Image source @ Visual China
| whipper, author | Gu Yan
Following the cold Internet winter at the end of last year, Weibo, Zhihu, Byte, Didi, Baidu, JD.com, B Station, Youzan, Shihui Tuan and other Internet companies have recently exposed news of layoffs.
The winter of the Internet seems to be continuing, the company released fewer jobs, recruitment is more cautious and conservative, the original "gold three silver four" by job seekers ridiculed as "copper three iron four", "broken three rotten four".
But for Internet recruitment platforms, layoffs and new jobs mean huge market opportunities, and it is a good time to grab users.
Boss direct recruitment, worry-free future, liepin, pulse and other Internet recruitment platforms, each with a strange move, began a new round of fighting. The industry has the opportunity to reshuffle, who can stand out?
"Gold three silver four" or "broken three rotten four"
"This year is a small year for recruitment, a big year for job seekers." Internet recruiters told whippers.
In this year's spring recruitment, the "gold three silver four" iron law seems to be invalid, 985 master Yi Yi said to the whip: "There are one or two hundred resumes, and there are only two offers, all small companies." ”
When I graduated last year, Yiyi got offers from five or six big factories in a short period of time: "Small companies, I couldn't even look at it at that time."
Not only Yiyi, Xiaohongshu, Pulse and other social platforms, there are countless complaints about this year's spring moves, and netizens even jokingly call it "broken three rotten four".
Netizens nicknamed "villagers who reformed the plan on Elephant Island" complained about their spring recruitment experience, saying that "it was really painful, and every day it was very defensive." "The blessing of 985 undergraduate students and two internship experiences in large factories made him think that he was a stable offer. But after investing in forty or fifty companies, only four entered the interview process, and all of them were small and medium-sized enterprises, and even after waiting for a week, they received rejection emails.
"Cast hundreds of resumes, north to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, not a single interview", "cast 200+ resumes, 0 offers" such voices are not in the minority, and even some people give up the Internet industry and choose to cut salaries to enter traditional enterprises.
According to zhaopin's survey data for professionals, 60.5% of respondents believe that it will be more difficult to find a job this spring than last year.
Although the Internet industry has entered a cold winter, young people still regard the Internet industry as their first choice. In September last year, the "Z Generation Workplace Status and Trend Survey Report" showed that more than 30% of The Z generation expected to become Internet people, and 24.8% of the post-95s and 31.1% of the post-00s wanted to join the industry, accounting for more than the pre-95 group.
But since the middle of last year, Internet companies have successively broken the news of layoffs, and now, several Internet manufacturers have also taken turns to open the "layoff" optimization plan, and the "layoffs" have even been packaged as graduation and ridiculed as "opening apes and throttling".
In the screenshot circulating online, the work card of the employee who collectively "graduated" was recycled in boxes. Some netizens also posted the copy of the layoffs at station B to guide the various matters of "bilibili graduation day". Even Lilith, an Internet game company that is "rich" out of the circle, has recently been laid off. Some likes were rumored to lay off as many as 70%, and then some likes responded that the actual adjustment ratio was about 20%, involving about 1,000 people.
"Overall, Tencent's employee count will still grow this year." At the recent earnings conference, Tencent President Martin Lau responded to the problem of layoffs for the first time, "The Internet industry is encountering structural challenges and changes, and Tencent, as a participant, will also take the initiative to adjust ... We have also optimized the cost of our loss-making businesses in order to maintain healthier growth. ”
Martin Lau also mentioned the changes in the entire Internet industry: in the past, the industry was competition-driven and invested heavily; now, compared with short-term gains, everyone pays more attention to long-term business development and invests more healthily, especially the optimization of marketing costs, operating costs and labor costs.
"This year is indifferent, the Internet recruitment can release fewer positions, the company's decision-making time will be extended." Li Lin, an Internet company HR, told the whip, "Again in the epidemic relationship, the company is relatively conservative, and the positions that can be recruited or not will be more cautious in choosing the best candidate." ”
The staff of an Internet recruitment platform also corroborated the statement to the whipper: "This year, the positions released by various companies are indeed fewer than in previous years, and the recruitment positions involved are mainly grass-roots posts and sales. ”
In addition, this year, many enterprises have been locked, personnel can only come and go, many job seekers complained that "the offer is over, the HC is locked".
"This year, all the platforms have said that they are very good and have achieved results, and to be honest, I feel that the moisture inside is too much." Headhunter Mu Mu said to the whipper.
In the context of the slowdown in existing business and the lack of innovation of Internet companies, this year's "spring recruitment" seems to be becoming more and more deserted.
"Internet Recruitment"
Internet recruitment has always been a large and fragmented market, and competition has tended to be homogeneous.
The CICC report predicts that the size of the mainland Internet recruitment market is expected to reach 58.3 billion yuan in 2025, with a CAGR of 19.2% in 2020-2025.
Network-related data show that at present, the top four in the domestic Internet recruitment market are 51job, Liepin, Boss Direct, and Zhilian Recruitment.
On March 25, the 2021 financial report data released by Boss Direct Employment was eye-catching. According to the financial report, Boss Direct Employment achieved revenue of 4.26 billion yuan in the whole year, an increase of 119.0% year-on-year, exceeding market expectations. The company turned a profit and achieved a net profit of 853 million. In terms of users, the average monthly active users (MAUs) of the platform for the whole year was 27.1 million, up 37% year-on-year.
