Wen | Chen Chang
Editor| Yang Jie
"This is the 32nd resume I have received from an educational institution in a month."
Summer Solstice worked as director of new media operations at a live broadcasting company, and before joining the company, he was a mid-level manager of a large publicly traded education company. Over the past year, he said, he has truly felt how the tide of capital has poured into the online education industry and how it has quickly receded.
The summer solstice is recruiting for their new job. He told AI Finance and Economics that now that the recruitment website is opened, most of the job seekers from the original education industry account for more than half, and even many of them are still lying in his address book. "I jumped out of the education industry, and now I have to personally screen the resumes of the friends who have fought side by side with me." It's so dramatic. He sighed.
Driven by capital, the online education that has been "blindfolded" all the way has finally slowed down in the summer of 2021. After the "double reduction" policy landed, the main tone of the online education industry brushed against the transformation and contraction. The hustle and bustle has ended, and countless employees who have been involved in this industry have also withdrawn from it and embarked on a journey to re-apply for jobs.
Re-applying for a job: insurance, cleaning, driver
Which one do you choose?
Signs of layoffs at online educational institutions have been showing since the beginning of the year. Some people sighed that the daily life of employees of online education companies has become "meeting in the morning, laying off employees in the afternoon", queuing up to do resignation, and running labor arbitration for compensation... According to lagou data, since May 2021, the proportion of online education employees who are in the "left, can quickly arrive at work" is as high as 98.5%; in July this year, the monthly per capita login frequency of online education industry talents on the platform was as high as 92.8 times, which was 1.85 times that of the Internet industry.
Many departing employees told AI Finance and Economics that it was relatively easy for employees who were originally engaged in operations, technology, marketing and other positions to change jobs. "There is no contempt, no salary pressure, and if the ability is good, there will be a salary increase." An industry and research worker who has just jumped from an education company to an Internet factory told AI Finance and Economics.
The most affected are the employees who were formerly engaged in academic posts. According to reports, a teacher who works for a head online education company wants to continue to be a teacher after being laid off, but after he has submitted 186 resumes of teachers on the recruitment website, he is still fruitless; forced by the pressure of rent in Beijing, he tutors the landlord's son in English, two hours a week, and earns 200 yuan per hour. Before that, his monthly income was about 20,000 yuan.
On August 27, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission also held a special job fair for primary and secondary school teachers in Beijing in 2021, and each district provided more than 300 teacher positions in the establishment. On the same day, the Beijing Haidian District Education Commission also launched a special job fair, and 67 primary and secondary schools and some kindergartens affiliated to the Haidian District Education Commission provided 254 teacher positions.
For more former employees of the original online education institutions who have nowhere to go, on August 18, Beijing Tongzhou held a "double reduction" education and training practitioner reemployment special online job fair, 22 companies provided 77 positions, a total of 360 people were recruited.
Some job seekers who participated in the job fair revealed that at the job fair, among the many positions, the highest salary was telemarketing, starting at 10,000 yuan, and most of the other positions were between 3,000-8,000 yuan. Most of the positions recruited are drivers, customer service, receptionists, front desk, cleaning, greening workers, etc.; one of the property companies is recruiting cleaning staff, and the salary is only 2500-3000 yuan.
Source: Beijing Tongzhou "double reduction" education and training personnel reemployment special recruitment fair
This is a lot lower than the general salary offered by the online education industry before, but many people believe that this is also no way, "it is good to find a job." AI Finance and Economics has joined a group of unemployed employees of an education and training institution with more than 200 members, and the members in the group communicate with each other every day, "hug the group to keep warm", do personal training, examination preparation, change to micro-business, sell insurance, all of which have become active and serious topics in the group every day.
