"Copper three iron four" recruitment season: who is still relying on the recruitment platform "hunter"?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | At the forefront of entrepreneurship, the author | Feng Yu, Editor | Egg total

Known as the "graduation season with the most graduates in history", job hunting, employment and recruitment have become highly concerned topics.

In the Internet industry, which most young people prefer, the change seems to occur within a year. For most Internet people, this year's recruitment season has changed from "gold three silver four" to "copper three iron four" - major factories not only lock HC, in-service employees may also face organizational optimization, "graduation", "output talent"...

Contrary to Internet recruitment, which has entered a "contraction period", some industries are actively releasing high-paying jobs.

Since last year, the tilt of the national industrial policy has made many emerging industries a gathering place for funds and talents: for example, the "robbery war" in the new energy industry is no less than that of the Internet manufacturers of that year, and even headhunting companies can earn tens of millions of dollars a year just by relying on a new energy enterprise "hunter".

The contraction of the Internet industry reflects the coldness of the recruitment industry to some extent, but this is not the whole story.

Since the beginning of the year, in Beijing's crowded subway stations, a large number of advertising spaces have been basically rounded up by recruitment platforms. Within a few steps, huge advertisements such as 51job, BOSS Direct Hire, Liepin.com, and Pulse rushed into the line of sight, which shows that there are not only workers in the inner volume, but also recruitment transfer stations that link them and enterprises.

Compared with the "freedom of wealth" argument of internet manufacturers in the past, today's recruitment market, although there is no lack of high salaries, is more pragmatic and grounded: for recruitment platforms, the overall contraction of the Internet industry has forced them to dig deep into the recruitment needs of other industries; and in the eyes of job seekers, seeking stable and well-matched jobs is far more secure than jumping ship because of high salaries.

"Recruitment is a hard job, although it can't grow into a big tree, but it has always been a 'small grass that can't die'. Regardless of the economic situation, the demand for labor will always exist. A recruitment industry observer said.

The color bubble of the Internet burst, and the recruitment market was greeted not so much as an inward roll as the beginning of another game.

01 The recruitment season has become "copper three iron four"?

This year's spring is exceptionally cold for Internet people.

In fact, since last year, the collective decline in Chinese stocks and the green face of shareholders have heralded the coldness of the recruitment season at the beginning of this year, and the setbacks are far more than online education, real estate and internet industries. Ripples of market turmoil continue to spread.

In the past 20 years, the post-80s and post-90s have experienced the ultra-high-speed development stage of the Internet, catching up with the wave of Chinese stock listings in the past few years, "wealth freedom" and "million annual salary" are just talking points that can be seen everywhere in roadside cafes.

The rapid expansion of the industry's wealth has also accelerated the flow of talent.

According to Guosheng Securities data, the average frequency of active job hunting and job hopping for white-collar or gold-collar job seekers is 1-2 times in 1 year, while the frequency of blue-collar active job search and job hopping is 4-5 times in a year, almost 4 times that of white-collar workers.

March and April of the year are generally regarded as the peak period for job seekers, and usually at this time, companies will also re-examine their company strategies and open up recruitment positions for the new year.

Grace, head of the Lagou Recruitment Data Research Institute, told "The Forefront of Entrepreneurship" that March and April every year is a prime time for job seekers to jump ship. "The recruitment positions of enterprises in the next year will generally be opened before the Spring Festival, and the year-end bonus of the previous year will also be issued during this period, and most job seekers will wait until they get the year-end bonus before jumping ship."

At that time, talent was still valuable. In order to compete for core talents in certain positions, it is not uncommon for large factories to give salaries several times higher than those of their opponents. And when the entire industry is in a buyer's market, it is difficult to determine whether such a high salary matches the ability of job seekers.

The high salaries given by the big factories are not only for senior talents, but also for graduates. "A fresh graduate who can get a monthly salary of 15,000 yuan when he enters a large factory is already a very good level, but many people have received 30,000 or 40,000 yuan, which is because the market price has been raised between large factories in order to grab talents." Li Li (pseudonym), a former executive of a large factory, revealed to "The Forefront of Entrepreneurship".

But it didn't take long for this "everyone to pay high" situation to quickly usher in a "face change" moment.

The news of layoffs from large factories has poured in, and even if the layoffs are beautified as "graduation", they cannot hide the sad background behind them.

"The tightening of the epidemic superimposed policy has led to the entire Internet industry being in a state of consolidation." Grace said that in the past decade, the Internet industry has developed rapidly, the market competition is fierce, and many new businesses have emerged, so the large-scale talent demand of enterprises will explode.

"But at this stage, the pattern of the Internet industry is relatively stable, and the production capacity and personnel of enterprises are overcapacity, so many marginal businesses or talents are facing the risk of being laid off." Grace said.

She believes that in the past large-scale recruitment stage, the threshold for talent selection will be moderately lowered, but the trend of future market recruitment will change from the original scale priority to quality priority.

