The 2025 Shanghai Technical Professionals and Project Matchmaking Conference was held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center on Nov 7.

The event introduced an innovative model combining competition, exhibition, conference, and exchange, offering a comprehensive overview of Shanghai's innovations and achievements in professional talent development for the city's 3.28 million technical professionals.

To facilitate the movement of researchers between academies, universities, and enterprises, and promote the allocation of human resources, the conference released a series of implementation guidelines on supporting scientific research personnel in public institutions for innovation and entrepreneurship. This aims to accelerate the integration of scientific and industrial innovation.

The new policy enhances support for professionals who leave their posts to start businesses, including the following measures:

• If a venture does not achieve profitability during the initial leave period, employees may return to their positions and transition to part-time innovation, with the reinstatement period not counting toward the leave quota.
• Support for setting buffer periods and key entrepreneurial milestones for leavers seeking entrepreneurship.

For part-time innovators and in-service entrepreneurs, it delegates more authority, such as:

• If part-time innovation or business activities do not interfere with primary job duties, institutions should generally approve such initiatives.

For outbound cooperation, management is standardized through tripartite agreements, while for enterprises' talent introduction, the policy encourages the creation of innovative positions such as project manager, results promotion specialist, technology manager, and transformation service officer.

The conference also released the Shanghai's list of recognized international professional qualifications (3.0), designed to better align overseas certifications with domestic titles for global talent in the city.

This list establishes four mechanisms: proactive discovery of certificates linked to industry needs, scientific evaluation and selection, dynamic adjustment in line with industrial demands, and efficient verification response.

The newly updated version has expanded in scale, professional scope, and geographical coverage, now comprising 139 items in the A-list of recognition, 24 in the B-list of urgently needed skills, 41 in the C-list for professional title alignment, and 12 in the D-list of mutual recognition of qualifications. The upgraded version maintains tiered and categorized convenience measures and strengthens the international evaluation system for technical professionals.

In engineering and technology, a batch of certificates in key areas such as digital technology, information security, data management, artificial intelligence, financial technology, green architecture, and mechanical engineering has been selected.

For international mutual recognition, senior-level title holders in Shanghai can directly apply for the highest level of professional qualifications issued overseas. For example, associate senior accountants and above in Shanghai can directly apply for a fellow membership of the Institute of Public Accountants with exemptions for up to 13 assessment and exam subjects.

Title holders at junior, intermediate, and senior levels can apply for overseas qualifications with exam exemptions. For instance, professionals in the economics sector can correspondingly apply for junior, intermediate, and senior certificates in engineering management without the need for examinations.

In 2024, approximately 45,000 individuals received professional title evaluations in Shanghai, with over 60 percent from non-public sectors. About 15,000 received associate senior titles or higher.

Through the mechanism for aligning overseas qualifications with domestic titles, 1,159 professionals, including 52 direct overseas applicants, from 910 employers, applied for certificate verification, and 225 certificate holders obtained professional titles through assessment recognition.

Source: Jiefang Daily