Wang Ming, who previously worked for a children's picture book reading agency for more than six years, said that the income of this institution was not good when the epidemic first broke out last year, and after the "double reduction" policy landed, she became a member of the laid-off. Now, she is an insurance broker. Wang Ming said that she also made this choice with "great determination": "After all, in the eyes of the public, there is still a general prejudice against 'selling insurance', and I also think that I will not be able to get by on the face." But now I'm working my own, and I'm content with it. ”
Compared with people like Wang Ming who "changed careers", a large number of people who still want to stay in the education industry are still confused.
Sun Yi has taken the teacher's examination several times, but all of them have failed, and she is a little depressed. She said that one of her former colleagues who has been taking the exam is 36 years old this year, and the teachers of the exam are overaged, and there is no chance to take the exam again, and she is worried that she will follow in the footsteps. She expects that the landing of the "double reduction" policy will also have an impact on those who are preparing to take the teacher qualification and teacher establishment, such as the entry threshold will be raised, the difficulty of the examination will increase, and the job competition will become larger. "In this way, I may not be lucky enough to go to public schools." She said. Not long ago, Sun Yi's institution contracted, and she also became a member of the "unemployed" army. "My income is directly zero, and my heart is very bottomless, so recently I was interviewing a quality education institution and preparing to be a teacher who trains famous books to read." She said.
But despite this, Sun Yi is still worried that the future of quality education is not solid: "Many people are resigning, and I still jump in, is it a bit silly?" Many people in her group also gave her advice, which made her even more hesitant: "Everyone advised me to go to public or private schools as a temporary teacher, and they said that the prospects for working in education and training institutions were unclear, and we must be cautious." ”
Escapee:
"'Double Minus' also gave me a normal girlfriend"
Before the "double reduction" policy landed, some people had already predicted the trend of the industry in advance and withdrew in time. The summer solstice is one of them.
Summer Solstice said that he was not a teacher, and what attracted him to the industry was not an "educational ideal", but the "industry is in full swing" driven by capital, the aura of "big factories" brought about by the continuous financing of enterprises and soaring valuations, and the salaries of employees.
Gradually, he sensed that the industry was a bit sour. "The teaching assistants, consulting, and sales posts in the company will basically change a stubble in three or five months, and most people will either change their careers or jump jobs for a while, or even directly resign, and then the company continues to recruit some new faces to take over." So that every time I meet a new colleague, I ask, when to leave? ”
In the eyes of the summer solstice, this is not a normal corporate behavior and industry state. In March this year, when online education advertising was banned from CCTV, Summer Solstice decided to leave the industry. He began a four-month long resume and interview process, and a week before the "double subtraction" landed, he received an offer from the company he liked. "It was probably one of the most correct decisions I've made in my career." He said.
Zhao Ming said that he even somewhat thanked the "double reduction" policy. His girlfriend entered the industry at about the same time as the summer solstice, and around 2019, she joined a large K12 educational institution and became a tutor. "Her salary is really high, in Nanjing, she graduated a year into this company, 8,000 yuan per month, not counting other performance and commissions, more than my salary of 5,000 yuan before the tax of a manufacturing factory at that time."
But Zhao Ming said that his girlfriend's work also has bad points: "The biological clock is reversed, and she often does not rest for more than ten hours when she is busy, which causes her to have severe headaches, anxiety disorders, and neurasthenia." ”
In June 2021, Zhao Ming's girlfriend was dismissed due to institutional layoffs. Now, she has a new job, nine to six in the morning, although the treatment is much worse than being a tutor, but at least two people can leave work, eat, and walk together. More importantly, Zhao Ming said that she finally did not lose her temper to herself for no reason because of excessive anxiety, and her body and appearance became much better. "Thanks for the 'double subtraction' and for giving me a normal girlfriend." Zhao Ming sighed.
Wang Ming, who switched to selling insurance, also expressed the same feelings to AI Finance and Economics. She said that she used to work overtime a lot, and everyone in the agency was responsible for several jobs, not only to substitute for classes, but also to undertake external publicity, customer service and even some administrative logistics.
