Text | Pole Business, author | Cindy, edited by | Yang Ming
What is a pulse? A social software based on workplace relationships, or a "pantry" for Internet people? Or is it the Internet "Discipline Inspection Commission"?
Recently, Wang Qian, co-founder of Pulse, gave a new answer, using "review content + list aggregation + position" to help job seekers break the circle of cognition and become the internal reference for job search in the workplace.
After 9 years of establishment, after experiencing the storm of the closure of the "anonymous plate", the pulse finally found a path that seemed to work logically, that is, to help job seekers make career choices with user reviews, so that they could become the "public reviews" of the "workplace version".
The originator of workplace reviews is the American job search service company Glassdoor. In May 2018, after a failed shock listing, Glassdoor was acquired by Japanese recruitment firm Retract for $1.2 billion in cash.
According to previous reports, Pulse has been preparing for a new round of private financing or sprint listing - as early as the C round of financing in 2017, Pulse founder Lin Fan revealed that Pulse will be listed in 2019, when the expected valuation was $10 billion, but after pulse was interviewed the following year, the listing plan has been stranded so far.
The emergence of a new story can also be seen as another effort of the survivors of this "workplace social" track in the capital market. It's just that for the pulse, it remains to be seen whether the new story can become a new way out.
01 The "Last Survivor" of Workplace Social networking
In the vigorous Copy to China era, Linkedin is an unavoidable target. The Linkedin model forms an online mesh social network based on workplace relationships, monetizing through advertising, recruitment and other services. In China, which has more than 400 million working people, the Chinese version of "Linkedin" is a big and beautiful story.
However, since 2004, none of the Chinese version of "Linkedin" has survived, and even Linkedin China's own incubated "Red Rabbit" was officially rolled off the production line at the end of July 2019.
Some people think that the Internet penetration rate is not high, some people think that it is Chinese there is no habit of professional scene socialization, and some people think that WeChat fully satisfies the workplace social function. Whatever the reason, the result is that "there is no professional social networking in China."
In hindsight, the pulse survived not because of socializing, but because of the content. There is an anonymous section in the vein, and the anonymous people in the workplace can spit on the company, leaders, exchange salaries and benefits, etc. It's this feature that gives Pulse the differentiated value. Survived the mournful "workplace social" track.
But surviving is one thing, financing and listing is another proposition. In the past 10 years of development, Pulse has made a variety of attempts based on workplace socialization.
In 2018, Pulse completed the D round of $200 million financing, when Pulse had the ambition to move from the Internet to the whole industry, and launched the "Ladder Plan" to expand the coverage of the industry - it is expected to invest 1 billion yuan and carry out in-depth cooperation with 1,000 partners in various industries. Two years later, Lin Fan summed up in the media that "he spent 1 billion yuan to buy the lessons", and the external cognition of the pulse at that time was still "Internet teahouse".
Pulse has also done workplace "internal pushing", and this project is also defined by Lin Fan as "failure".
In the first half of 2020, there have also been management changes in Pulse, including five senior executives, including co-founder and vice president of commerce Zhang Wei, co-founder and chief marketing officer Hu Chen, chief technology officer Yao Jinyi, co-founder former CTO Jiang Youxin, and senior director of content advertising Cui Yao.
According to previous media reports, "No matter how many stories The pulse tells, in fact, it is a secret (an anonymous social app) cloaked in LinkedIn." In an article, Shen Boyang, founder of Red Rabbit, believes that the pulse is the anonymous social network that "brings its own traffic" in the middle of the fire.
At the same time as the workplace social network has been repeatedly defeated, the anonymous area of the pulse - "professional speech" has become popular. As the anonymous area brings together more and more employees of large factories, the year-end bonus of the King Glory team is 100 months' salary, Alibaba's acquisition of Youku Tudou, Lu Qi's departure from Baidu, and the sudden death of Pinduoduo employees, all of which have been bursting out from the pulse. The well-known KOL Half Buddha Immortals are even more blunt, "The pulse anonymity area has become the Internet Daddy".
True and false news, as well as the lack of content review, screening and management responsibilities as a platform, have made Pulse a "public enemy" of Internet manufacturers, frequently complained by many big factories, and even sat in the defendant's seat many times, involving themselves in the center of the public opinion storm.
In 2020, Pulse has also invested more manpower and resources into the "professional speech", and added functions such as "circle of colleagues", which has not caused too much splash. In the spring recruitment season of 2022, workplace reviews have become the keywords of pulse market promotion.
02 Will it become a "workplace version" of public reviews?
Industry insiders believe that the pulse of content to put down social obsessions and turn to "reviews" is a kind of optimistic change that goes with the trend.
The need for information flow in the workplace is scattered in all corners of the Internet. In the early Tianya forum, "just applied for Huawei's customer solution test, please ask how about this job", similar to this want to understand a company, job situation post is not a few posts. At the same time, young people have developed a habit of reading reviews before acting. Dianping and other review platforms have become the benchmark of modern people's eating, drinking and having fun.
In this context, the positioning of the pulse is gradually clear - the company's comments. And found a more logically feasible business model in the company's review content: let job seeker reviews to plant grass enterprises and complete advertising monetization.
At this time, it has been 9 years since Pulse first embarked on the road of social networking.
However, compared with the public reviews and little red books, which are people's evaluation of "goods" and "services", company reviews involve more subjective dimensions such as people to people, people to posts, and people to work atmosphere, which is a greater test for the platform.
For the goal of listing, whether it is Glassdoor, the originator of workplace reviews or "public reviews" of life services, the development has a history of nearly 20 years. The Little Red Book, which was established in the same year as the pulse, has also been specially accumulated for 9 years. The pulse of doing workplace reviews is equivalent to "slow entry" - if you need to convince the capital market with such a slow business, there is still room for discussion.
Returning to the relationship between workplace reviews and recruitment, the main active users of the current pulse are still employees of large factories, and most of the long-tail enterprises that constitute the main body of the job recruitment market still need to be covered. According to QM data, the pulse in December 2021 MAU is around 3.8 million, which is still quite a distance from the industry's first gradient. 51job, Zhaopin recruitment, boss direct recruitment in the same period of MAU more than 10 million, the main elite talent hunting MAU also more than 6 million.
Pulse has high hopes for recruitment. In July 2020, Pulse said revenue from recruitment services had surpassed the total for the full year of 2019. In 2021, Lin Fan set a target of 270% growth for Pulse recruitment revenue, from Lin Fan's latest statement, "In the past year, Pulse recruitment business revenue increased by 259% year-on-year, user posts reached 5.7 million, a total of 8.6 billion information consumption occurred", although the growth rate is not fully realized, but the desire for the recruitment market is obvious.
However, judging from the feedback from major social platforms, whether it is HR, headhunting, or job seekers, the recruitment function of pulse is mixed.
A senior HR person on the Internet who is familiar with the pulse said, "The most important thing for job recruitment is communication efficiency, but even if you pay a lot of membership fees to the pulse, you can't directly contact the job seekers by phone, you can only send contact within the pulse, and the user feedback speed is not timely." This is also the trouble that job seekers have been in the pulse before. In addition, from the perspective of recruitment resume management and other functions, the pulse is not perfect enough, and it is difficult to become the main choice channel for recruitment in the industry.
The aforementioned person believes that with the support of the background of interconnection, the recruitment industry does not have to build one more wheel. If there is a large recruitment platform to cooperate with the pulse and open up the closed loop of "reviews" and "transactions", it may be a more win-win result.
The premise of all this also requires that the pulse can successfully tear off the label of "large factory pantry". And, whether the "review" is true enough.