Phoenix Network "Eye of the Storm" produced
Author | Jiang Lu
Edit | Yu Hao
"Internet melon field" is a label attached to the pulse by the outside world.
From "ofo corruption" to "Ali female employees were sexually assaulted" to "byteDance employees died suddenly"... These news events that have attracted a lot of attention come from the Pulse community. It can be said that every explosion of the inside story of a large factory can accelerate the position of the Internet information source of the pulse.
The Professional Speech Community has brought traffic growth to Pulse and has also caused trouble for it. From 2017 to 2020, the number of Pulse users rose from 30 million to 110 million at the end of June 2020. At the same time, the pulse was also complained by major factories such as Station B and Pinduoduo, and even sat in the defendant's seat at one time.
In the midst of the controversy, Pulse made a decision that shocked the industry: to launch a company review system in the original workplace community and recruitment business. This move quickly triggered a heated discussion in public opinion, and the outside world received mixed reviews. Some people think that reviews make information more transparent, and some people say that workplace reviews can be true or false, which will breed water and rumors.
In this regard, Lin Fan, founder and CEO of Pulse, responded that he accepted all criticisms and suggestions, and also wanted to clarify some misunderstandings and prejudices. In his view, there is a serious information asymmetry in the traditional recruitment model, and the review model will provide job seekers with multi-dimensional real information and optimize the matching of supply and demand in the talent market.
It is undeniable that the original intention of the pulse is good, and the review system can reveal the true side of the enterprise to a certain extent. However, there are also many problems in workplace reviews, is there value in user review content? How to maintain authenticity? Can Pulse use the review system to play the advantages of the community and find a suitable differentiated positioning in the recruitment market?
A week after responding to the review controversy, Lin Fan accepted an exclusive interview with Phoenix.com. When asked whether workplace reviews are pseudo-propositions, he said: "Reviews are the natural needs of users, which is valuable, and recruiters also want to find employees who agree with corporate values." ”
Lin Fan's confidence comes from the data of pulse growth. From January to October 2021, the commercial revenue of Pulse Recruitment increased by 259% year-on-year, with 5.7 million user posts and a total of 8.6 billion information consumptions." But he also admitted that employee reviews are subjective, which is a problem that every community cannot avoid, and what Pulse has to do is to ensure that the content of reviews is true and diverse
The following is the dialogue between Phoenix Technology and Lin Fan:
Reviews are the needs of users, and pulses do not charge "protection fees"
Phoenix.com: What made you launch the review model?
Lin Fan: It should be the end of last year. At that time, we were doing strategic discussions, and the most important thing in 2022 is to provide valuable content to users, and reviews are the most able to help users provide a lot of valuable knowledge. Then, at our new employee training meeting, a new employee shared the story of his pulse, and the classmates around him all said that they should go, and the pulse is the place where everyone goes to find the good or bad of each company, and he once again mentioned the reputation of the review among users. Therefore, the review mode is inherently user-defined. Based on this, we officially set up a project to do this at the end of last year.
Phoenix.com: Users can comment on enterprises, but the pulse is oriented to most of the customer body is the recruiter, which is the biggest controversy of the current review model. What do you think about this, and do you consider the balance of commercialization when making decisions?
Lin Fan: In fact, it is also the most difficult point, but it is not a problem that only exists after doing company reviews.
In this regard, first of all, from the perspective of user needs, whether users discuss whether the company is good or bad is a real need. Users not only have discussions on the pulse, but also discuss in Zhihu and Weibo. Therefore, it is not that we guide or encourage users to do this, but that users naturally have needs. Just on the pulse, because everyone has the identity endorsement of employees of different companies, everyone will be more efficient in the pulse discussion, so more and more content has received the pulse.
Therefore, we are actually meeting the needs of users, which is not a false proposition. Second, the customer pays for the pulse, what is the money paid? If it is a protection fee and a deletion fee, I think this is really not, it is a recruitment service paid to The Pulse for the enterprise, that is, to recruit the right person for them.
Phoenix.com: What if these companies don't invest money because of this?
Lin Fan: If the company says that there is their negative death on the pulse and does not invest money, we can also accept it. So why do so many companies still buy Pulse's services? Because Pulse provides differentiated value that other recruitment platforms can't provide. For example, there are many company directors and even VPs active on Pulse, and enterprises cannot find matching VPs and executives on other platforms, and they will naturally pay for Pulse's services.
In fact, the senior management of the company that dives in the pulse will often look at the evaluation of employees, so as to improve the company's system. At the same time, they will also screen some job seekers who agree with the company's values. In the long run, it's a mutually reinforcing and matching thing.
