for different groups, including university graduates, while explaining eligibility requirements and application procedures in real time. Representatives from key companies also appeared in the livestream, promoting more than 10,000 quality job opportunities while offering services such as CV optimisation and career guidance.