Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Just as the record of the hottest summer is broken almost every year, the definition of the hardest employment season is refreshed every year.

The difference is that this year, China's college graduates exceeded 10 million for the first time, setting a new historical record.

Every offer that flies out is silently calming down a minute of anxiety. As of mid-April this year, 55% of graduates had voluntarily lowered their employment expectations, according to a research report by a recruitment platform. 46.7% of the graduates surveyed received offer. Others are pinning their hopes on the recent start of the autumn trick.

Obviously, the first lesson for this class of graduates to get out of school is to face reality and face up to themselves. Some of them once had an emotional breakdown to see a psychiatrist because of the 300 "thank-you notes" lying in the mailbox; some wanted to "go ashore" and immersed themselves in taking the public entrance examination, postgraduate entrance examination, and teacher qualification examination; others refused the offer because HR came up and asked: can you accept 11-11-6?

There are also young people who can't roll up, living to be "against the social clock". They go to Rookie Cafe, Lululemon, and become baristas and yoga pants guides.

Whether it is active choice or passive coercion, from the whereabouts of this year's graduates, we can see the trend of the turn of the times.

01,300 HR "thank-you notes" made me cry in front of a psychiatrist. When I graduated from a university in southern China in December 2021, Yang Shiya did not realize how difficult it would be in the coming months.

Due to the conflict between the recruitment time in the autumn of 2021 and the time to write her graduation thesis, she focused on her thesis and found nothing in nearly 10 autumn recruitment interviews.

At that time, her state of mind was relatively stable, "after the Spring Festival, there are spring tricks."

It can only be said that the chill has not yet reached the end. After the Spring Festival, she soon found that there were fewer recruitment positions, but more competitors. Some of them are similar to Shiya and belong to "postponing employment".

She had to adjust her expectations. In the autumn recruitment last year, Shiya basically invested in the operation of large Internet companies; in the spring recruitment stage, she began to cast a wide net, expanding her attention to Internet + Technology hardware Company + state-owned enterprises. Because there is no "surplus food" on the Internet.

After 20 years of high growth and scale expansion, the Internet has reached the edge of stagnant user growth and peak traffic. Bumping into the policy regulation of the past two years, the impact of the epidemic, and the macroeconomic slowdown, the focus on the main business has replaced the expansion of a wide opening and closing business.

One subtext of focus is contraction. If the key words on the hot search of big factories are high salary and 996 blessings, this year it has become to reduce costs and increase efficiency and lock HC. The dividend of the times is gone, and the employment opportunities of this year's young people have also been diluted.

From March to April, Shiya keeps doing 1-2 sets of pencil questions every day, and then there is endless waiting. The time has been stretched for a long, long time. The mailbox will "drip" almost every day and jump out of a new reply email. But what comes is often the "thank-you note" that she doesn't want to see-thank you for submitting the position. I'm sorry you "don't meet the job requirements".

At a later stage, she only glanced at the title of many emails and would not click on them at all. Those unread emails are still lying in the mailbox list, page after page.

Throughout the spring recruitment season, she has probably invested in about 300 companies, and fewer than five have issued interview invitations. She participated in several group interviews, and most of the interviewees were 985, 211 or returnee masters, as well as many C9 (top university alliance) graduates. "per capita internship experience in a large factory, our school is considered to have low academic qualifications." in the final stage, she was horizontally brushed off.

Although Shiya has accumulated three seemingly good internships-the chief executive of Tencent's online users, the content operator of NetEase's platform, and the AI voice product manager of Yunmi Technology, these resumes also look a bit mediocre in this year's employment situation. To be exact, their class was forced to "roll" from the internship. She still remembers that during the same period, most of the interns were masters, and "they were all masters doing chores."

Now people may be faced with the same selection. "it hurts me that I don't have many interview invitations, and it makes me feel like I've been chosen. I was very depressed during the whole spring recruitment. "she went to a psychiatrist on her own initiative, and when she talked to each other, she couldn't help crying. Her roommate also burst into tears under the pressure of looking for a job.

The psychiatrist had an insight into her stress and advised her not to be too hard on herself. Finally, she plucked up her courage and turned to her master's out-of-school mentor for help.