The same applies to fresh graduates. "In order to recruit talents, large factories will first recruit a large number of graduates, and then eliminate 80% of the personnel after screening, leaving only the best talents, and the job seekers who are eliminated are likely to find no direction for a while because of the high salaries of large factories, and they are not willing to go to small factories." Li Li said.

And when companies are struggling to survive, under the relatively conservative strategy, their demand for talents will inevitably decline.

Since the second half of last year, the entire team of Li Li Company has been laid off more and more, and Li Li will eventually be unable to escape the fate of being laid off. After getting compensated to leave in February this year, he found that the situation of offers flying around has become a thing of the past, he put relevant job resumes on multiple recruitment platforms and contacted headhunters, but there was little response, and some small companies also gave up because they could not afford high salaries.

And according to industry insiders, there are currently dozens of executives with annual salaries of more than one million on the market who are looking at opportunities.

There are also cases of job seekers being laid off and leading to loan breaks, or even leaving first-tier cities to return to their hometowns due to the high cost of living.

"Under the current market environment, the stability of enterprise personnel will become higher and higher, and the frequency of Job hopping of Internet talents will also decline compared with the past." Grace points out.

Seeking stability seems to have become the core word of the job market.

In contrast to the cold Internet job market, the recruitment platform has always performed high-profile.

Subway ads became their close-quarters hand-to-hand combat positions. In the past, the traditional recruitment season was also the peak period of the recruitment platform brand, and an industry insider also revealed that in general, Q4 is the peak season for corporate demand, and Q1 is the big season for advertising.

Photo / Recruitment "Advertising War" in Beijing Subway

"Although this year's 'Golden Three Silver Four' is not as hot as in previous years, whether from the perspective of brand strategy or user growth, recruitment platforms will also choose to seize people in this time period, after all, 'Golden Three Silver Four' is the most active period of the whole year." Grace said.

This also seems to mean that most recruitment platforms have not been affected too much by this Internet shock.

02 While "downsizing", while "changing blood"

For this year's cold job search scene, there was a passage that was widely circulated on the Internet.

A high-speed toll collector collapsed after being dismissed: "After so many years of work, what can I do now when I quit?" At that time, an Internet person looked at it coldly: "Why did you go earlier?" Now that the Internet industry is receding, the situation of the toll collector is still copied, and this Internet person is also confused, "From the beginning of the industry, I have been doing the Internet, what else can I do when I am laid off?" ”

This paragraph is a joke, but behind it reveals a fact: it is easy for people in the workplace to transform.

The first is the sudden increase in competitive pressure for the same position. For example, in the past, high-paid employees of large factories could not find suitable positions at the same level, and they might be compatible with small and medium-sized factories, forming a dimensionality reduction attack.

According to the "Internet Departure Talent Report" released by Lagou Recruitment, since December last year, the number of users who are in the state of departure on the Lagou recruitment platform has been increasing, and the number of departures exceeded 2.76 million by March, an increase of 2.1% compared with the same period last year.

An interesting phenomenon is that many companies are downsizing and accelerating layoffs on the one hand, while on the other hand, they are actively recruiting new people to change blood. "These companies are generally doing organizational structure upgrades, and in the future, when the demand for talents is not so strong, the requirements for the ability model of recruiters will become higher and higher." Grace said.

In her view, on the one hand, enterprises will be more willing to recruit high-tech talents such as experts, on the other hand, larger enterprises will pay more and more attention to the construction of internal personnel training systems, such as through school recruitment to create their own talent team.

According to Grace's observation, many former Internet practitioners have also begun to consider more stable job search options, such as state-owned enterprises, foreign companies, and even taking civil servants into account.

At the recruitment level, as opposed to the Internet industry, emerging industries are releasing a large number of talent needs.

According to the "2022 Spring Job Market Trend Observation" (hereinafter referred to as "Observation") released by the BOSS Direct Recruitment Research Institute, since the spring recruitment season, the recruitment demand of high-end manufacturing industry has grown rapidly, the recruitment scale has increased by 40% year-on-year, and various segments are generally facing the shortage of talents. Among them, the average monthly salary of biopharmaceuticals, aerospace, electronics/semiconductors/integrated circuits and intelligent hardware reached 13410 yuan, and the salary increased by more than 40% year-on-year.

Among them, highly educated talents have become fragrant in the recruitment market.

According to the data of "Observation", the demand for doctors in the industry has increased for three consecutive years, and the job scale of doctoral recruitment in the spring of 2022 has increased by 120% year-on-year, and the average monthly salary has reached 36,000 yuan. Small and medium-sized enterprises have become the key to industrial upgrading and the employment of highly educated talents, and small and medium-sized enterprises with less than 500 people have created 60% of doctoral recruitment positions.

In addition, as traditional enterprises have accelerated their digital transformation in recent years and recruitment has become more and more online, it is not uncommon for Internet talents to go to traditional enterprises and even return to their hometowns.

