After interviewing 70 companies, I let go of the face of the big factory people
Author | Zhan Tengyu
Edit | Su Wei
Title Picture | "The Demon King Who Jumped Job"
Xiao Tani, who has less than 200 followers, didn't expect his post about job search experience to become a small hit.
Xiao Gu, who resigned from a large factory in 2022, has traveled to almost all major Internet companies and their upstream and downstream enterprises in Beijing in the next two years, and won 5 offers in 70 or 80 interviews.
Xiao Gu used five mainstream recruitment software on the market, and by the end of the year, there were only two left, and one of them had more than 7,000 communication records. There are still hundreds of headhunters in Xiao Gu's circle of friends, which are the remnants of that rushing time.
The change in temperature during the change of seasons affects almost everyone equally.
(Photo/"The Demon King Who Jumped Ship")
Before 2022, Internet people still have a trace of the illusion of decency, maintaining a balance between tiredness and gain. Many people feel that this is a common bump in the moment when they suddenly stumble over fate, and joke with their friends around them about "N+1", almost never thinking about how to break through the bottleneck of not being able to go up or down next.
When the layers of pressure fell on Xiao Gu through HR, through the interviewer, and through a reliable or unreliable company, those abstract economic statistics suddenly became concrete, and they became the force that urged Xiao Gu to pick up the phone again, turn on the camera, and repeatedly introduce himself to strangers.
And this continuous rotation of interviews, thinking about oneself and career, may not have reached the end yet.
The following is Kotani's statement:
"The one who faced me before left early"
I always feel ashamed to say these things.
Although some of them are not my problems, they have basically been like this for two years (failed interviews), and it is hard not to deny myself. When I told my friends, they didn't believe it, and they couldn't find a job when they came out of a big factory?
When I just resigned in 2022, I returned to Beijing from Guangzhou, and I made an appointment with a few familiar media friends to play LOL, and after more than half a year, everyone had a bad time. Some people are unemployed, some people are still in the original company and have not moved or been promoted, and there is a buddy who divorced and returned to his hometown. I didn't want to socialize, I couldn't find anyone to socialize, and in the end I didn't even play the game. It used to be very lively in the group, but now it's hard to speak.
I talked to a lot of other friends and the feelings were similar: for the past few years, we have been living in a big factory dream. Dreams are beautiful, there is everything in them, and we seem to be able to do anything. When we woke up from the dream and left the factory, we realized that we actually had nothing.
(Photo/"We Who Can't Be Beasts")
We also changed from talking about ideals and promotions to discussing whether we didn't deserve our previous salary. Until the end, everyone had nothing to talk about and no longer contacted.
In my current situation, 3 years ago, the probability of getting an offer may have been 50%, but now the probability is infinitely close to 0. I feel that the entry threshold of the first-line head Internet company is more than twice as high as in previous years, and the adaptability requirements are higher, but the salary cannot be too high.
As for the reasons, I guess it includes the hard noodles of the lack of post establishment, the absence of the post establishment after the face, and the fact that my level is indeed "dish". There are many interviews, and it's actually very annoying to the back, and I've introduced myself hundreds of times, and I've been able to interview while playing LOL.
For a while, I was interviewing while playing "Killing Tower", and I felt that the interview was quite similar to playing a game, and some fixed actions were done for a long time, and they all became muscle memory: I introduced myself at the beginning, and climbed the tower to the first floor. I repeat the introduction of "who I am", and click the mouse to the viewer to change their posture. I'm so familiar with each other that I've accumulated more than 500 hours of game time, and I have to have seventy or eighty hours of interviews combined.
Kotani's Steam statistics for 2023 have a total duration of more than 600 hours. He's a master of strategy games, but he's at a loss for life. In 2023, his life is to go back and forth between interviews and hospitals, and playing games has almost become his only pastime. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
One of the most impressive times was when I interviewed Factory H, when I was still in Factory E, and the interviewer happened to have just gone to Factory H from Factory E. We had a good chat the whole time, and at the end he asked me if there was anything I wanted to ask. I said quite directly, I want to know if Factory H has any ancestral defects of Factory E, and whether you, the interviewer, have brought this set of things over.
