Produced by Radar Finance and | Zhang Kaijing, editor| deep sea
It's time for subway stations, bus stops, and office buildings to be "bombarded" by advertisements on online job sites.
The data also reveal a similar phenomenon. The financial report shows that in the first quarter of the calendar year of 2019-2021, the sales expense ratio of BOSS direct employment is the highest in the year, which to some extent verifies the so-called "recruitment off-peak season". During the Winter Olympics just past, it was also reported that there were advertisements for boss direct recruitment, Zhaopin recruitment, Liepin, 51job 5 platforms at the same time as the Beijing Wangjing subway station.
However, while online recruitment is hot, routines are always with them. Last year's 315 party exposed the personal resume leakage problem of the three platforms of Zhaopin Recruitment, Liepin and Future Worry-free; this year, a "blood slave case" put 58 Tongcheng on the cusp of the storm, although the case was later reversed, the Cambodian police determined that the case was purely fabricated, but it could not cover up the fact that 58 Tongcheng was full of false recruitment. In late February alone, a number of netizens complained about it in the black cat complaint.
In this context, Internet recruitment has undergone iteration after iteration, but the results are difficult to say smooth. In the capital market, Zhaopin Recruitment, 58.com, and 58 5job have completed privatization, and in the eyes of industry insiders, the low valuation is an important reason.
But the story has not ended here, since this year, the catch-up direct recruitment, pulse and other new concepts such as live recruitment, first watch reviews and then job hunting have been put on the stage. Will this give new hope to Internet recruitment?
Why did the "FIRST SHARES OF HUMAN RESOURCES SERVICES" choose to be privatized?
Worry-free future, was the first U.S. stock market listed Chinese resources service enterprises.
At the beginning of the 21st century, China's Internet industry was in the ascendant, and China Talents Network, 51job, and Zhaopin Recruitment saw the development opportunities of Monster, the world's largest online recruiter at that time, and followed its business model and moved the scene in the talent market online.
Among them, 51job was founded by Hong Kong native Zhen Ronghui, who was one of the youngest vice presidents and partners in the history of Bain International Strategic Consulting before starting its business. The dividend of the times has increased 25 times in the three years from 1999 to 2002.
Since then, China's Internet recruitment market has undergone several changes, and the stock price of 51job has also experienced great ups and downs, from a minimum of only $3 in 2009 to more than $114 in 2018. According to the data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in terms of revenue in 2020, the market share of 5job in China's online recruitment industry reached 34.2%, ranking first, almost twice that of the second boss directly hired.
Even so, 51job has ushered in the fate of delisting. In June 2021, the company threw a $79.05 per share privatization, corresponding to an equity value of about $5.3 billion; however, the agreement, which was supposed to be completed in the second half of 2021, was unexpectedly postponed until the beginning of March 2022.
Not only that, according to the latest announcement of 51job, the revised merger agreement with Garnet Faith Limited will reduce the purchase price per ADS from $79.05 to $61.00, a decrease of 29.51%, and the equity value of the corresponding company will also fall to $4.3 billion. The privatization deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.
Radar Finance found that behind the privatization of Future Worry-free, it also reflects the company's judgment on the current market situation.
First of all, the company's performance growth has encountered a big bottleneck. From 2010 to 2018, the year-on-year growth rate of 511-15's revenue has remained above 11%, and even exceeded 20% for four years, but in 2019, this figure has plummeted to 5.77%, and the corresponding net profit has also been slashed.
From the perspective of financial reports, the revenue of 51job mainly consists of online recruitment services and other human resources-related revenues, of which the former accounted for 64.3%, 61.8% and 58.2% of revenue in 2018-2020, respectively.
Specifically, revenue from online recruitment services mainly comes from fees that companies charge employers, including running recruitment and advertising on websites and apps, downloading information from resume databases, and online marketing services such as keyword purchases. Since 2018, the number of worry-free employers has decreased year by year, falling by about a quarter in two years.
