Leopard transformation

Leopard transformation

Certified author Lv.4

follow

The job search season, which carries expectations, has quietly ended, and the workers waiting to land are still working hard to submit resumes. On the other hand, the changes on the demand side are both hidden and obvious. While HC is sorting out, freezing, and urgently recruiting, the patience of big companies with time is also accelerating to disappear. This article is from WeChat official account: Baobian (ID: Baobiannews), written by Ye Danxuan, edited by Xing Yun, and the source of the title: Visual China

Article Summary

This article describes the end of the peak job search season for gold, silver, and silver, and the current situation where job seekers are still waiting for offers. The article covers changes in demand, the evolution of recruitment methods, and the disappearance of patience with time.

• •    The peak job search season has ended, and job seekers are waiting for an offer

• •    The recruitment methods are gradually evolving, including the re emergence of traditional methods such as "dominating the market"

• • ⏳   The tolerance of large factories for time is decreasing, and they have extremely high requirements for urgent recruitment and on duty time

The golden age of 2024 has passed, and there are still very few successful candidates in Zhang Meng's job search group. Her offer approval was also stuck at a critical time point in the department's inventory. On Xiaohongshu, many people in a similar situation as her experienced a long and agonizing wait, resulting in the end of the department's inventory, the termination of the HC (headcount quota), and the invalidation of the offer.

Jin San Yin Si, commonly used to refer to the traditional job hunting peak season, appears in the spring after the Chinese New Year. Compared to 2023, which has just resumed normal flow, this year's Gold, Silver, and Four programs clearly carry more expectations from job seekers.

At the end of February, the wind of "Golden Three Silver Four" had already blown. Due to the new high traffic and server overload, Zhilian Recruitment is unable to provide services normally. Zhilian Recruitment has announced twice that its website and app have resumed service, but there are still job seekers who have reported being unable to log in normally.

Under expectations, the ideal response did not arrive as expected. From Internet giants to state-owned enterprises, changes in market and demand are taking place.

Has Bamian returned?

During the rainy season, Shenzhen often makes it difficult to distinguish between day and night. On an afternoon at the end of March, the Nanshan Science and Technology Park at 2 o'clock was brightly lit, shining like lightning across the sky. This is not Liu Tong's first time entering Tencent, but the appearance of the "Ba Mian Qu" still surprised him.

In 2024, Tencent relaunched the practice of "domineering" during offline interviews for interns and specifically opened a "domineering area". "Ba Mian" refers to job seekers appearing at the interview site with their paper resumes without submitting them in advance, and participating in the interview selection process normally.

For Liu Tong, who enrolled in his undergraduate program in 2018, "Ba Mian" is an almost entirely new term. In his perception, job seeking is a matter of starting with a resume. From college to major, resume screening is very clear, and skipping the initial screening stage and directly interviewing is simply unimaginable.

However, in the dividend period of several years when the Internet economy is in the ascendant and Internet giants are soaring, "dominating the face" is not only a kind of interview tradition, but also a synonym for the Jianghu spirit and youth of the Internet industry, such as "dropping talents regardless of style" and "heroes don't ask where they come from".

Chen Mo, who has worked as an HRBP among BAT factories for many years, graduated in 2016. At that time, whether it was a well-known foreign enterprise like Microsoft, an Internet giant like Tencent and Alibaba, or a once famous O2O enterprise, it was assumed that job seekers could take a "dominant" approach to win interviews for themselves.

The underlying logic of "dominating the market" is that the company's expectations for future development are expansionary and optimistic. From corporate culture to a budget of real gold and silver, they are willing to invest in it, seeking a possibility of blowing out the sand to achieve success. Technology and creativity, traits that cannot be embodied in linear resumes, were exactly what companies at that time hoped to pursue with great investment.

Thanks to his dominance, Chen Mo obtained a job opportunity at Tencent after graduating from a second tier university, and his identity changed from a job seeker to an interviewer. Starting from 2020, he realized that changes were happening: dominance was gradually silenced in interviews, and recruitment by large companies became more traditional with increasingly fierce competition.

"Not to mention the people who come directly to 'bully noodles', many HR personnel have not heard of the term' bully noodles'." Chen Mo said, "The key is that there have been more competitors, but the number of pitfalls has not changed, and even gradually decreased, and the meaning of 'bully noodles' has disappeared."

When a large number of graduates flock to the designated positions of Internet enterprises, recruitment habits will naturally be modified. Chen Mo said, "Now it's not a problem of not being able to open a 'top tier' platform. Many companies have already started using AI to screen resumes."

So, does the quiet return of "Ba Mian" mean a warming of recruitment water temperature?

The answer may still be unclear.

A person close to Tencent confirmed to Leopard Transformation that the "Ba Mian District" is currently only being reactivated in the recruitment of summer interns and daily interns. It is understood that there is no "Ba Mian" process in social recruitment.

JD is changing

A more intuitive change appears in the modification of JD (job description, job requirements).

A headhunter specializing in e-commerce and commercialization told "Leopard Transformation" that overall, there has been little change in the demand for business positions by large companies, and the rumored hiring freeze is basically true. At the same time, at the end of March, the message of full lock hc (quota) came from ByteDance, and there was no positive response to this byte.

In 2024, the decline in job mobility was the first significant consensus felt by both headhunters and job seekers.

