TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chip maker, is planning to recruit 8,000 employees this year — double its usual number — reports said Wednesday (Sept. 9).

According to Mirror Media, the company has never employed so many new staff members within a single year. This time, it even managed to persuade employees who had announced they were departing for competitors in China to stay on after all.

TSMC’s successful development of 7- and 5-nm chips left rivals Intel and Samsung behind, contributing to the Taiwanese company’s success as well as to its need for new talent, Mirror Media reported Wednesday.

TSMC already employs about 50,000 people, meaning the recruitment of 8,000 more would amount to an increase of 16 percent. Initially, the company sought to rely on its usual practice of taking part in campus job market events, but the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic scuttled those plans, forcing it to wait until the final four months of the year to launch its recruitment drive.

The chipmaker, headed by chairman Mark Liu (劉德音), is not willing to divulge details about its plans or how many new employees it has recruited so far in 2020, the report said.