The city of Shanghai's latest effort to pull in some finance professionals has been a recent campaign in the Pudong New District to look for top students, which concluded on Nov 21, with 10 students being chosen from a total of 3,500 by a panel of experts.

The organizers say that the program was started in June by the Shanghai Financial Development Service Center, the Shanghai Student Affairs Center, and Shanghai Student Federation with the idea of selecting some top students who want to work in finance in cooperation of governments, enterprises, universities and social organizations as part of a talent pool to make the city into an international finance center.

They went on to say that they cooperated with nearly 200 companies and 150 universities, and expected to attract both foreign and Chinese students for the program. The winners of the Pudong contest will be put at the top of a hiring list or will get internship opportunities at local financial institutions, or scholarships.

Local authorities said that the program has increased communications between finance companies and universities and can be seen as a new way of hiring people. They also explained that they expect to get the program to play a greater role in developing more good minds for finance so as to turn Shanghai into a hub of talented personnel and that they will do more to bring in top finance professionals to help the city reach its goal.