As part of a recruitment drive for its new manufacturing plant in California, technology giant Tesla invited Mexican engineers to an event in Monterrey last week, attracting hopefuls from all across the country.

The strategy is part of a hiring push to prepare the company to mass produce the upcoming Model 3 from this plant.

Tesla aims to build 500,000 cars a year by 2018 at its plant in Fremont, California, south of San Francisco. If successful, this figure would represent a six-fold increase over 2016.

Mexico’s talent pool is certainly up to the task, with experienced manufacturing engineers across 19 automotive plants owned by global automakers including General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, and Volkswagen, to name a few.

Tesla has been actively hiring in the past few months for assembly-line jobs at its Fremont plant, but has found that manufacturing engineers are in even shorter supply than software engineers in Silicon Valley.

It is known that certain U.S. automakers and suppliers will occasionally bring in employees from Mexican plants for short-term assignments, but this recruiting on a “wholesale basis” is quite unheard of, and is likely due to a lack of sufficient talent.

This move by Tesla shows a deep confidence and belief in the strong technological and engineering talent that is being created in Mexico today.