East Lake High-tech Development Zone -- also known as Optics Valley of China and located in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province -- launched a mega recruitment drive recently, zone officials said.

It kicked off its Talents in Optics Valley large-scale spring recruitment program on April 9, with over 140 high-tech companies participating, offering over 16,000 jobs to graduates.

According to local media reports, the event is a move to attract top-flight people launched by Optics Valley, mainly fresh graduates of universities.

Affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak and given that colleges and universities have not resumed classes and students have as yet been unable to return to schools, this year's recruitment drive will be carried out entirely online on April 17 to May 20.

At present, a website channel for the recruitment activity has started warming up and is scheduled to hold special sessions for Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan University of Technology, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan).

Officials said that already 60 of Optics Valley’s resident high-tech enterprises have decided to participate in a special recruitment activity in the special session for Wuhan University to be held on April 17, where graduates can have  online consultations and make video appointments with recruiters.

From the perspective of the industries involved in the recruitment drive, the talent that Optics Valley plans to absorb in large quantities mainly focuses on optoelectronics, integrated circuits, biomedicines, the internet and other pillar and emerging fields.

Recruitment positions mainly include technical R & D personnel, software engineers, marketing personnel, among others.

According to zone officials, in 2017 Wuhan launched its plan for one million graduates to stay in the city for businesses and jobs -- hoping to have one million college students remaining there after five years.

Optics Valley's current resident population has an average age of 31 years and works in more than 100,000 companies.

Officials said the latest Talents in Optics Valley recruitment drive is mainly a platform connecting universities, enterprises and graduates. Over the past three years, it has attracted more than 350,000 university students studying in Wuhan.