2021 is a lost year for many. Education has been hit hard, the real estate winter, and the Internet has laid off employees, dragging down the faces of shareholders with a green glow. But for another part of the people, it is another harvest year, and the new energy and chip industries are booming, which has also attracted various capitals and large factories to enter the market.
For these changes, headhunters are the most intuitive and intense group of people. The headhunter in the new energy industry has made tens of millions of dollars by relying on only one car-making company; the headhunter in the chip industry has competed to dig up fresh graduates; the headhunter in the real estate industry has frequently received the news that the candidate has been laid off, and a candidate has even looked for a job for 2 years to successfully enter the job; and the headhunter in the Internet industry has fallen into the inner volume of mutual speed.
We chatted with four different field leaders, the most sensitive to industry changes, who have a deep memory of the past year, but also hold the secret of how much money people in different industries can make in the future.
Headhunters have made tens of millions of dollars by relying on one company
Violet, chief consultant of new energy industry, has been in the industry for 20 years
Last year, the state of new energy vehicle companies grabbing people was particularly crazy, especially in the field of automatic driving.
A peer recruited a car-making company, and from this company alone, it earned about ten million, which was a sensation in the headhunting circle. Another peer helped recruit a self-driving company, and a candidate's annual salary plus stock exceeded 10 million, and the headhunting fee alone was 2 million.
Due to the large number of competing companies, the salaries of engineers have risen, ordinary engineers from 300,000 to 800,000, and it is normal for experts to have millions. The high-end candidates I work with hold seven or eight offers, or even more than 20 offers, at the same time. When foreign companies entered China for a large number of recruitment, a high-quality candidate was only three or five offers.
High-end chip manufacturing is also busy digging up R & D personnel, a master's student without any experience, in 2021 the starting annual salary can be given to 300,000, higher than many Internet 3-5 years of experience in the engineer salary are higher.
There are two main ways to charge headhunting. One is that after the successful entry of the candidate recommended by the headhunter, the company pays 20% of the candidate's annual salary as a service fee to the headhunter, and some shortage positions may reach more than 30%. This is the mainstream model. The other is to pay for packaging, the headhunter first collects 1/3 of the total commission, which is used for preliminary research and other work; the candidate enters the interview link and charges 1/3; after signing the offer, the remaining 1/3 part is charged. If the candidate has not passed the guarantee period, the headhunter will need to make up one more person. In general, the outbreak of the new energy automobile industry has made the headhunters in this industry earn a lot of money.
The two most sensational recruitment cases last year were Xiaomi Car and SAIC's autonomous driving project. Xiaomi announced the car in March last year, when I had a customer's company that was finalizing the investment with Xiaomi, but it has not been able to meet Lei Jun's time. I heard that in those two months, he visited and studied in various factories, and there were a large number of large-scale acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions, and the reserves were almost complete before the official announcement. Xiaomi recruited people very quickly, and after the momentum was almost created, in addition to the internal executive transfer, a team of more than three hundred people was formed externally, which was completed in a few months.
SAIC Motor announced last year that it would invest 300 billion yuan in areas such as smart electric vehicles. They started building the team at the end of 2020 to form a new self-driving software center, initially recruiting more than two hundred people in the first batch and expanding to a thousand people by 2021. When recruiting people, SAIC motor used more than a dozen headhunting companies at the same time, and recruited more than 500 people at once, and the action was very large.
Other big manufacturers are also rushing to enter the game, Baidu is doing automatic driving, and Huawei is also coming in to share a piece of the pie. The industry pattern has been changing, from the perspective of car delivery, "Wei Xiaoli" has become "Xiao Wei Li", xiaopeng delivered more than 90,000 vehicles throughout the year, which was twice doubled than last year.
From what I said, it can be seen that talents are flowing to new energy, xiaomi, Baidu and other non-traditional car companies to build cars, the initial talents have to rely on high salaries to dig.
The frenzied robbery produced two results. First, the frequency of talent job hopping is very high, it is common to change jobs on average every year and a half, and finally everyone is more than the salary, where to give high I will go. Second, the rapid development of enterprises, there is no time to train engineers, so junior engineers also have to sign non-compete agreements. I don't think this is normal because previous non-compete agreements were only for engineers who were experts and had core secrets.
