The industry is "warm and cold", do big factories still have the confidence to recruit people?

Written by | Ho Furong  

Edit | Wang Pan

Over the past three years, the pandemic has been a universal fig leaf. The slump in the industry, the substandard performance, the unsatisfactory work life, etc., all the negative results have a plausible explanation.

In the middle of last year, Yu Qiang voluntarily resigned from a leading Internet company and left Shanghai to return to his third-tier hometown. "At that time, Shanghai was affected for nearly three months, and my mood was relatively broken. Coupled with the company's cost reduction and efficiency increase, the people who remain are under increasing pressure to work, and they resign as soon as their hearts are crossed. ”

Compared with the "graduates" of more Internet workers in the past two years, Yu Qiang chose to take the initiative to end this psychological torment.

Yu Qiang, who has been away from Shanghai for more than half a year, now does not have to pay thousands of dollars in rent a month in his hometown, but when he comes to a small city, he can hardly find a job that matches his original major. Yu Qiangxin's troubles also followed, that is, the salary was greatly discounted and the sense of job fulfillment was lost.

Layoffs, unemployment, lying flat, refusal to roll in, fleeing from the big factory and Kitakami Hiroshi... These phenomena have become the norm in the context of the workplace in the past two years, and most young people have also learned to temporarily reconcile with unsatisfactory career experiences in this "normal".

With the new year, everyone is back on track of social life, and the expectations of finding a job at the beginning of the year have also been raised to a high point.

Now it is gold, silver and fourth, but the employment environment does not seem to be completely synchronous to pick up, and the employment anxiety of migrant workers and graduates is released by this expectation deviation.

Employment is still cold, where do young people go?

In 2023, the employment situation remains chilly.

Open the pulse, the top three hot search lists are "2023 job search sad process" "TW announced the termination of 2023 fresh graduates", and "In the current employment environment, why HR still complains that it can't recruit people?" "Workplace communication software seems to be gradually becoming a showcase for workers' job losses. Other social software is also full of various "difficult to employ" content sharing.

"I'm about to collapse and feel cornered. I couldn't find a job all the time, the interview didn't get results, I really didn't know what to do, I was so powerless. A Pulse user wearing an Alibaba vest posted.

Under this resonance, it attracted many onlookers, and even some users comforted, "It's okay, everyone is the same", some people said that "half of the salary cut finally received an offer", and some people felt incredible "Ali can't find a job when he comes out, is it so rolled".

Discounted wages, hopeless delivery, long-term job expectation, and the employment anxiety of migrant workers are increasing day by day with the passage of time. Cost reduction and efficiency improvement have become a daily proposition of the Internet, and it seems that it is difficult for Internet people who leave the big factories during this period to find jobs comparable to before.

"Between the pressure of life and the pressure of work, it seems that only by withstanding the pressure of work can we maintain the normal operation of life." Almost a year after leaving the Internet, Jialin's pressure has not disappeared with leaving a high-pressure industry.

Unlike most young people who do not have a car, a house or children, Jialin still has palpitations when he remembers his experience of "being graduated". "I am almost 35 years old" was graduated, and this sentence echoed countless times in Jialin's heart.

At the beginning of last year, Jialin looked for a job in Beijing for two months, but never received an offer. In desperation, he chose to return to his second-tier hometown, and with the blessing of his once large factory background, Jialin received a job offer from a traditional pharmaceutical company.

"At that time, the epidemic was still going on, and I thought pharmaceutical companies should be a good choice, and HR told me that their traditional companies would not lay off employees, which was relatively stable." Even in the case of a big discount in salary and treatment, Yu Qiang still agreed to join, and the helplessness behind it was that he had no other options.

What he did not expect was that less than a year after joining the company, the overall performance ratio of Jialin's department was lowered, and his personal salary level was pulled down again.

According to Jialin, he used to earn an annual salary of nearly 500,000 yuan in an Internet company, but his monthly salary is only maintained at about 10,000 now. "Now the family house has to repay more than 7,000 monthly payments every month, and the children are studying, all of which are subsidized by the previous savings, and now they can make do with their lives."

Reducing salaries to join traditional enterprises has always been just a transitional choice in Jialin's heart. Although the pressure of work is getting less and less, the various expenses of his family have to make him worry about income. "If I have the opportunity, I still want to return to the Internet industry." Jialin sighed.

After leaving the big factory and leaving the Internet, some people choose stability, and some people choose to engage in manual labor without mental internal consumption. But the reality is that the pressure will only shift, not disappear, and choosing an easy and stable job will come at the cost of low wages, and the prerequisite for leaving Beijing is also the loss of more job opportunities.

Not just workers in the workplace, graduates may face more pressure this spring recruitment season. Recently, the popularity of "Kong Yiji literature" on social media has continued to rise, and between ideal and reality, young people's employment anxiety has generally been exposed.

In addition to discussing whether young people can "pull down their faces to engage in more manual labor", the more direct reason behind it is actually the further increase in the employment pressure of graduates.