As soon as he asked this, he was anxious. Originally, the interview only lasted 20 minutes, but he spent half an hour explaining to me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. But if you talk about it like this, naturally there will be no follow-up. The headhunter said that the interviewer had a bad impression of me.
It was March 2022, and the headhunters approached me three or four times. I told them that if I was still in a position related to the H Factory Group, I would not meet each other, and I would never want to be a colleague with anyone from Factory E again. After more than half a year, I changed to a headhunter to ask, and I said I wouldn't go with the same reason.
(Photo/"The Demon King Who Jumped Ship")
He said that the public relations of Factory H has been changed twice. The one who met me before left early.
Then I went to the noodle N factory. In fact, Factory N as a whole is fine, but once it was outrageous, they wanted me to be a direct competitor to Factory E's products. In fact, I have never wanted to help my competitors fight my old club, and I always feel uncomfortable. They had to add me to HR for a year or two, and I shouted three or four times. In the end, I decided to try it before I went back to Beijing.
The interviewer was a friend of my friend, who knew I was going to have an interview and asked me if I wanted to say hello in advance. I said no, just talk casually, and I won't go anyway. At the end of the interview, I casually asked the interviewer, do you know Lao X (your friend's name) too? The interviewer asked, "Are you familiar with him?" I said, "Too familiar."
(Photo/"We Who Can't Be Beasts")
The result was that I didn't pass the interview, and I guess it was a friend who I talked to later. My friend also analyzed that he was a supplier and had business dealings with Factory N, and the interviewer might be worried, and later gave an evaluation of "very mismatched, it is recommended not to hire".
There are also two N factory interview experiences that are also very strange. One is their art middle platform, the other is the operation of one of their martial arts games, and the two posts are pushed by the same HR. Some HR always likes to recommend me to a position that is completely mismatched, and she encourages me every day and calls me for interview coaching, which I really can't refuse.
The one in the art middle stage actually talked for two rounds, although in the first round I knew that this position was not suitable for me at all. He said that he wanted someone who knew art very well, preferably someone who could write before as an artist, and finally hung up as expected.
The second one was even more embarrassing, I didn't come from an operations position, and as soon as I turned on the camera, I and the interviewer laughed. His first sentence was, looking at your resume, you are not a good match for this position. I said yes, your HR pushed it.
Then, the two of us had a hard chat, and we also chatted for half an hour.
"I'm not really a good value for money"
On the contrary, there are some positions that I think are suitable, but I haven't passed.
Factory N also has a sci-fi game that I'm quite optimistic about, and I think that position is quite suitable, and I had a very happy chat during the interview, and I gave them a lot of sci-fi-related suggestions.
But in the end, I didn't understand.
After that, I went to interview Q factory. The first position was pushed to me early by a friend in the game media, when I was about to leave Factory E. It took a total of three or four rounds to face and take a year, from 2022 to 2023. In the end, the post didn't say no, and didn't say okay, it dragged on week after week, and then there was no news.
Later, another former colleague pushed me to a position in their department, and they had just been transferred to be in charge of a major annual project at Plant Q. Unfortunately, I was in the hospital for surgery at that time, and I went to the interview the next day after the operation. The interviewer felt that the hospital was noisy and asked me to meet again another day. As a result, I was very uncomfortable on the day I was discharged from the hospital, and I was very poor, and I didn't answer many questions properly.
For example, if I have done a good case, I said that I have not done any good cases before, and none of them are satisfactory. The interviewer was a little speechless, and he said, you are really honest. But you say that, it's not quite suitable for an interview.
(Photo/"We Who Can't Be Beasts")
There were also a few funny experiences. went to interview a film and television company that made science fiction, and the first round was actually the big boss, and then three rounds of interviews, and the last round was a face under the big boss.
There is also a company that does Guoman,Got a well-known IP in the country,That one got the offer,The background investigation is done,Just waiting to sign the contract。 I was originally scheduled to join the company before May Day in 2023, but I kept waiting, but HR didn't call me, and after waiting for almost a month, I kept asking him, and he said let me wait, and it was very soon.
