Photo/VCG

July 8 (NBD) -- U.S. electric carmaker Tesla is speeding up recruitment of talents in order to get its Gigafactory in Shanghai prepared to start operations.

On Saturday, the electric vehicle manufacturer held the third round of recruitment at the Shanghai Pudong job market, hiring factory technicians, plant management personnel, and employees for general assembly, coating, welding, and logistics departments, according to news outlet The Paper.

Hundreds of job seekers were seen lining up outside the interview rooms. Staff with the Pudong job market revealed that Tesla had around 500 applicants in the pipeline for the interviews on the day.

"They (interviewers) asked me some professional questions, including how to handle problems at the assembly lines, what the difference is between Tesla products and those that I'm working on. I haven't seen a Tesla car in real life," Hu Xiaoming recalled details during the job interview. Hu had worked as a shift leader for many years at a Volvo factory in Zhejiang and was applying for the quality control department.

Li Yong who lives in Pudong has been following Tesla's recruitment information since he learned that the U.S. carmaker decided to build a factory at the Lingang Industrial Zone. "I hope the salary will be higher than my current level," Li said to The Paper. Li now earns a little over 4,000 yuan monthly at a SAIC General Motors facility and puts his expected salary somewhere between 4,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan.

National Business Daily found that Tesla started hiring employees to operate the Shanghai plant as early as this May so as to guarantee a punctual delivery of the Model 3 manufactured locally in China. 

In May this year, the U.S. automaker announced that the Shanghai-manufactured Model 3 was available for pre-order with a starting price of 328,000 yuan (47,618.4 U.S. dollars) and expected to be delivered at the end of this year or early next year.

The Tesla factory, with an investment of over 50 billion yuan, is the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project in Shanghai's history, and Tesla's first outside the U.S.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn