While laying off employees and recruiting new recruits, is the spring recruitment in 2022 "Schrödinger"?

Image source @ Visual China

Wen 丨 Number Science Society, author 丨 柠溪

Under the gradual failure of the "gravitational field" of the Internet industry, what other "tracks" are worth looking forward to?

It's spring season again.

"Gold, silver and four" should have been the best time for companies to "hunt" fresh graduates, but from the overall situation in the current market, it seems that there is no heat in people's image.

As the epidemic economy gradually returns to normal, whether it is employers, headhunters, or new professionals who are about to enter the society, there seem to be some big changes: what remains unchanged may only be the recruitment action every year; but what has changed is the operating status of various enterprises, the recruitment mechanism, and the understanding of more and more young people about the "employment" itself.

So the question is, in the context of frequent layoffs and salary cuts in Internet factories, is the spring recruitment of enterprises in 2022 a "Schrödinger-style" recruitment? Under the gradual failure of the "gravitational field" of the Internet industry, what other "tracks" are worth looking forward to? When entering a large factory and seeking a high amount of "general contracting" is no longer the first choice of young people today, what are they pursuing?

Their stories may give us some answers.

01 Recruiting new is not "Schrödinger"

Looking back at 2021, the introduction of the "double reduction" policy has made the wave of layoffs sweep the entire education and training industry. Byte Education, Gaotu, Good Future, Ape Counseling, New Oriental, 1 to 1, Spark Thinking and other educational institutions have almost all been wiped out, and at the same time, the affected workplace personnel have even exceeded the order of millions.

Not only the education and training industry, but also the situation in other industries is not optimistic.

For example, the short video platform Kuaishou has been optimized to varying degrees, including e-commerce, commercialization, internationalization, and games, and some teams have optimized the proportion of up to 30%, and it is rumored that most of the laid-off personnel have an annual salary of more than 1 million.

Another example is that Heytea has also been exposed by the media that a round of large-scale layoffs has been opened before the festival, involving about 30% of employees, although Heytea said that this is only a normal personnel adjustment and optimization based on year-end assessment, but there are certified Heytea employees in the vein of the workplace community who have confirmed this matter in the internal circle of colleagues.

In addition, ByteDance (mainly involved in education and training, online games, local life and other business sectors), iQiyi (all business lines), Baidu (mainly involved in MEG mobile ecological business group), Waterdrop Chip (mainly involved in the consultant team and insurance sales team), Xiaomi (all business lines except the car business), OPPO and other enterprises, have been rumored to lay off employees or reduce wages .

This can't help but raise questions: on the one hand, there are successive layoffs and reductions in treatment, and on the other hand, the release of new HC to continue to recruit new ones, is the spring move in 2022 a "Schrödinger-style" setting?

The survey data produced by third-party direct employment agencies can be answered at a certain level.

According to the "2022 Spring Recruitment Market Quotation Weekly Report (Phase I)" released by Zhaopin on February 14, the scale of corporate recruitment in the first week after the Spring Festival shrank slightly, and the number of recruitment positions decreased by 4.5% year-on-year; on average, each position received about 11 resumes, which is about twice that of the same period last year; in addition, 60.5% of respondents believe that it is more difficult to seek a job this spring than last year.

Xiao Xin, who graduated from Heze College majoring in accounting, is a fresh graduate in 2022, and is currently working in a small accounting firm in Jinan for internship, according to his original plan, it is very likely that he will directly choose to turn positive after the internship. However, after talking with HR about the treatment of regularization, he re-planned the trajectory of his life and decided to go all out to graduate school.

"During the internship, my monthly salary was 2400 yuan, and this salary was almost only able to maintain a subsistence in jinan", Xiao Xin shrugged his shoulders and said, "I thought that after becoming a regular employee, the salary would be improved to a certain extent, but hr told me that the external employment environment is not good overall, so my salary will not be too high than the internship period." ”

"Of course, the financial industry itself has a higher threshold, during the internship, I also chatted with the brothers and sisters of the same school and the seniors who have worked for many years, or chose to go to graduate school." However, our school does not have too strong advantages, so the graduate school is also a way for me to 'gild'. In the future, I hope to work in a unicorn company and achieve my career dreams. Xiao Xin said.

02 There is still a "prosperous industry" in the market?

At a time when almost all industries are called "ebb tide" and "barren", if there are still areas that show a prosperous scene, then this industry is not a new energy track: on the one hand, it is reflected in the support of policies and the weight of capital; on the other hand, it is reflected in the talent level, such as the "Xiaopeng 400 million salary executives" exposed by the media, and then "the car-making business line is not affected by layoffs" revealed by Xiaomi car insiders.

In the "Farewell kryptonite era • 2021 Talent Attraction Report" released at the end of last year, the top three areas of "the top ten areas of job growth in the new economy industry in 2021" are related to the new energy industry, and new energy vehicles are ranked second with a growth rate of 365%, grabbing the attention of the public.