"Public Enemy of Big Factories" Is a Temporary Contradiction Good enterprises attach importance to the voice of employees
Phoenix Network Technology: How does Pulse limit the spread and generation of rumors and ensure the authenticity of reviews?
Lin Fan: We are not an "anonymous" community now, but the only nickname mechanism like Weibo. Pulse is a platform for encouraging dialogue on an equal footing and encouraging responsible speaking, and there are many initiatives in this regard. At the product level, we provide a channel for clarification. Enterprise users can also use their real-name identities to refute rumors with their real names in the upper right corner. In addition, Pulse users can choose values tags for any post, such as "in line with the facts", "no evidence", "excessive words" and other pulses have labeled reminders for emotional reviews.
Secondly, the community regulates some bottom lines, for some types of content, it does not matter whether it is really possible to do it first, such as improper relationship between men and women, these can not be confirmed or falsified information, the platform will be uniformly deleted. We encourage users to take responsibility for their own comments, and each post has a portal to report, which covers multiple dimensions such as abuse, false information, and fraud.
In addition, on the basis of promoting authenticity, we are constantly striving to increase the diversity of content. From the perspective of the operating system, we will guide users to answer many positive questions. For example, there will be a topic in the circle of colleagues # Do you remember what you said when you were a child that you wanted to do when you grew up?
Phoenix Network Technology: Pulse will do topic guidance?
Lin Fan: Yes, for example, #2021 year-end summary#, #What makes you choose your current company#, when we ask some positive questions, users will be guided, and some users will create this kind of positive content.
In addition to improving the product mechanism and operation topic, Pulse also improves from the KOL operation. Go to the industry to find a variety of experts, commentators, these people are not here to complain, through the KOL operation to publish some valuable content. From these levels, it is equivalent to constantly improving the positive content.
Phoenix.com: What do you think of the label of "public enemy of the Internet factory" of the pulse?
Lin Fan: I think that the "public enemy of large factories" may be a superficial phenomenon, and it should be said that the pulse is the presentation of temporary contradictions between employees and enterprises.
Why is it temporary. Because the policy orientation is common prosperity, the overall wind direction of society has begun to pay more attention to the voices of ordinary employees than to the voices of entrepreneurs.
In fact, we believe that as a long-term development of the enterprise, to be a "century-old store" enterprise, are very important to the voice of front-line employees, rather than avoiding problems and ignoring the needs of employees. In the middle of this process, the pulse has become the position of the two sides, so it seems to have become a big factory public enemy.
Misplaced competition serves passive job seekers
Phoenix.com: What role do you think Pulse plays between employees and businesses?
Lin Fan: We are now helping him (employees) to present, to help both sides have an equal dialogue. In fact, these workplace problems are not because of the pulse, but naturally exist.
We provide a good channel for the company's management to communicate with the front-line employees. In the past, it was a layer of reporting, each layer attenuated the information by 20%, 30%, after four or five layers, basically no real voice reached the management. So we now see that excellent managers will make good use of the platform of pulse, communicate with their front-line employees, listen to their voices, solve their actual problems, and then build this company better, build a company that can absorb more excellent talents. So we should actually be called friends of the big factory.
Phoenix.com: What is the revenue ratio of each business of Pulse now?
Lin Fan: The ratio of recruitment, membership and advertising is 3:2:1.
Phoenix.com: How do you compete with other recruitment platforms such as Boss Direct?
Lin Fan: There is a very important concept here, let me first clarify that the users that Pulse really serves are "passive job seekers", that is, it does not say that you are going to change jobs soon, but if someone comes to find people who are not excluded. I think that in the stage of actively looking for a job, we have no advantage over other recruitment websites, and it is difficult to surpass in the short term.
Phoenix.com: Is there any pressure to grow at this stage?
Lin Fan: I'm not worried about that. Because we have good content, users are active on the pulse. Then after the matching becomes more and more accurate, more and more people will come here to find jobs, and companies will find suitable employees on the pulse. We are a slow company, but we are actually very efficient in solving the needs of both sides of the recruitment.
Phoenix.com: What kind of platform do you hope to develop into in the future?
Lin Fan: Compared with the past, the current workplace environment is really different. For example, the post-70s and post-80s are more concerned about growth and interests, but the post-90s and post-00s are more concerned about "respect", and they hope that enterprises will see themselves as people, not as tool people. The voice of ordinary employees is increasingly valued, which is the background of our company's rapid growth.
The environment is changing, our original intention has not changed. Pulse's mission is to achieve career dreams, we hope to help every professional person, from the first day he entered the workplace until his retirement, so many decades of professional career, he encountered a variety of problems, all kinds of confusion, this community this platform can help him to solve these problems, this is our ideal pulse.