In MAU calculations, BOSS Direct Recruitment continues to maintain the status of "the largest recruitment platform in China". Behind the seemingly "unexpected" growth, Boss direct employment is still facing "growth anxiety".
Last July, due to a cybersecurity review, the Boss direct hire app was asked to suspend new user registrations. In fact, due to the inability to accept new ones, the MAU that Boss directly hired since August last year has dropped significantly from the previous month.
Some people believe that newly registered users are very important to the Internet recruitment platform, which will directly affect the retention and payment of enterprise users, if they cannot be new, the platform is only left to change jobs instead of job seekers, and the activity may plummet.
Many netizens said that when they just graduated and began to look for a job or change jobs, they found that the boss could not register, at present, there are related voices on various social platforms "how can not register", and even asked "is there any good alternative software".
This has also spawned a "second-hand" Boss account trading service. On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Pulse, paid rental of Boss accounts abounds, and in a second-hand trading platform, a Boss account is even sold to more than 100 yuan.
Job seekers and newcomers who have just entered the workplace who have re-entered the market by the wave of layoffs may choose other Internet recruitment channels because of the difficulty of registration.
According to the 2021 financial report released by Liepin, its company achieved revenue of 2.651 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 41.8% year-on-year; the annual net profit was 191 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 106.2%.
According to Liepin's previously disclosed data, as of mid-to-early February 2022, the number of Liepin individual users has exceeded 75 million.
Major Internet recruitment platforms have begun a new round of competition, have laid omni-channel advertising, subway, bus, elevator, everywhere can see boss direct employment, liepin, future worry-free figure. Potential users of bosses are being eaten.
Although Naxin was blocked, the offline advertising directly hired by Boss was still hot, and its huge poster was posted at the Xi'erqi subway station, where the Internet factory gathered.
In response, some users said that "the subway is plastered with boss direct hire ads, downloading a discovery to stop new user registration." ”
In addition to the ubiquitous subway advertisements, Boss also sponsored the Winter Olympics and became the exclusive supplier of official human resources services for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games; before the Spring Recruitment, it also launched a fidelity job identification program "Conch Preferred" for manufacturing general workers; in February this year, Boss directly hired online sports enterprise recruitment.
Although it can't be new, Boss Direct Hire must arm itself with offline marketing.
Internet recruitment "shuffle"
"Now I'm going to brush up on the recruitment software when I'm fine." More than one unemployed job applicant said.
However, for the Internet recruitment platform, in addition to the open rate and DAU (number of daily active users), it also depends on whether the recruitment end and the job search end can be successfully matched.
"I haven't responded positively for a long time, and morale has been affected." Headhunter Mu Mu told the whip that a large factory pushed for several months, nine times out of ten are directly hung, it is difficult to have a few began to chat about offers, but did not give the candidate's expectations, "is the lock HC." ”
The Internet industry is cold, and enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency, reducing job supply, which is undoubtedly a huge challenge for recruitment platforms focusing on the industry.
Therefore, in addition to Internet positions, Internet recruitment platforms should also expand new recruitment areas.
For example, Boss Direct Has previously announced its entry into the blue-collar recruitment market and has also launched a live recruitment format. According to statistics, in 2021, 1218 small and medium-sized enterprises with less than 500 companies opened nearly 2,000 recruitment live broadcasts on Boss direct recruitment.
Liepin and 51job have expanded more corporate services.
In addition to the core business of recruitment, Liepin also provides other services such as flexible employment, online research, employee training and evaluation.
Moreover, when Releasing the 2021 Annual Report, Liepin proposed to launch the "platform + SaaS + service" strategy, with the help of SaaS products composed of dynamic recruitment modules, the company can provide services to different types of customers.
From focusing on Internet recruitment to employee career development, to expanding human resources outsourcing, evaluation and training. At present, its human resources value-added services have achieved good results.
In addition, 51job has also enriched its business through a large number of investments, and the projects involved in the current 51job investment include fresh graduate job search network, lagou network, pulse search, CDP group, etc.
Known as the "Internet pantry", the pulse has also begun to force Internet recruitment, recently launched a new feature "company reviews", in which employees can publish evaluations of the company, answer questions from job seekers, and even score the company. However, this new feature is still controversial. In addition, the companies on the list of "jobs to go" are still dominated by Internet manufacturers.
When LinkedIn announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market in October last year, there was a voice about whether Pulse could undertake this part of the high-end users.
It is not easy for Internet recruitment platforms to break through quickly. After experiencing it for a while, Mu Mu also said: "There are more high-end positions on the Internet on the pulse, but there are still fewer in other industries. ”
The services of the Internet recruitment platform are becoming more and more comprehensive, the tentacles of each recruitment platform gradually reach each other's territory, the platform business is increasingly overlapping, the differentiated characteristics between boss direct recruitment, liepin, 51job and other platforms are no longer prominent, and the Internet recruitment platform has been pulled to the same running line.
The wave of Internet layoffs is a dilemma and an opportunity for recruitment platforms. Who can grasp the trend of the times in this competition and seize the opportunity in the crazy shuffle, it may break out of the siege and break the situation that the Internet recruitment platform has always been "equally divided".