Flexible recruitment of overseas talent

Flexible recruitment of overseas talent is a global practice. Despite its important role in complementing traditional full-time recruitment, empirical evaluations of these initiatives remain scarce. Combining curriculum-vitae mining, bibliometric visualizations, and regression analysis, this study evaluates China’s flagship flexible-recruitment program for internationally trained researchers. The analysis yields a nuanced assessment. The initiative successfully attracted high-profile scientists—many with substantial pre-existing scholarly influence—to China’s leading universities. However, post-appointment outcomes vary markedly across individuals: gains in publication volume are modest on average, and the expected intensification of collaboration with host institutions and domestic co-authors is limited. These mixed results highlight both the promise and the constraints of part-time mobility models. In an era of heightened geopolitical and economic friction, the findings suggest that China—and other countries grappling with sustained brain drain—need to recalibrate talent strategies to balance reputational gains with deeper integration mechanisms that convert visiting expertise into enduring knowledge spillovers.