"When I worked in the organization, most of my daily work was to call home visits and urge parents to renew classes, I remember that on the first day of employment, I made more than 80 phone calls, and all the phone calls and WeChat chat records with my parents were all under the company's monitoring." Thirteen, a former intern at Homework Help, complained to AI Finance and Economics that after working for more than a month, she left her job because she really couldn't stand this exhausting work model.
In the eyes of young people like Thirteen, they are holding the ideal of education into the online education industry, but the experience after taking up the job is completely different from their imagination, driven by traffic and KPIs, the young people who work in it are all "physically and mentally exhausted".
So, in a way, "this blow wasn't entirely a bad thing either." In the aforementioned "unemployed group", a group friend said, "Every time a new era comes, it means a reshuffle of the business model, and we should regard it as an opportunity and challenge." We are not in a desperate situation, doing family education, book clubs, or developing personal IP private domain traffic are the way out, and there are countless subdivisions of the education industry to do. ”
Left behind: Go to work every day as usual
"Panic in my heart"
Most institutions are still functioning, and there are still "left-behind" people among them. Han Xin is a former colleague of summer solstice, and he has neither resigned nor been laid off. But he said that he was already "Buddhist": "It is to consume numbly and indifferently every day." ”
"What used to be rolled inward is now rolled outward." Xiao Qin concluded to AI Finance and Economics, "Because the familiar colleagues around you have gone one by one, no one is competing with you for a position." ”
Xiao Qin also remained in the original institution. She said that the main reason why she did not leave was that she did not dare to speak naked. Although she herself is unmarried and childless, she is alone, but she has no car and no house, and the cost of living in Beijing makes her feel that she cannot stop, "It is still the off-season for job hunting, in case I can't get a new job, I can only wait to drink the northwest wind."
The point is, Xiao Qin said that he also learned that some companies are less willing to recruit people in the original online education industry, "they will feel that the price of such job seekers is too high to afford."
Around 2020, when online education is in full swing, institutions are overdrawing wage costs and expanding recruitment. According to the "Online K12 Extracurricular Tutoring Industry Special Report" released by CITIC Securities in 2020, the salary level of the main teachers in the industry is generally higher than 180,000 yuan a year, and the annual salary level is mostly 200,000-400,000 yuan. In order to grab famous teachers, some institutions even offer graduates of famous schools a salary of "600,000 yuan a year".
The practitioners of these online educational institutions have been raised and it is difficult to take it back. "If you change jobs casually, you will definitely not accept the sense of income gap." Han Xin said.
However, many of the employees who are still working in such education and training institutions are also in a state of uneasiness and anxiety. "Every day, a lot of colleagues are leaving at a speed that is visible to the naked eye. The number of people in the work group is decreasing. We ourselves seem to go to work normally every day, but while staring at the computer screen, our hearts are 'panicked'. "An employee of a 1V1 English training institution said that there have been recent reports that many front-line educational institutions are still continuing to lay off employees, and small institutions are facing a life-and-death situation, and everyone feels a deep sense of crisis after seeing it." Maybe the next wave of cuts will be themselves. ”
Some of the "sticky" employees are also facing the problem of falling salaries. A netizen who has been in the education and training industry for 11 years said that he went from assistant teacher to single assistant teacher, then became a teacher, and finally promoted to teaching principal, and his company has been in turmoil, although he himself has not been laid off, but the monthly salary is only 3500 yuan, just barely maintaining his livelihood.
Han Xin also began to waver. "What about waiting?" A person's professional life is limited, if you can have a good way out, it is best to change the track and run early. ”
Xiao Qin just sent a message to AI Finance and Economics that a male colleague at the workstation next to her also received a layoff notice yesterday. She calmly and reluctantly watched him go through the resignation formalities, hand over the job, and after bidding farewell and returning to her seat, the first thing she did was to open the recruitment software and quietly lower the salary range she asked for.
(At the request of the interviewees, Xia Solstice, Xiao Qin, Han Xin, Zhao Ming, Wang Ming, Thirteen, and Sun Yi are pseudonyms)
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.