According to the research forecast of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, the annual sales of new energy vehicles in China will exceed 5 million in 2022; in 2025, it will reach at least 7 million, with an optimistic estimate of 9-10 million. This means that by 2025, the demand for new energy vehicle talents will reach 92,000-116,000 people, but the total supply is seriously insufficient, and the net talent gap will reach up to 37,000 people.

In order to grab people, various new energy vehicle companies and intelligent vehicle technology companies have offered attractive "salaries" as the most basic sincerity.

Only in the case of Xiaomi. In March last year, Xiaomi officially announced the construction of the car; by October last year, the founder, chairman and CEO Lei Jun revealed: Xiaomi Automobile is expected to be officially mass-produced in the first half of 2024; and then a month later, Xiaomi was exposed by a number of media to apply for the registration of trademarks such as "Xiaomi Automobile", "MICAR" and "Mi Car"... Xiaomi's every move to build a car has attracted much attention from the industry.

Under such a tight timeline, the real "fuel" is bound to be talent, after all, the project of car manufacturing requires a lot of professional talents and technical support. Some former xiaomi employees in other departments mentioned that the company began to release a large number of HCs in July last year, and even released 120 positions in 2 days to recruit talents with unprecedented efforts.

In terms of treatment, Xiaomi Automobile has issued a "combination fist" of high salaries and options to recruit talents. According to Xiao Chen, a product personnel who jumped from the new forces of car manufacturing, his current salary structure is monthly salary + year-end bonus + option, and the total annual salary package price is about 1.2 million. Xiao Chen said, "Although it sounds like the price is not low, my salary is actually the median of my level in this circle." ”

Even fresh graduates who do not have any job management can get an annual salary higher than that of fresh graduates in other majors. However, it should be noted that according to industry insiders, Internet car manufacturing generally rarely directly recruits fresh graduates, and traditional car companies will relatively give fresh graduates more opportunities.

In this robbery war without smoke, the people in the car circle are happy to see it. In the new energy vehicle job-hopping circle, there is a saying in the industry: "The post on the outlet (software algorithm class) has increased by more than 30% in the same city, and 50% in different cities. On platforms such as Pulse and Little Red Book, people in the car circles with different entry times and different career paths are also sharing their job search experiences.

For the question of "whether high salary represents alignment with the profession", Xiao Chen summed up in combination with his own and surrounding peers, "Internet car-making companies are indeed willing to spend a lot of money to recruit people, and the vast majority of people recruited have very beautiful resumes, but in terms of professional ability, I will not say anything." Relatively speaking, 'Wei Xiaoli' several new car-making enterprises, the professionalism is still a lot higher. ”

03 The "myth" of the big factory has lost its color, and the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou are no longer worshipped

In order to promote as much employment as possible in such a depressed environment as 2022, the major recruitment platforms have also tried their best to implement various methods and launch new functions: Zhaopin recruitment, liepin based on trend prediction, the launch of talent and research reports; the launch of AI interview rooms based on the underlying technology, short video exploration stores, etc.; Pulse launched a job search list based on salary, humanities, prospect judgment and other dimensions, advocating "first look at reviews, and then find a job".

But in fact, from 2020 onwards, the "myth" of the big factories has begun to fade, and the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou are no longer a place of worship. According to a set of data in 2020, 24.6% of the first-tier cities were selected, 33.0% of the new first-tier cities were selected, and 20.3% of the second-tier cities were selected. Among the new first-tier cities, Chengdu (4.9%), Hangzhou (4.1%) and Xi'an (2.8%) are the most popular among 2020 graduates.

The same is true this year. According to this year's survey report, 4.3% of people choose to change their work cities, of which 52.9% choose to go to first-tier cities, suzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Ningbo, Shijiazhuang, Tianjin also make many practitioners yearn. In addition, 19.7% of people choose to sink to second-, third- and fourth-tier cities, and the most important reason to change cities in order to improve the quality of life is the most important reason to change cities.

The epidemic has affected many enterprises (especially in high-tier cities), but also changed the young people's perception of "work", more and more young people choose to "work from the heart" employment, they are more willing to choose those reliable, stable, "small and beautiful" jobs; of course, many young people choose to return to their hometowns, in their familiar environment to work hard in the next piece of "river soil".

In order to achieve such a job mentality of young people in essence, local governments have also provided real money and silver to support it.

For example, on February 17, Chen Zhong, deputy director of the Department of Human Resources and Social Security of Zhejiang Province, publicly stated at a press conference that if college students want to start a business, they can apply for loans ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 yuan, and if the business fails, the loan of less than 100,000 yuan will be repaid by the government, and the part of the loan of more than 100,000 yuan will be repaid by the government for 80%.

"It is not necessary to work hard in a certain city to be called a dream, nor is there any need to deify a city", in the eyes of Xiao Wang, who studied in Beijing and decided to return to Changsha to work, the important thing is not the city, but the improvement of personal work skills. "The development prospects of the new first-tier cities are also good, because the cost of living is relatively lower due to returning to local employment, which is more suitable for us to accumulate professional experience with peace of mind."