How many people have benefited from the internal referral program that was cracked down on by Tencent?

Why has Tencent's official anti-counterfeiting internal referral become a business for many people? This article will take you to explore the reasons. This article is recommended to college students who are about to graduate and seeking employment and workers who want to change jobs to provide case analysis, so as to strengthen their own protection awareness and prevent being deceived.

Tencent, which has been frequently targeted by paid referral scams, finally couldn't help but take action to fight the fraud.

From paid referrals to paid internships, Tencent recently released an official announcement revealing how some job search agencies, public accounts, and individuals are engaged in "paid referral" and "paid internship" scams. It also highlighted that "Tencent does not charge for any internship positions, and such behavior is strictly prohibited. All positions that require payment for internships are fake positions and are fraudulent information."

In fact, internal referrals were originally just a tool used by some companies to improve recruitment quality and efficiency and save costs. However, as it was widely used by more and more companies, some lawless elements and unscrupulous organizations saw business opportunities in it, taking advantage of job seekers' eagerness to do so. From employment agreements with a "guaranteed position" and "guaranteed results" that paid tens of thousands of yuan to internal referral codes in large companies that cost as low as a few dollars, they have turned it into a lucrative business.

1. Good jobs and talents are not available on recruitment platforms

At present, whenever someone in the workplace generously posts about his or her decent salary and benefits online, the comment section of this post will most likely be flooded with messages asking for “internal referrals”.

"Is there any job in Shaanxi that is easy to get started? Please recommend me. I don't want customer service or sales. If successful, I will split the first month's salary in half."

"I am a computer science major and will graduate in June this year. Is there anyone in Shenzhen who can recommend me for internal testing (either front-end or back-end testing)?"

"I'm a 24-year graduate, majoring in e-commerce, and have experience working in fire control center. Is there any headhunter who can help me recommend a job related to post-production or new media operation?"

…

When faced with a good job, internal referral becomes the first choice

Zinc Scale found that compared with finding a job through those well-known Internet recruitment platforms, whether it is the new generation of young people or people over 35 who are seeking re-employment, internal referrals have actually become the most popular form of social recruitment . The reality may be just as one netizen commented, "There are only three types of good jobs: campus recruitment, internal referrals, and headhunting."

"The key is that submitting resumes on recruitment platforms seems to be useless." Having to become a member of the "job-seeking army" again at the awkward age of 35, Yang Yang, a "post-85s" has deeply experienced an unspeakable sense of powerlessness during this period. "I can see that my resume has been viewed many times in the background, but most of them have been read but not replied. There are very few interview invitations, and the interviews are either telephone sales or insurance specialists. After chatting, I can't accept it."

But even though Yang Yang despised him, there were many competitors for such jobs. "When I went to interview for an insurance position, I saw a 28-year-old guy who used to work in software testing among the same group of interviewees. How difficult is it to find a job now? Just think about who would work in insurance before!"

For enterprises, recruitment is also difficult. "I have used several recruitment platforms, but I just can't find the right person for some reason." Fang Yue, who works in human resources at a small and medium-sized enterprise in a second-tier city in the west, has been troubled by the problem of recruiting new employees recently. "We are a small company, and our salary and benefits are just the industry average. We are unable to build our own exclusive talent pool, and we don't have enough conditions to attract applicants to compete for jobs. Although many people are indeed facing unemployment, their previously high income expectations are still there, and it is normal that no one is willing to do low-paying jobs."

What makes Fang Yue even more frustrated is that even if he occasionally recruits people, they don’t stay for long. “After all, small companies have a short recruitment process, and the assessment is not as comprehensive and detailed as that of large companies. Talent evaluation mainly depends on the interview results. It is inevitable that the quality of the recruited talents is not in line with the job requirements.”

"Good jobs will not circulate in the market, and excellent talents will not circulate on the Internet." Zinc Scale found that this sentence is being unknowingly regarded as the new employment logic by more and more people, "most likely it is internal digestion between relatives, acquaintances, and friends."

2. Job seekers flock to large companies for internal referrals

With the change of concepts of both job seekers and recruiters, the employment model of "looking for connections and seeking internal referrals" has begun to gain ground.

At present, the information related to internal referrals that is flooding all major platforms has attracted enough attention and traffic: on Xiaohongshu, there are more than 550,000 notes under the topic of "internal referrals"; on a certain leading short video platform, the number of views of videos related to "internal referrals" has exceeded 80.902 million times; on Zhihu, there are a large number of posts about "internal referral job hunting" and "paid internships"...

In fact, internal referrals were originally a tool used by some companies to improve recruitment quality and efficiency and save costs. It usually refers to employees recommending familiar and trusted talents to work in their own companies. However, as more and more companies use this model more and more frequently, many lawless elements and unscrupulous organizations have seen business opportunities in it.