In this regard, the company has attributed it in its earnings report to the weakness of macroeconomic conditions. In 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises have collapsed, and many giant companies have also adopted the method of reducing the expenditure on personnel and human resources-related services to "winter", which has a greater impact on the future.
51job has also tried to seize the market through more aggressive marketing methods. In the first three quarters of 2021, the company's marketing, sales and management expenses reached 1.687 billion yuan, an increase of 44.42% year-on-year, even higher than the previous expenditure of each full year. However, the result was that the net profit in the same period fell by 65.11% year-on-year.
Second, the current regulatory attitude towards the online recruitment market has also changed. In November 2021, 51job 1Job said in the announcement that the delay in privatization was related to changes in regulatory policy.
After 2016, the state has continuously introduced relevant policies to strengthen the supervision of Internet platforms, especially those involving a large number of user privacy data management. During the national review in July 2021, boss direct employment was once suspended from new user registration. In 2021, it was named by the 315 evening party, and it will not be easy to deal with the latest supervision.
In fact, this is one of the reasons why the cost of Future Worry-free continues to rise. Some practitioners in the online recruitment industry pointed out that the current online recruitment platform generally adopts the method of system review and manual review, and if you want to reduce the errors and omissions such as false recruitment, heaping manpower is almost a necessary choice.
In this context, the attractiveness of 51job to capital has declined sharply. At present, its market value is less than $3.8 billion, which is relatively large compared to its peak.
In the eyes of industry insiders, privatization is conducive to helping them get rid of the situation of being undervalued in overseas markets and weakening their financing capabilities, so as to better integrate industry resources and enhance intrinsic value.
After more than 20 years of trial and error, the industry still has stubborn problems to be solved
Radar Finance noted that the problems encountered by 51job have a certain universality in the entire recruitment industry.
In 2003, China Youth Daily interviewed the first batch of HR that embraced online recruitment, including HR complaining: "There are a lot of resumes, mailboxes are often full, but most of them are obviously inconsistent with job requirements." For example, if more than 3 years of work experience are clearly required, most of the resumes are fresh graduates. ”
Since then, the online recruitment industry has experienced many eras such as the future, Zhilian, the "Three Kingdoms Killing" of Chinese talents, social recruitment, vertical recruitment, etc., and there have also been companies with different styles such as Lagou.com and BOSS direct recruitment, but this problem has not been completely solved until today.
Some people believe that the decision to find a job is actually the matching of four factors: people and bosses, people's skills and positions, people's expectations and development space, and people's timing and company's timing. This also reveals, to some extent, the complexity and diversity of recruitment itself.
Such a business, only by providing job posting and display, resume download and other services, can not allow users to harvest a differentiated experience. Correspondingly, the homogenization competition between enterprises is becoming more and more fierce, and platforms can only rely on advertising to increase their visibility, thereby attracting enterprises and job seekers.
As early as 2006, China Talents Network and Zhaopin Recruiting threw hundreds of millions of yuan into the occupation of subway and TV advertising. In the same year, 500 million yuan was also spent.
Later, the advertising war evolved into a battle of spokespersons. 58 Tongcheng and Yang Mi, BOSS Direct Hire and "Wonder Woman" Gal Gadot, Liepin and Li Yifeng, Zhilian Recruitment and Gao Xiaosong, Dou Mi and Yue Yunpeng, have all sparked, at the same time, the company has also spent a lot of money. In 2020, the sales expenses of BOSS Direct Employment, 51job and Liepin.com totaled nearly 3.4 billion yuan.
And similar "wars" will continue to be fought. Huaxi Securities mentioned in the research report that online recruitment in the track has two major characteristics: low frequency and just need. This means that enterprises must ensure that they continue to "pull new" and meet the needs of various positions.
Industry insiders pointed out that although the business model of online recruitment has improved its matching efficiency after iteration, it is still based on "selling advertising + services" as the mainstream. When the recruitment website becomes a traffic-driven business, the information in the platform will inevitably appear mixed, and false information will follow.