"the out-of-school tutor happens to be the CEO of an Internet company. I asked them if the company had any plans to recruit fresh students, and then he arranged a content operation post for me. "the job with a monthly salary of 7000 yuan finally relieved her of the heavy burden of job hunting, but it also brought a new psychological burden.

"when I learned that the postgraduate entrance examination was successful, it brought a sense of achievement, and my long-term efforts yielded a good result. The process of looking for a job was a little embarrassing, and I felt like I came in through the back door. When she first joined the job in late April, this idea perplexed Shiya until she gradually showed her ability at work and was recognized by the people around her, and the idea of "embarrassment" came down.

This may be the latest portrayal of the situation stronger than people. During the macroeconomic downturn, the environment is more likely to erode the vivid details of individuals and arbitrarily influence the fate of young people. Most of the time, they just lack a chance to show it.

However, compared with the twists and turns of Shiya's job search, some young people will take the initiative to put down their mental burden and enter the retail service industry. Some of them become clerks at Lululemon, officially called "product educators", while others work as baristas in boutique cafes with a monthly salary of 6,000 to 7,000 yuan.

According to a former Lululemon employee on Zhihu, some college students even went to the store directly with their resumes, hoping to get an interview.

According to a survey report on the employability of 2022 college students published by a recruitment website, the proportion of people choosing freelance employment (18.6%) and slow employment (15.9%) this year have both increased by 3 percentage points compared with last year.

02. Will squeezing into the "landing" system make you have more sense of security? "when a friend threw out this question, Ding Yan hesitated for two seconds in front of the computer screen." very reluctantly but still have to say, yes. "

Before he was admitted as a civil servant in a political and legal unit in the northwest, he worked as a tutor in the teaching and training industry. Although the pace of the high road before the double reduction is sometimes "breathless", and some female colleagues even have serious hair loss, Ding Yan still works very hard.

The office environment of 5A-class office buildings, social insurance and house fund on the top grid, and attractive salary have all turned into motivation. Only the pressure of sales will dilute his sense of identity with the job, but when he gets paid later, he will return to the reality that he should not be able to find a higher-paying job in Chengdu.

At that time, the teaching and training industry was in its heyday, and he vaguely remembered that the company had built a "Gaotu Building" in Chengdu. But when he returned to Chengdu last year, the billboard of the huge "Gaotu Building" upstairs had been quietly removed.

Fortunately, on the eve of the great turmoil in the education and training industry, Ding Yan was mobilized by his family to go back to his hometown to take an examination of civil servants. Parents said that only within the system is stable, Ding Yan did not say no.

In the past two years, graduates' enthusiasm for "going ashore" has increased unabated. In the public libraries and shared study rooms of first-and second-tier cities, groups of exams and postgraduate entrance exams are packed with every empty chair.

An examinee studying by himself at the library in Tongzhou District of Beijing even named his WIFI hotspot "Don't go ashore and don't change your name". I don't know whether the mobile phone owner wants to declare his determination to burn his bridges through this "wireless" way.

Netizen "Dorothy" recorded her pressure on the examination: "there is no other way out except for passing the national examination." From last year to the first half of this year, I even only took large-scale exams, dismissive of state-owned enterprises, social workers and banks. It was not until August that I began to work hard to take the exams crazily, but still failed. Even if the social work exam is not very good, it is very good in our family, and the average score of the last time is as high as 74 (out of 100, there are single-choice, multi-choice, subjective, judgment). "

Dorothy said she was confused about her future life, but wanted to have a job to protect her.

From the perspective of individual choice, it is understandable that the epidemic overlaps the economic situation, and young people are more and more inclined to seek stability. According to the Ministry of Education, 4.57 million people have applied for the national postgraduate examination this year, an increase of 800000 over last year. The aforementioned report also mentioned a phenomenon that 18.2% of the contracted graduates of the class of 2022 went to state organs and institutions.

In contrast, there are two other sets of data. In 2022, 2.123 million people across the country passed the national civil service qualification examination, and some posts became a veritable "one in a million". The number of people taking the teacher qualification certificate in the 2021 annual report also reached 11.442 million, 4.4 times that of five years ago. Among them, 8 million of the applicants are not teachers-related majors.

