Searching for Baidu Star(2)

October 16, the first "Baidu Star" program design competition finished in Beijing. Tianchen Lu from Tsinghua University won out from the 57 finalists and awarded 10,000 yuan. It is the largest ever competition in program design.
Tsinghua is the top university in China. And the winner, Tianchen Lu is a "genius" freshman who has won gold metal of International Olympic Math a year ago as a high schooler.

A "star" signing his name on the "Star Board"

The race took a month and attracted 4000 students from 310 colleges nationwide. There were also three high schoolers and one foreign student. After two rounds of selections, 57 participants from 13 cities including one high schooler and the foreign student entered the final competition.

Participants visiting Baidu's silver tech office

This is also the largest scale programming competition targeted at college students. Besides the large number of participants, and schools, many participants and those unable to join also had big discussions on it's topics and best designs on the web. Many colleges had heated discussions of "Baidu Star" in their tech forums.

Top ten winners sharing a photo with Baidu's staff members

"The competition was unusually intense", said Baidu's chief architect Liming Zhou. "the finalists represented the highest level of programming design in China's colleges".

Baidu's vice-president in charge of technology, Jianguo Liu told the reporter, "Baidu has been based on technology, and is paying great attention to technology and the discovery and cultivation of technology tallents. We hope to raise more people's great interests in system design and programming achievement through "Baidu Star". We will have similar competition every year in the future and hope to make it a high level competition and communication platform for high level IT tallents. And to fully expand Chinese software tallents' potential and to promote the growth of China's internet industry".

Baidu's vice-president Jianguo Liu gaving a talk to the finalists

At the same time, as the prelude to Baidu's campus recruiting activities, Baidu hopes to discover the best computer tallents through the competition to enrich it's "Baidu tallent pool". General manager of Baidu's HR, Linming Lu said that, selection of tallents through large competition is much simpler than traditional recruiting. Top tallents can come out easier. Through selection, these outstanding tech genius from the colleges will be precious tallents for search engine business. Baidu will continue to follow up on all the finalists.

Baidu's CTO, Shanshan Chui gaving a talk to the participants

Before this competition, Baidu's selection and promotion of tech tallents has been very unconventional. Last October, Baidu held "Apple" award for all Chinese around the world on creative ideas. That race gave every tallent in IT or non-IT fields a chance to provide ideas for better Baidu services. At the same time, it provides job opportunities at Baidu for those who understands search engine well and also with creative ideas.

source: Tencent and Tom.com Tech Reports