 ▲ Attention to employment pressure and "Kong Yiji anxiety" on the Internet

Data show that the scale of ordinary college graduates in the class of 2023 is expected to reach 11.58 million, an increase of 820,000 year-on-year, and a new high. At the same time, "the number of master's and doctoral graduates in Beijing exceeds that of undergraduates" is also on the hot search on the occasion of the "golden three silver four", not only the scale of graduates waiting for employment is getting bigger and bigger, but also the competition for academic qualifications is more intense.

Jobs are hard to find, the desire for stability, the desire to lie flat but unwilling, the desire to get a high income but afraid of rolls, the Internet and finance, the most attractive industries in the past, there are also many new problems... Contradictions, anxiety, and difficulty in choosing are the "real group portraits" of graduates looking for jobs nowadays.

Graduates standing at the entrance of the campus are especially looking forward to a "golden three, silver four" with good news and a job that pays off.

Internet hiring is showing signs of recovery

At this time in previous years, graduates and job-hoppers were eager to get satisfactory offers during the "Golden Three, Silver and Fourth" recruitment season. And entering the Internet factory is also a goal consensus of most people.

In the past two years, the cold atmosphere has shrouded the Internet, and news of cost reduction and efficiency increase, layoffs, and business reductions have frequently arrived, and the "Internet giants", a place that once made everyone flock, have begun to stage various uncertainties.

After the shock of cost reduction and efficiency increase, the attractiveness of the Internet industry to employees has decreased significantly. But can you escape the Internet without getting involved? Can I lie flat if I leave Kitakamihiro? The answer is clearly no.

With the recovery of the offline economy and the recovery of consumption, all walks of life are gradually expanding labor demand, especially various livelihood industries involving clothing, food, housing and transportation, which are showing signs of recovery, which has also driven closely related consumer and retail Internet companies to expand recruitment demand.

At the end of February, Meituan announced the launch of the 2023 spring campus recruitment, which will hire more than 4,000 college students, covering technology, product, business analysis positions, and working in dozens of cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

At the same time, from the official website information, ByteDance has recently opened the 2023 campus recruitment full-time supplementary enrollment for fresh graduates and the regular internship opportunities for the 2024 graduates. Among other first-tier manufacturers, Ali and Tencent have not yet made official spring school recruitment announcements, but have released many intern positions.

Although the Internet's best "golden three silver four" is likely to be gone, at the critical juncture of graduates' spring job search, Meituan, Byte and other first-line manufacturers opened school recruitment, which still sent some positive signals.

On the one hand, in the economic recovery, offline physical merchants have gradually returned to the right track of operation, and the recruitment demand of Internet companies serving them has also increased. On the other hand, the Internet industry has been in the vortex of cost reduction and efficiency improvement for a long time in the past two years, and Meituan, Byte, etc., as first-line manufacturers, have opened large-scale school recruitment, which may indicate the gradual recovery of the industry.

In addition, Xiaomi, Huawei, JD.com, Ctrip and other major manufacturers have also announced the opening of spring recruitment. As spring blossoms, the future expectations of both companies and job seekers seem to be gradually improving.

Liepin covers Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and other 25 cities in 2023 "Spring Dream Recruitment Season" data shows that the Internet is still an industry with both strong supply and demand for talents, for example, in Beijing, the industry with the largest proportion of new jobs in the first week after the holiday is the Internet, accounting for 15.92%, from the perspective of delivery, the industry with the largest number of deliveries is also the Internet, accounting for 13.30%.

At first glance, the Internet was still the industry that offered young people more opportunities and better wages. Although the scale of recruitment is not as good as before the cost reduction and efficiency increase, the overall situation has more or less recovered.

From Meituan, Byte and other large manufacturers that release positive recruitment signals to the market, we can know that those Internet companies that have both "long-term rigid demand attributes" and "technological attributes" are relatively more certain of development, and have the conditions to create more development opportunities for young people.

No matter how the general environment changes, there will always be room for development in industries involving people's clothing, food, housing, transportation, and food and clothing. In this regard, the retail industry has endless space and endless places to work on.

Looking at demand in the short term and supply in the long term, what can really drive change is the change on the supply side, and technology is a key factor driving the change on the supply side. Whether it is driving the company's business development or promoting the progress of the entire society, the power of science and technology brings the certainty of growth.

It is not difficult to understand that in the first echelon of the Internet industry, Meituan, which has a technology and retail label, and Byte, which has always been known for its technical attributes, have recently taken the lead in opening their doors to graduates.

In the first quarter of this year, the number of logistics, procurement, and supply chain positions opened in the first quarter of this year doubled compared with the same period last year, and the number of technical positions increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year, of which software development engineers, test and development engineers, algorithm engineers and other technical positions accounted for a relatively large proportion, focusing on absorbing scientific and technological talents.