Mandy, who has worked as a product manager in Baidu, good Future and other companies, can still feel this "shock wave" despite graduating three years ago.

Every year, Renmin University of China, her undergraduate alma mater, invites representatives of past graduates from various industries to return to school to participate in employment seminars to provide some employment guidance to brothers and sisters. In the past two years, including Mandy, there will be representatives of a number of Internet companies in the past, but at the symposium in March this year, she was the only one from the Internet industry, and more from within the system.

She found that the problems of the younger brothers and sisters were also relatively concentrated, mainly asking for the experience of compiling exams, such as how to prepare for the civil service, how to become selective transfer students, and how to take the teacher. "two years ago, someone asked me how to enter Baidu, but now no one has asked. Maybe everyone doesn't want to join the Internet factory? "

03. Rejecting 11-11-6 big factories and countercurrent the change of young people's attitude towards big factories in the education industry has not only subjective cognitive influence, but also realistic constraints.

Since the beginning of this year, big companies such as byte, Tencent and Ali have shrunk their business lines one after another. Subjectively, young people in this class are no longer willing to spend more effort on 996 and the volume.

For example, a phone call from pinduoduo HR once completely scared Hu Yujia, a graduate of the class of 2023. "she came up and asked directly, Mr. Hu, can you accept the 11-11-6 work system? I feel that the pressure is still too great. "he made up for the picture of himself going to work at 11:00 in the morning and getting off work at 11:00 in the evening, six days a week, suffocating in his face.

After passing the written examination of the R & D post and three rounds of technical interview, Hu Yujia took the initiative to reject this offer. "of course I can accept overtime, but at the same time, I also hope to set aside some time for personal improvement and a balanced life. "

Yu Yang, the 2022 master's degree in electronic information major in Beihang, said his roommate also gave up the offer of Pinduoduo. At that time, HR opened to the total package of 700000 yuan, which is said to have reached the company's upper limit, but 11-11-6 is still prohibitive. The roommate also turned down byte beat, another big factory famous for its "invalid volume" among graduates.

Hu Yujia finally accepted the offer letter of intent from Cloud Holdings. This seemingly "new" enterprise comes from an unusual background and is the product of the diversified layout of Yuanfudao, the education head company.

Compared with the Internet giants, this year's young people seem to prefer "industry leaders"-moderate scale, flat management, less overtime, young people support internal entrepreneurship when they have ideas, and have more opportunities to get in touch with core business and grow rapidly.

Yang Li, senior HR of Yuanfudao, is well aware of the attraction of these "advantages". "what a lot of people may get in a big factory is a screw job. But in the head company, everyone has a core thing in their hands. For example, when our company assigns tasks, we are less likely to let some people do core work and others do marginal work. We prefer that everyone is better. "

These are the things that attract Hu Yujia. When he was just an intern, he was deeply involved in the infrastructure iterative tasks of the product line, from which he could learn and improve quickly. And the code he typed became part of the underlying technical architecture. There is another point, overtime is not fierce, you can have your own life.

But it takes a certain amount of courage to choose an online education company in the "head company". After the implementation of the double reduction policy last year, Yuanfudao, good Future, New Oriental and other educational institutions have all experienced large-scale optimization in the chaos of war. Yu Yang, who also received a call from offer last fall, was later told that recruitment was suspended. After graduating from Beihang in January this year, he went to Didi, where he worked in Hangzhou, close to his hometown in Anhui.

In May this year, he suddenly received a phone call from Yuanfudao HR, who told him that he had set up a group, diversified businesses were gradually launched, and there were many new business opportunities. He asked him if he was interested in considering returning to China.

"I really didn't dare to answer it in the second half of last year." Yu Yang has talked to the technical director of ape tutoring for several rounds of technology, and he already has a tendency in his heart.

However, the main body of the contract with him has been changed from Yuanfudao to look at Cloud Holdings, a company name that looks strange. It turned out that while the education business line was adjusted, various online education companies began to explore new directions one after another, such as education going out to sea in a good future, New Oriental moving to live broadcast with goods, and Yuanfudao, on the premise of keeping the main business of education unchanged, small-scale test waters in new areas, layout of new consumption, enterprise services, and digital publishing.