I've been working for over 20 years, almost 14 years in the recruitment industry, and by 2020 I'm catching up with this wave of car-making craze. In the past two years, the financial, Internet, and real estate industries have been greatly affected, and the country's policy orientation in the high-tech track is very obvious, and many people are flowing and transforming into new energy industries.
I think new energy vehicles can be fired for at least five years, although new energy vehicles and automatic driving have a little bubble, but now the bubble has a little fading trace, for example, some car companies have not built a car has gone out of business.
▲ New energy vehicles at the China Industry Fair. Photo / Visual China
"There has never been an industry as short of people as chips"
Alex, chip headhunter, has been in the industry for 15 years
How to describe it? In the chip industry, after the director is recruited, a very important job is to do a good job in personnel management, because the industry is short of people, and the people below may be poached at any time.
In 2021, the world is short of cores. After Huawei and ZTE were sanctioned by the United States in 2018, the inventory chip could only maintain the order volume for 2 months. More than two years later, chip production capacity is short, demand has risen again, and by 2021, every graphics card entering the market will be robbed in seconds.
The chip can no longer rely on foreign countries, and the domestic injection of capital has suddenly made the salaries of personnel in the market soar. Last year, the salary of fresh graduates in the chip industry basically rose by 50%, chip design engineers also increased by about 60%, and a director's monthly salary of 100,000 is common.
We dug a fresh graduate, in 2020 he was in a chip company in Chengdu, with a monthly salary of 8K. After a year, the company has raised him to 16K. In August 2021 he jumped ship and rose to 26K again. That's the equivalent of tripling your salary in just one year. Such candidates are often ignorant, carefully raised a salary, and the other party accepted it on the spot. When he was ready to go, another company offered a higher salary, but it was too late, and the person was already on the job.
The best order I did last year was that a chip company urgently needed to recruit people, and before starting the cooperation, it sent us 300,000 prepaid. Of course, this is a superficial success, and the bad side is also reflected in this company. In that partnership, we issued more than 100 offers for them, but only more than 40 people joined them one after another, which shows that the same batch of talents is still being competed for by other headhunters and companies.
It is too late to cultivate talents, and headhunters are busy digging people from overseas. In 2019, we recruited talents from overseas, with an annual salary of 3 million yuan, and the candidates will propose to solve the settlement problem of their lovers, as well as settlement fees and so on.
The lack of people in the industry is also reflected in the university. In 2021, the integrated circuit major was upgraded to a first-level discipline, and our headhunters also humbly aimed at fresh graduates. Other industry headhunters will not dig up fresh graduates, but we will.
In the chip industry, the most cattle companies like Huawei Semiconductor, the salary is relatively not high, but the options and equity are given more. Ali's Dharma Academy and Pingtou Brother also belong to the layout of the chip, and the engineers are basically more than 800,000. Candidates still have a higher priority for money than options, and they are more concerned about getting their hands on it every month and see it more immediately. OPPO gives a particularly large headhunting fee because they have application scenarios.
The current heat of the chip is in strong contrast with the cold silence of more than a decade ago. When I graduated with a master's degree in 2006, the salary of a fresh graduate majoring in microelectronics was 8-12K, and until 2016, the salary of the chip industry did not even reach a 30% increase. And my old classmate, who made sports chips last year, sold 600 million.
All along, the demand for own chips has not been large. Foreign chips have good stability and cheap price, even if a chip is expensive, but the proportion of the entire equipment is small, and there is no demand for independent research and development. Even if it is designed, there is no need for mass production, and the return on investment is low, there will be no investment.
Domestic applications, Gree, Ali, Xiaomi are all investing in chips - because there are many application scenarios of intelligence in China, and everywhere they are talking about smart homes and smart cities. Dong Mingzhu of Gree said that he would spend 50 billion yuan to study chips.
Using the Internet to spend money to change talents and build chips, I actually worry that this kind of play is not feasible. It's not enough to throw money at it, it depends on technology. Patents and hardware investments are ranked ahead of wage costs. But overall, the new year is still worth looking forward to.