From the recruitment situation, it can be seen that a track with good development prospects and strong certainty can give birth to more employment development opportunities. For graduates, when they first leave school, they aim at the development certainty of the company and the track when choosing their first job, and they are also looking for certainty in uncertainty, giving their career growth an "insurance".

What exactly is the "halo of the big factory"?

Different from the good opportunity of "gold three silver four" at the peak, in today's employment situation, what kind of job to choose seems to be more entangled for young people. Job seekers standing at the door of large factories look at the "halo of big factories" and have a more complicated mentality.

For graduates who are new to the workplace, the so-called "Internet giant" may mean more. It's not just a name, it's also about opportunities at the beginning of your career, salary, growth, platform size, and other factors.

It is precisely because of this that what can the "halo of big factories" bring to young people? This question is more valuable to discuss than before. Yu Chen, who graduated from the University of International Business and Economics, joined the Internet in the past two years and has a deeper understanding of what the "halo of a big factory" is. It's not just about a company's high-profile, glamorous workstations and office buildings.

At the reunion of the classmates who just graduated, everyone talked about their own work, and this group of high-achieving students talked about each other. There are those who do international advertising, data analysis, financial industry research... By the time of Yuchen, she repeatedly stressed that she worked in Meituan, "a big factory." ”

"What exactly do you do?"

Yu Chen was speechless. She often deals with pork in the fresh pork group of Meituan Kuaida Business Unit, which seems a little too grounded. But that was only two years ago.

In 2020, Yuchen, who graduated from economics and logistics, joined Meituan through school recruitment, grew up under the careful care of his parents, and devoted himself to books, and Yuchen's accumulation of commodity knowledge in the fresh food field was almost zero.

In order to make up for the shortcomings, Yuchen often stayed in the field in the first half year to observe and record. It was completely different from the big factory job she imagined, but it was also fulfilling and interesting.

In order to understand the supply chain, she conducted field research and followed her mentor to the production area of fresh goods. For example, in Linyi, Shandong, she observed the production process of garlic rice; In Jiangsu, she studied the industry situation of enoki mushrooms; In Shanghai and Hangzhou, he learned about procurement, sales, transportation, warehousing, distribution and other contents in the commodity warehouse... Just one business trip and research took more than 20 days.

"My family said that if I don't change jobs, I always travel, and I still have to travel for so long." Yuchen recalled. But through these difficulties and busyness, she has also grown a lot and gained a lot.

Through on-site learning, Yuchen quickly became familiar with the entire catering supply chain industry, and the "Pork Learning Notes" she had combed was once widely disseminated within the group, recording the supply chain operation process of a pig from breeding to the table, and how to generate profit margins.

 ▲ "Pork Study Notes" sorted out by Yuchen

Having laid a solid foundation in the fresh food field, although it is still a school recruitment, Yuchen began to take over the most challenging project in the group - fresh meat cost optimization. "Fresh meat is a non-standard commodity. For example, a pig, different cutting methods, the meat that comes out is different, the price is different, it is difficult for you to standardize; Then the supplier is different, the source of goods is different, the cost may be different; Including the pork market, it is also constantly changing. Yuchen gave an example.

She found the fixed and variable costs of fresh meat products, explored the relationship between procurement costs and actual costs, and repeatedly verified through cross-departmental collaboration, and created the SPU bare coefficient model. This model can locate abnormal goods in procurement costs through the calculation of the bare coefficient of full goods, and serve as the basic model for supplier gross profit optimization, "achieving a breakthrough from 0 to 1." Yuchen said.

When facing his classmates and friends again, Yuchen had confidence. Kuaidi provides purchase services to catering merchants, and the catering supply chain business is complex and cumbersome. "Fresh food shopping here is not a simple buyer, but a retail business with technology. I find this work more and more interesting and requires greater responsibility. In just two years, Yuchen has grown from a "little white" in the technology retail industry to an expert, and has also been rated as an excellent school enrollment by the company.

▲Yuchen who is "dealing" with pork (provided by interviewee)

Looking back, Yuchen feels that the "big factory aura" is not actually a virtual thing, but the knowledge learned in the challenge, the real growth and reward obtained. It is also such a down-to-earth job that dares to entrust young people with heavy responsibilities that makes her feel grounded. Walking out of the workstation for field research made her feel that this job was less "suspended" and reduced a little anxiety.

With the economic recovery to the consumer, retail, service industry and other industries, the big manufacturers on the relevant track have more confidence to recruit, similar to Yuchen's work such as non-"suspended" and growth space positions have been released, which is bringing more upward opportunities and motivation for young people.

For young people who are new to the workplace, choosing the right industry, choosing the right track, and choosing the right company for the impact of the career path is extremely important. The fate of individuals is floating between the track and the platform, and the big factory may still be a good choice.

The growth and acquired abilities gained after training in the frontier track and first-line manufacturers can also alleviate the anxiety of young people to a certain extent, and add capital and confidence to everyone in an uncertain environment.

(The characters in the article are pseudonyms)