And guess what? This HR actually left, and at that time I was interviewing the other two, because I took its offer, and I rejected one of them.
In November, when I interviewed a music company, they said that they had to go to Shanghai to meet their boss in the last round, and they had actually had a video chat before, but they insisted on meeting offline for another round, and I said that I was not available, so I accepted another offer, so I refused this one.
(Photo/"The Demon King Who Jumped Ship")
Later, in December, he told me that he really wanted to recruit people again, and he could continue to push them, that is, to meet them offline again. I made a special trip to Shanghai, and we had a good chat, and we finished talking about the salary, and then asked me to wait, and I waited for a month, and I kept asking to no avail.
Finally, he said that in the restructuring adjustment, "Or, wait until next spring". I just cursed.
There are too many examples of this kind of reversal. In March and April 2022, I met with a company in Shenzhen, and we talked about it beforehand, but in the end, the boss repented and asked me to try the manuscript. After he finished writing, he said no, all kinds of faults. I suspect they just don't want to hire.
In 2023, I also met a game company, and we started chatting well, but in the end, the reason why I didn't want me was that they didn't want Beijingers.
Later, I thought about it, some of the reasons why the interview did not go well, maybe there was money, because I had worked in factory E, and in the eyes of many people, I was really not a cost-effective person.
"Once you leave, it's hard to quickly integrate into another machine"
I had some work experience in between.
A friend who used to work in a large factory and became the owner of a branch in Beijing called me over. After entering, I found that it was too pitiful, first of all, he was very indecisive, could not make decisions, and was not suitable to be a boss. And he himself is neither familiar with the product, nor does he know much about marketing, so he is not as good as me in writing manuscripts.
The big boss can't get up and down in the credit book of the past, but in fact, the company has gone from thousands of employees at its peak to only a few hundred now, and the atmosphere of the whole company is not good. I had a hard time working there, and I was given a strange orientation. The work philosophy was different, and my colleagues were fighting with each other, so I left.
(Photo/"The Demon King Who Jumped Ship")
For a while, I simply stopped meeting and concentrated on taking my mother to see a doctor. In 2023, my mom had a serious illness, and after being discharged from the hospital, I had to go to the hospital two or three times a week at most, and I myself stayed in the hospital for a month, and I went back and forth between interviews and hospitals for almost the whole year.
The family affair plus the interview, almost the whole year of the mental and physical collapse.
When I resigned from that chaotic company at the beginning of 2023, my biological clock was disturbed, my mental state was very poor, and I couldn't sleep at all without taking medicine every day.
Headhunters have also pushed a lot of positions that have no memory points, such as Party A, Party B, video, and live broadcast, all of which have been tried, but I don't remember them very well.
I can't go up, I can't get down, I'm stuck here. Even if I want to take a pay cut to become a basic post, people will tell me that you are really overqualified.
Xiao Gu's cat, followed him from Beijing to Guangzhou, and from Guangzhou back to Beijing, Xiao Gu "regarded it as his own", but unfortunately, the cat died last year. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
Looking back on the past two years of looking for a job, I actually think more about the fact that what I did in the original E factory was a screw in the precision instrument, and once I left, it was difficult to quickly integrate into another machine. The work done in a large factory, not to mention whether it is fine or not, less (single direction) is certain. I often reflect on whether there is a problem with my ability structure: what should I do with my current ability, what will I do in the future, and whether I can start again in a different direction.
After encountering a lot of messy things during the interview, I suddenly felt that Factory E protected me well. When I left Factory E, I really couldn't understand why I had done so much and had so little return, and I was not recognized.
"Gee, I think work, that's it. ”
Talking about the painful things of the past two years means that many of my friends will know about things that I don't really want to talk about. My wife said that it is useless to save face, what if you can't find a job. Yes, everyone is used to seeing success, and someone has to share the twists and turns.
Proofreader: Yang Chao, Operation: Lu Zirui, Typesetting: Liang Ningyan