According to a report by China Youth Daily on the investigation of college students' "paid internal referrals", some paid internship agencies not only promise to "100% guarantee you an internship offer at a target company and position", but also provide services such as scientific research experience and professor recommendation letters, with prices ranging from 30,000 to 300,000 yuan depending on different needs. However, the final result is that the "offer" obtained after spending a lot of money is meaningless to one's personal development, or the promises such as "participating in university research projects" and "obtaining professor recommendation letters" cannot be fulfilled and there is no way to get a refund.

If these paid employment scams that "guarantee a job" and "guarantee results" may still have a certain entry barrier due to their high asking prices, then searching for "internal referral" on Xianyu can unlock a large number of internal referral codes from large companies that cost as low as a few yuan. For example, a product link for a Xiaohongshu internal referral code priced at 9.88 yuan, but the product details indicate that "Xiaohongshu recruitment generally considers internal referrals first, so resumes submitted with internal referral codes will be viewed by HR first, but there is no guarantee of 100% response and admission."

Products related to "internally recommended" on Xianyu

Industry insiders have previously done some popular science on internal referrals, "What internal referrals can definitely do is ensure that your resume has a channel to enter large companies, and ensure that this resume can remain in the talent pool of large companies." Of course, internal referrals actually only serve as an entry point, which is actually the same as being screened by headhunters through Internet platforms or job seekers submitting their resumes on the official website themselves.

"At most, the person who recommended you is very familiar with you and will help you track and follow up the recruitment process, and then feedback to you the stages and milestones of the process. However, for the result indicator that everyone cares about most, such as the success rate of recruitment, the effect may not be ideal." Especially if the person who makes the internal referral and the person who determines the candidate are not in the same organization or function, the final effect of the general internal referral is basically the same as the job seeker submitting his resume on the official website of a large company. "Ordinary internal referrals are not as valuable as imagined, unless the middle and senior management want to directly introduce some people they are very optimistic about."

3. Internal referral scams target impatient newbies

"In Tencent, internal referral is just a way to submit resumes, not a stage or a necessary process. Whether or not there is an internal referral does not affect any process in any link." Just as Tencent said, the recruitment process of large companies is often very long. It is very likely that colleagues from multiple departments will be involved in the process, and job seekers will be cross-interviewed. Even if they have internal recommendations, they still need to go through multiple rounds of interviewers' observations from different dimensions. This means that after entering the recruitment process, job seekers still have to rely more on their own performance to show their true personal strength, rather than taking shortcuts by relying on personal connections.

In April this year, the Ministry of Education issued a special reminder to remind college students to be wary of job hunting traps such as "paid internal referrals", "paid employment", and "interns nesting dolls". At the end of May, the Ministry of Education issued another warning, saying that "some claim to have internal recommendation rights for well-known companies, and defraud money under the guise of recommending high-quality positions for a fee" and "some lawless elements set traps under the guise of recruitment, defrauding money, stealing information, and inducing crimes. These phenomena occur from time to time, seriously damaging the employment rights and interests of graduates."

However, there are many people who deify the effect of internal referrals. Looking through relevant reports, it is not difficult to find that news such as "100 yuan to buy a resume delivery", "30,000 yuan to get into a big company and 50,000 yuan can be referred", and "Internships in big companies with internal referrals start at 100,000 yuan". There are even so many related scams that even Tencent, a big company that is frequently hit by scams, can't sit still and has personally stepped in to fight against fraud and expose the tricks of paid internal referrals and paid internships.

Tencent's official tweet mentioned, "Every year during the recruitment season, many students fall into job scams because they are eager to find a job. In the end, not only do they not get the ideal offer, but they also waste a lot of time and money. After the 2024 internship recruitment started, different job scams began to appear again."

Tencent officially launched an anti-counterfeiting campaign

In a sense, the reason why the internal referral business is becoming more and more prosperous is that it takes advantage of the fierce employment competition faced by the majority of job seekers, especially the unprecedented pressure on fresh graduates . According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, the number of graduates from ordinary colleges and universities nationwide in 2024 is expected to reach 11.79 million, an increase of 210,000 year-on-year. According to a survey conducted by China International Recruitment, 81% of companies have plans to recruit fresh graduates in 2024, 32% of companies said that the number of fresh graduates recruited will increase, and half of the companies said that it will remain the same as the previous year. Under such circumstances, it is understandable that job seekers are desperate and trust paid internal referrals.

So, in order to prevent more people from making the same mistakes, job seekers need to continuously enhance their awareness of risk prevention and have the awareness of protecting their rights according to the law, verify various aspects when facing various job opportunities, and be wary of those intermediaries who promise to quickly find a job. As for the "newbies" who are entering the workplace for the first time, they should collect reliable recruitment information through official channels, such as the school's employment website, various campus job fairs, and the national college student employment service platform. As for the problem mentioned by job seekers and recruiters in the previous article that Internet recruitment platforms cannot play their due role, it may mean that it is time for the Internet recruitment industry to launch a new recruitment model in line with the needs of the times.

Author: Meng Huiyuan, Editor: Li Jinlin

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)