In the past, the reason why gold, silver, and silver became the conventional peak season for job hunting was not only because the labor market became active after the end of the Lunar New Year, but more importantly, this period happened to be the time when various companies finished their inventory and distributed year-end bonuses. Many people consider looking for new opportunities after winning the year-end bonus, and the size of the year-end bonus package can also serve as capital for salary negotiations.

According to the lottery draw in the past two months, although the year-end award is still the most expected part of the Internet, the euphoria surrounding the lottery draw in the past no longer exists. A person close to Baidu told "Leopard Transformation" that the company has adjusted the proportion of base salary and year-end bonus, which depends on the company's performance level and individual performance evaluation. The proportion of year-end bonus in the salary structure has further increased.

The arrogance of big companies towards year-end bonuses is also diminishing. A person close to Ant told Leopard Transformation that this year's year-end bonus is not very optimistic, with a performance rating of 3.5 and a year-end bonus of 1-2 months.

The tightening year-end bonus is reshaping the psychological expectations of workers, and many people who originally planned to leave after winning the year-end bonus choose to stay after observing the market situation.

The above headhunter said that the requirements of Internet giants for JD are becoming more and more sophisticated. In fact, since 2023, many top companies have quietly adopted this standard for key business positions, requiring sufficient mastery of the vertical categories responsible for business. This year, the perception of such demand on the headhunting end is becoming increasingly strong, and "many positions require direct experience in matching.".

In the past, whether it was job transfer within Internet enterprises or job hopping between large factories, similar business lines were a great advantage. But starting from 2023, the cost of cultivating a team has also been secretly reduced. "I would rather spend more budget on poaching people, such as directly leveraging people from competitive teams and accurately landing, than spending time and energy on cultivating a team."

Internet tycoons no longer focus on cost reduction and efficiency increase, but this knife for redundant budget is always waving in the organizational structure, and "cost performance" has become the top priority.

Zhang Meng is a Master of Arts graduate from the 985 program, and most of the positions she meets the requirements are in the middle stage of operations. Since 2024, she has received feedback from many HR personnel, revealing that the demand for middle platform positions is further decreasing this year. Some HR even told her that this trend may continue for a long time in the future and suggested that she plan ahead.

Not all business positions are facing downsizing. In the past April, Wang Yi from the automotive industry received interview notices from several top car companies, and the social recruitment process was progressing quickly. In less than 20 days, she finalized the company she wanted to join and reported to work after the May Day holiday.

Industries and lines that still have incremental growth may be new opportunities. The headhunter mentioned above told "Leopard Transformation" that in the past year, the demand for active business lines has been internationalization, and the opportunities and ambitions for going abroad are written on the face of big companies.

Young and eager to recruit, big companies are losing patience

The pursuit of youth has always been a secret preference of the Internet.

In the past, the balance between work experience and years of experience was drawn, which became a psychological safety zone for many elderly professionals in the workplace. However, the patience of big companies with age is accelerating to disappear.

Internet enterprises can almost be said to be born out of the vitality and creativity of young people. The wealth bonus express of high-speed Mercedes Benz is driven by countless young people. However, in the past decade, the organizational structure of Internet enterprises has been solidified, becoming more traditional and complex. The big companies, eager to relieve their difficulties, have begun to put this hidden preference in front of them more clearly.

The headhunter mentioned above revealed to "Leopard Transformation" that currently, among top companies, the average age within the department is calculated before sending candidate requests, and needs to be maintained at 30 or 35 years old or below. Therefore, candidates with only 1-3 years of work experience become a more preferred choice.

A big factory that loses patience has more tolerance for time than just age.

Chen Mo found that in the current situation where HC (quota) is generally frozen, both his own company and his friends are still maintaining the high requirements for the time to be on duty in the released positions. The rest of the positions will be carefully locked after inventory. "The positions that are currently being promoted are mostly urgent recruitment, and the earlier you arrive, the better."

Wang Ming also found during his job search that many positions do not even allow job seekers to have a one month handover time. In the past job search season of Jin San Yin Si, the two positions he was in contact with have reached the next offer stage, and the other party has requested to be on the job after 10 days. Wang Ming said that time was too tight and he had difficulty handing over his resignation, so the process was immediately terminated.

This is also a dilemma for many job seekers. On the one hand, there are not many positions in the market that can still be promoted normally, and the tolerance for the onboarding time window for urgent recruitment positions is extremely low, making "use it immediately" the mainstream; On the other hand, companies on the market are not tolerant of job seekers during their career window.

"Barely resigning to find a job is the bottom line, and it's hard to find a job that can't even wait for the normal handover time." Before spring passed, Wang Ming went to Chaoyang Park to admire the flowers, but the spring he was waiting for in the workplace had not arrived yet.

(At the request of the interviewee, all characters in the article are pseudonyms)

This article is from WeChat official account: Baobian (ID: baobiannews), written by Ye Danxuan, edited by Xing Yun

Leopard transformation

Leopard transformation

Make the most penetrating and insightful business observations

Certified author

376 articles have been published on Husniff

This content is the author's independent viewpoint and does not represent the Tiger Smell position. Reproduction is not allowed without permission. For authorization matters, please contact us hezuo@huxiu.com

If you have any objections or complaints about this manuscript, please contact us tougao@huxiu.com

People who are changing and want to change the world are all on the Tiger Smell app

金三银四过去了，我还在等一个offer

豹变关注