In August this year, Yuanfudao online Education Company quietly upgraded to Kanyun holding Group, and the original education business line still retains the brand name of "Yuanfudao". I don't know if this is inspired by byte beating. After upgrading to byte beat that year, Jinri Toutiao was downgraded to the brand name of the product line, which is the same sequence as Douyin, watermelon and volcano.

Behind the name change may mean that these education companies are once again light. For example, good Future, Yuanfudao restarted school recruitment and social recruitment this year, and the latter came up with 200 school recruitment research and development posts at a time. Hu Yujia listened to colleagues from HR say that the education business line alone has solved the employment of four to five thousand people this year.

Interestingly, recently, there has also been a programmer job analysis post on the pulse, "how to choose between a good future and Yuanfudao", which may be a signal for education companies to "return blood".

After joining the job, newcomer Hu Yujia became the second-largest "celebrity" in the company within a few months. There have been more than 1000 resumes of school recruitment promoted by him.

Among the resumes he received were Qingbei, Beiyou, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and even returnees. There are also some peers from byte, Tencent, OPPO, "they are considering jumping from big factories to companies like ours." "

The working atmosphere is becoming one of the weather vane of job-hunting after 2000. Li Zi, an undergraduate at a university in Shandong province, said she turned down bilibili's position as an auditor before graduation and chose a clerk who was 1000 yuan lower than bilibili's base salary. The reason is that the auditor has an all-night shift every month, but she doesn't want to stay up late.

You see, balance is becoming a new fulcrum.

04, the autumn move in the eyes of the Internet HR: no one has a head start. As for the overall situation of school enrollment this year, there is probably no one with more thorough insight than the enterprise HR. After working in an Internet company for five years, HR Jiang Yuqing found that this year's autumn tricks finally don't have to be "preemptive."

In previous years, in order to "pinpoint" school enrollment, everyone's rhythm was to lock in "early approval" in July and August, send letters of intent in September and October, and issue offer with salary conditions one after another after National Day holiday. However, up to the end of September this year, there has been no major movement, and relatively few enterprises have issued letters of intent.

The whole process is being delayed. Many corporate HR are in the wait-and-see stage, and graduates can only "soak in the pool"-- this "pool" refers to the company's talent pool. There are two states in front of this class of graduates: those who can't wait for offer after the interview belong to the kind of "deep pool", and those who decide on offer soon after the interview are "shallow pool".

"it is believed that good children can be found in November. Jiang Yuqing said that this is very different from the situation in previous years.

Last year, the big HR was still in a hot stage of grabbing people. Some new graduates from R & D posts of "offer harvester" type can earn as much as NT $700, 000 or NT $800, 000 a year. The school recruitment directly leads the industry salary trend, if the school recruitment average salary rises, about half a year later, this change will be transmitted to the company's internal social recruitment staff.

"but you may have to be psychologically prepared for this autumn move, and you may not necessarily get a good opportunity. We need to continue to fight until next spring. Jiang Yuqing reminds graduates to adjust their mindset, and Internet recruitment is lengthening the overall pace.

But she also found that everyone's response was more flexible than in previous years. From undergraduate to master's degree and from master's degree to doctor's degree, the proportion of delaying employment begins to increase. "one of the doctoral candidates we recruit is still debating whether to work for an Internet company or to be a postdoctoral student. The annual salary of a postdoctoral student can also be more than 400,000, and it is obviously more stable. "

Her company also did a survey and found that the position of first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou declined after 2000, and many new first-tier cities were favored. Some graduates even negotiated terms with her on the issue of hukou in Beijing: "if there are invisible restrictions on getting a hukou, then I don't want it."

In choosing a career, if the post-80s generation is not very keen on the examination, and some people are infatuated with entrepreneurship, the perception of the post-00 generation has changed-- taking the public examination and going to school are also good roads, and it can be regarded as one more choice.

For new graduates who are preparing for a job, one of Jiang Yuqing's suggestions is, "when the tide comes, it's best to grab the nearest plank first." "

(note: at the request of the interviewees, Yang Shiya, Ding Yan, Hu Yujia, Yu Yang, Yang Li and Jiang Yuqing are aliases)

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: noise reduction NoNoise (ID:forjingyijing), author: sun Jing, intern Zhang Yaqi

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