58.com is a typical example. As a website that survives on advertising fees and membership fees, its reputation has been quite badly affected by false information. In 2018 alone, 58.com was named and interviewed by the regulatory authorities more than ten times, including three in Beijing. The problems of interviews in various places mainly focused on false information and breach of good faith.
In addition, Radar Financial Investigation found that there are multiple gray industrial chains behind the recruitment website, there are sellers to provide business license generators, different levels of accounts of various recruitment platforms and other convenient buyers for recruitment, buyers get the account, but also through the recruitment of agents and other ways to spread a large number of false information for fraud, or after obtaining resumes, the job seeker information in it is resold, sales and other activities.
The 2021 CCTV "3.15 Party" also mentioned that only 7 yuan is needed to pay to buy a resume of the latest job seeker on Zhilian Recruitment. The content of the resume is detailed, and the job seeker's name, gender, age, photo, contact information, work experience, education experience and other information are readily available. Sellers can even accurately screen resumes according to age, region, graduation institutions and other information according to user requirements.
Can the new model bring a new atmosphere?
In order to break the inherent stubborn diseases of the industry, the new Internet recruitment platform that has been launched later has also thought of many ways.
In 2014, the main "direct chat" model of BOSS direct recruitment online, coinciding with the call for "mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation", a number of small and medium-sized enterprises mushroomed, and BOSS direct employment also successfully broke through the fiercely competitive online recruitment market with the help of this wave of dividends, and has now become one of only two listed companies in the industry.
However, the more far-reaching significance of BOSS direct employment for the industry lies in the mobile recruitment website, as well as the algorithm recommendation and talent matching driven by technology. In 2019, almost all online recruitment companies have completed the transformation of mobility, and the mode of direct chat has also improved the efficiency of communication.
According to the data, in the third quarter of 2021, the average MAU of boss direct employment apps was 28.82 million, the highest in the industry, and the peers were less than 20 million. At the same time, C-end retention also attracted B-side payments, and in the 12 months ended September 30, 2021, the total number of BOSS direct paid enterprise customers reached 4 million, an increase of 110.5% year-on-year.
However, it is also difficult for BOSS direct recruitment to avoid the fate of high Internet recruitment marketing costs. In the third quarter of 2021, the company's net profit achieved a turnaround, and the most important reason for the loss reduction was the control of costs. The company's marketing costs fell 64% sequentially during the quarter.
In addition, behind the rise in BOSS profits, or implied "squeezing" of enterprises. It has been reported that the HR of a startup company has complained that boss direct employment, including posting positions, group messages, search exposure, App chat, etc., all need to charge, and it cost 3,000 yuan to open all the functions once, and many functions are only valid for 1 month, compared with 3600 yuan for 51job and Zhilian recruitment.
After the direct chat, there was also a live recruitment. In 2020, under the influence of the epidemic, the trend of recruitment and job search to online has become more and more obvious, and "live broadcast with post" once achieved good recruitment results. In this year's spring recruitment season, Liepin.com, Zhaopin Recruitment, and 58 Tongcheng's catch-up direct recruitment will all incorporate live recruitment into the publicity.
"Live recruitment can complete one-to-many batch recruitment needs and improve the efficiency of traditional recruitment; and the transparency of live broadcasting can effectively block the intrusion of 'black production'." An industry person working in human resources said.
It is worth mentioning that the pulse of the recently known as the "Internet factory pantry" is also called to be a "public review" in the workplace, aiming to help job seekers find high-quality jobs and optimize the supply and demand matching of the Internet talent market through the way of "review content + list aggregation + position".
But either concept, whether it can become a long-term business model still needs to be verified. Some media practitioners have pointed out that an account that has not passed the pulse identity authentication can still publish company reviews, and after passing the review, it also appears on the company's rating page. At the same time, there are also problems such as community rumors and water army brush reviews. In response, Lin Fan, founder and CEO of Pulse, responded that only the function of certification can be reviewed will be launched.
For more impacts brought by the new model, Radar Finance will continue to pay attention.
Note: This article is the original of Radar Finance (ID: leidacj). Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.