Alibaba seeks for 5000 new employees worldwide to become a global leader

While being eaten up by the world financial crisis most companies across the globe, including technology giants, are laying off thousands of employees, Chinese Alibaba Group Holding Ltd announced its plans to recruit 5,000 people to increase the stuff from current 12,000 to 17,000 by the end of the year. Apart from this, Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma, stated that the company is going to benefit from the global economy downturn and to transform itself from a China-focused e-commerce provider into a global web marketplace.

Last year Alibaba, Hangzhou, east China-based company, hired nearly 4,000 people. This year the recruitment will focus on China but the ecommerce giant wants also to extend employment in the U.S. and Europe. China passed the US to become the world's biggest Internet market, with 298 million Web users at the end of last year. Alibaba achieved a mark of 5 billion yuan (US$731 million) in spending on its Taobao online-auction site as consumers in China increase Internet purchasing.

Mr Ma noted that before the crisis the company was helping China's products abroad. Now their goal is to partner with small and medium-sized enterprises in other parts of the world. As part of this move Alibaba is moving its European headquarters from Geneva to London this month, as it sees the UK as one of the most promising markets for picking up suppliers. While the plans are long-term Mr Ma hopes to attract suppliers from other regions that would then stay with Alibaba in better times. He shred his view on the future when SMEs in Europe could be connected to customers in China, America, Japan and so on. He said, that Alibaba is likely to go far beyond just being China-centered.