On paper, Taiwan is an extremely attractive destination for expatriates. Blessed with vibrant nature, culture and cuisine, world-class medical care, and a relatively low cost of living, Taiwan was ranked as the best place for expats to live in a 2019 poll conducted by the expat networking website InterNations. So why do so many arriving expats in Taiwan struggle to find employment outside of working as English teachers?

All Hands Taiwan, an initiative founded in January 2019 by expatriates John Murn and Daniel Miller, aims to answer this question. Murn developed the idea after a staggering number of people came to him asking: How do you manage to find a non-teaching job in Taiwan? Murn and Miller, respectively from the United States and the United Kingdom, responded by holding events to help expats brainstorm and network, including hosting Taiwan’s largest-ever international job fair on the last 28th of September with an aim to get as many international professionals hired as possible.

The popularity of All Hands Taiwan among the foreign community has been evident since its first event earlier this year. Many people want to find a way to stay in Taiwan doing something other than teaching, but information and resources are scarce and hard to find. As the group’s website explains; the job search experience for foreigners in Taiwan has been slow to improve over the past decade.

There are some Facebook groups in English which advertise jobs, but most are focused on teaching. (Non-Teaching Jobs in Taiwan, which has just under 20,000 members, is one welcome exception.) You can also find job postings in English at 104, likely the most popular platform for job-seekers in Taiwan, but its interface remains exclusively in Chinese, making it difficult for foreigners to register and navigate the website. Aside from that, options remain limited. Prior to All Hands Taiwan, professionally focused networking events for the international community were limited to those held by foreign chambers of commerce.

Another reason why finding a non-teaching job is quite troublesome, as Murn and Miller explained at their recent event, is that there are more job-seekers than jobs, which makes competition intense. This is partially due to the belief of many companies that hiring a foreigner will be too expensive, or that the process of obtaining a work permit will be too troublesome. However, neither of these assumptions are necessarily true. There are many skilled foreigners who love Taiwan and understand how the salary market here works even before they go to their first interview.

Ever since All Hands Taiwan was created, the group has held near-monthly events covering several diverse topics, including how to move from teaching into a white-collar job, how to write a good curriculum vitae, and how to start your own business in Taiwan.

These events have drawn crowds of around 80 to 100 people, most of whom are foreigners seeking employment in Taiwan. The events also include academics, journalists, investors and local Taiwanese interested in engaging with the foreign professional community. As one can see from the group’s website and Facebook page, their panels consist of a variety of professionals, both foreign and Taiwanese, who provide insight into the experience of establishing a career in Taiwan.

One of the main values that All Hands Taiwan brings to the community is the network it cultivates. From their first event, the idea has always been that everyone is always one handshake away from impacting their careers.

All Hands Taiwan’s website—which, to the delight of foreigners, has a complete English interface—gives users job-seeking tools and provides articles on topics such as the 70-point system for foreign graduates seeking work permits and other visa options.

Foreign employment in Taiwan is an important topic. There are many qualified foreign professionals looking for jobs and many companies which can benefit from them. Aside from that, Taiwan will benefit from the qualified labor. With a rapidly ageing population and an ongoing “brain drain,” Taiwan will benefit massively by recruiting capable foreign workers, especially as many have graduated from Taiwanese universities and can speak Mandarin. There are also many foreigners who studied in Taiwan through tax-payer funded scholarships, so it would be only logical for them to remain in Taiwan to work and contribute to the Taiwanese tax collection system themselves.

This pressing need has helped All Hands Taiwan quickly become influential in Taiwan. It has evolved into an institution that has the support of local lawmakers like the Taiwanese Legislator Karen Yu (余宛如), who has pushed for changes to Taiwanese labor law that positively impact the lives of thousands of foreigners in Taiwan including myself, such as the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals. All Hands Taiwan has worked with Yu to lower the capital requirements for companies seeking to hire foreigners, along with other potential law changes. The group has also gained the support of international institutions and is working on a white paper to address foreign employability with groups including the American Chamber of Commerce and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto United States representative office.

All Hands Taiwan has also joined the Alliance for a Globally-Oriented Taiwan and organized events for the Talent Circulation Alliance, an initiative launched earlier this year that brings together the AIT, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other government institutions. The alliance is a public-private partnership that facilitates the circulation of talent between Taiwan and like-minded partners with the goal of cultivating a deep pool of capable, internationally integrated and digitally savvy professionals.

As a result of this initiative, the first Talent Circulation Alliance International Job Fair took place at the end of September and brought together a wide variety of companies, both local and international, in search of international employees. The guestlist included companies like Taroko Software, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro and photo editing app PicCollage.

As an expatriate who has worked for Taiwanese companies, I understand how limited the information for foreigners trying to stay in Taiwan can be. I was able to stay in Taiwan and obtain a work permit—an achievement that puts me in limited company. Because of that, I can attest that initiatives like All Hands Taiwan are sorely needed and carry the potential to be life-changing for the many talented foreigners who like me, want to make Taiwan their second home.

(Photos courtesy of All Hands Taiwan)