▲ Photo / "Selection House: Headhunter's Style"
Large factory rolls, headhunting is also rolling
Tina, Internet headhunter, has been practicing for 6 years
I mainly recruit technical posts and product posts. Doing Internet headhunting, it is very interesting that we basically take Ali's rank as a reference benchmark, that is, the P sequence rank, the larger the number, the higher the level. Young people are still more inclined to enter the big factory, overtime intensity, but high salary, good job hopping, just like Tsinghua Peking University, everyone wants to take the exam, but the students inside must be more volume.
Most companies most often need headhunting to recruit grades are P6, P7 and P8, middle and high-level, generally P6 to 20-35K, P7 to 35-50K stock allocation, P8 is basically an annual salary of millions + stocks. I have found a P9 for JD.com before, and the time for the high P position to be vacant will be very long, this position is still open, and finally it may be promoted internally.
After the epidemic, the live broadcasting industry is particularly hot, and the game industry is also on fire, so live broadcasting and game companies are recruiting a lot. The demand for technical talents in large factories is relatively stable, the demand for Java engineers is very large, the salary of P6 level is 25-35K, the development post is 25-40K, the senior design expert of production and research is 35-50K, and the salary of image algorithm is also good. Ali's daily excellent fresh, Yitao's product technology director, and high P position of operation have been found, and the salary is more than one million, open to talk. I have also successfully recommended many candidates for Xiaomi's test development, logistics planning, product director and other positions.
The biggest salary increase is still BAT and TMD (Toutiao, Meituan, Didi), netease, JD.com, millet and other companies are also considerable. The rank of the old big factory is hard currency, such as Ali P6 out, into xiaomi to become P7, a higher level, salary increase can be 30%.
In addition to BAT, the most exaggerated salary is ByteDance. As long as they want to rob people, they will poach people with high salaries. I had a candidate before, in the Meituan to do the architecture, belongs to the core technical personnel, low title, strong ability, annual salary of seven or eight hundred thousand. He went to JD.com for an interview, and the salary was directly doubled. After Jingdong met, he felt that it was too far from home, and he faced Ali and Byte, the former with an annual package of about 100,000 yuan, and the price of the latter directly higher than hundreds of thousands. In the end, he chose the headline department of Byte, because there were too many to give, and the cash and allotted stocks added up to 2.2 million, up nearly 3 times.
But Companies like Ali, Tencent, Baidu, Byte, and Kuaishou are not very willing to cooperate, because they all have their own talent database, which is very powerful and has a wide coverage, and when I am looking for talents, I often crash with the database. Sometimes I just find a particularly suitable person and throw it into their system and it shows repetition. The repetition rate is particularly high, and there are many headhunting companies that have signed contracts, which leads to a special internal volume of headhunting companies, and all people are staring at a position in a large factory, and the hand speed of submitting resumes. The hand slowed down, and it was done in vain in one day.
The channel of HR of the big factory is more relaxed than the headhunting. We headhunters can not send some candidates for college promotion and college, but the commercial expansion of large factories is rapid, and the recruitment standards will be reduced, and when I contact these candidates, some of them have already contacted the HR inside the big factory, and even have direct preparations for interviews. The big factory does not want the headhunting fee to be wasted, and the talents recommended by us are very demanding.
Compared with large factories, second- and third-tier companies will do better. For example, sky eye check, easy car, flash delivery, the probability of talent collision will not be so high, and there are more positions for headhunting. Like the regional operation director of Flash, with a monthly salary of 40-60K and a salary of 14 a year, I recruited the right person in almost 2 months.
In the second half of last year, it was obvious that there were many good talents from large factories, and at the end of the year, large factories laid off and downsized, which was quite difficult for many candidates. Jumping out of a large factory, you may have to go to a small factory. But don't worry, after the spring, customers will re-examine the needs and will release the position, so the headhunting industry is also "gold three silver four".
The layoffs of Internet manufacturers have a good side and a bad side for our headhunters. We are like "housing agents", before there were listings, but there were no guests, and now the talent market is high, and we can quickly match the demand.