"For example, in the fields of traditional automobile manufacturing, finance, and consumption, the difference between its recruitment needs and that of Internet companies is mainly reflected in the professional background requirements for talents." Grace said, "Overall, talents from internet backgrounds are well matched with traditional industries, and they can bring advanced ideas and organizational work forms to traditional enterprises." ”

For Internet people, the underlying logic of some businesses is the same, even if it is cross-industry, it is not difficult.

In the mouth of the above-mentioned observers, a more typical case of transformation is that an Internet person engaged in live broadcasting of e-commerce operations returned to his hometown in this wave of shocks, entered the local manufacturing enterprises and started a handy live broadcast with goods.

03 A new way out of social recruitment

When the job market "changes the sky", it also means that the "shift period" of the recruitment market has arrived.

Around 2000, China's first batch of traditional recruitment websites took the lead in eating the demographic dividend. 51job, Zhaopin recruitment, and China Talents Network will be online recruitment demand, and then through the advertising and marketing war, the "Three Kingdoms Kill" in the recruitment market was formed.

But soon, companies gradually found that the "resume library" model of website recruitment was not an efficient match for companies and job seekers, which also led to them having to continue to work hard to screen suitable candidates from a large number of resumes.

Since then, China Talents Network has been sold miserably, and Zhaopin recruitment has been privatized and delisted, which also marks the end of the traditional website recruitment era.

The rise of mobile recruitment came around 2010.

With the iteration of mobile Internet, big data and other technologies, a number of new recruitment companies have been born in the market: in 2011, Liepin online launch, focusing on headhunting, the main BHC model, in 2013 the pulse was launched, and then cut into the recruitment market from social networking; in 2014, boss direct recruitment was launched, and the direct recruitment model narrowed the distance between job seekers and bosses.....

The model innovation and intelligent technology application provided by these enterprises have provided new possibilities for improving the efficiency of job matching.

In fact, the rigid demand, low frequency and non-standardization characteristics of the recruitment industry have directly led to the long-term recruitment platform having to rely on new to maintain the large-scale growth of the platform.

The crazy advertising war is the most obvious evidence - the only advantage of the platform is to exchange advertising for scale, who has high popularity, can attract more companies and job seekers.

The essence of advertising warfare is homogeneous competition in the recruitment market.

For enterprises or job seekers, the hit rate of multi-platform and wide casting is higher, while the possibility of focusing on a certain platform is not high, and the stickiness of users is not strong.

Zhao Peng, the founder of BOSS Direct Recruitment, even said bluntly that there are no companies with more than 10 billion US dollars in the domestic recruitment industry, and the root cause lies in homogeneous competition.

With the development of artificial intelligence and big data, new technologies and new models may become the focus of competition for online recruitment platforms.

Aware of this, most recruitment platforms are diversifying beyond their main recruitment and trying to extend the life cycle of platform users.

For example, in January this year, Kuaishou launched the blue-collar recruitment platform "Quick Recruitment", the main product live form to enter the recruitment market; BOSS direct employment through algorithms and data iteration to improve the penetration rate of small and medium-sized enterprises and blue-collar groups; 51job further expanded to human resources outsourcing, evaluation and training and other businesses; Pulse also began to force Internet recruitment and launched a new feature "company review"...

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the upgrade in the form of live recruitment, social recruitment has gradually become one of the recruitment forms loved by young people.

According to iResearch's 2021 China White-collar Consumption and Workplace Social Research Report, 93% of white-collar workers in the workplace have a positive attitude towards workplace socialization; workplace socialization helps teams to better collaborate and communicate more efficiently; more than 50% of white-collar workers hope to enhance learning and be with excellent people through workplace socialization; and in the future, they hope to absorb diversified knowledge, enhance business capabilities and expand networks through workplace socialization.

"Occasionally, I will also brush the home page of various recruitment platforms, observe the recruitment requirements and salary levels of various industries, and keep abreast of industry dynamics." One job seeker told "The Forefront of Entrepreneurship" that the function of recruitment software is no longer limited to finding a job, but can extend to a variety of social and pan-workplace needs.

Compared with traditional website recruitment, the cost of online recruitment is one-fifth of that offline. Between the new generation of recruitment platforms, a new round of efficiency change is also happening.

"A person's career life cycle has 20-30 years, and the future recruitment platform must compete for the service ability of the job seeker's full career cycle." An industry observer said.

In his view, if a platform can not only solve the user's job search needs, but also provide solutions at key nodes in its career development path, then the user stickiness and service efficiency of this platform will be significantly higher than other platforms.

It can be seen that when the recruitment market enters the era of stock game, multi-legged walking and efficiency improvement may become the winning method of the recruitment platform. For job seekers, in the face of various changes in the job market, we must maintain a good and stable mentality, and do not forget to continuously improve their self-working ability and workplace literacy, in order to exercise their career competitiveness in the turbulent tide of the times.