My own worries are that Party A will return the candidate within the three-month guarantee period. A while ago, I recruited a developer, monthly salary of 25K, the next day will be 3 months to expire and turn positive, the result of the company told us the day before, this person did not meet the requirements of the enterprise, both sides are not satisfied, the previous work is done in vain. Now the threshold for large factories to select people is high, many companies recruit people to "double first-class" to lay the foundation, and the running single rate is also higher than in previous years.
No matter when, technical talents are not worried about work, high-end talents are always being dug, and it is not uncommon to receive multiple offers. The Internet is still hoping to be under 35 years old, can work overtime, single candidates.
▲ Photo / Screenshot of "Deeper Than the Sea"
The real estate was hit hard, and HR also gave more than 40 people to leave
Celine, real estate headhunter, has been in the industry for 5 years
Real estate customers will have some soft requirements for candidates, some customers are Thai, he wants to see the candidate's birthday, genus, some customers give positions, it is clear not to want some people who belong, because the fortune teller said, make a mistake. Hong Kong-funded companies love to look at feng shui, and the time of construction and opening is exquisite. Even in the project of Plaza 66 in Shanghai, people often jump off the building, so the question of the security manager interview is, if someone jumps off the building, how do you solve this problem?
But last year, it was no longer enough to look at feng shui. In 2021, the real estate industry was hit hard, and more than 20 large housing enterprises exploded. After Evergrande exploded, it directly packaged the resumes of a group of departing people to the headhunters to see the opportunity.
Last year, commercial and residential real estate projects were shrinking, many private housing companies no longer took land, and there were a large number of candidates in the market who could not find opportunities. In previous years, 10 companies were looking for candidates for the same position in the same period, but now there may be only two or three.
Some fund companies also no longer invest in real estate projects, the real estate division was dismissed in situ, and my candidate called me while doing the resignation, saying that HR was also in the conference room to do the resignation of more than 40 people.
In 2018 or 2019, the salary increase of talents in the real estate industry is still 20%, the proportion of general increase is also very low, and some positions have disappeared directly. During the epidemic, there are fewer opportunities, job hopping can not be increased, candidates are basically equal salary jump job. Land in first-tier cities is difficult to get, and land in second- and third-tier cities such as Wuhan, Xi'an, and Nanjing is easy to get, so many real estate people are working in different places.
Male candidates in real estate are more receptive to off-site, and women will have a lot of concerns about travel. I was impressed by a real estate candidate with a foreign background, she was in her thirties and invited me to dinner outside, and the annual salary offered to her at that time was 400,000. I spoke passionately about how reliable the fund's background was and how helpful the job would be for her future career. But she was silent for a moment and said to me, "You're not married yet, and you don't know how the pace of overtime will affect my family." In the end, she twice turned down the opportunity to jump ship, choosing to spend more time maintaining the family. A few years later I learned from my boss that she was still divorced, and that family changes had made her mood worse and less productive in the workplace.
I'm not qualified to judge which option is better, but you can imagine what grade and status she would have reached if she had entered a fund firm. When I call a male candidate, I don't ask too many questions at home, but if it's a woman, you have to know if she has children, whether the husband is more stable in the industry, or good at embracing change.
At the age of 45, it is another threshold. The real estate industry is a bit like the Internet industry, which clearly wants candidates under the age of 45. Therefore, for many older candidates, industry changes will hit him hard. I have a good candidate, who has a lot of experience in past projects, but is 51 years old. After leaving in 2019, I helped him find a job for two full years before finally joining an Internet company that wanted to open up real estate.
Some time ago, several real estate companies were fined or dismissed, the industry is not good, most of the headhunting companies feel that the real estate has nothing to do, will cancel the real estate industry this sector, turn to semiconductors, artificial intelligence or Internet celebrity industry. My hunting firm has quickly shifted to other segments of real estate – logistics real estate, industrial real estate, urban renewal, pharmaceutical real estate and data centers, which have a lot of recruitment needs and have become a new focus.
Recently, I talked to my real estate colleagues around me, and everyone is basically a post-90s person, who has a very serious sense of confusion or anxiety about their careers, which is a phenomenon that will occur in recent years.