The 2024 Spring Recruitment Job Hunting Guide is really great!

The 2024 spring recruitment is about to begin, and many college students are looking for jobs. Let us first receive a job search guide and learn before looking for a job.

Before the Spring Festival was over, many students came to ask:

• Everyone says the overall environment is not good, are there still golden March and silver April?
• I want to change to a high-paying job this year. Is it possible?
• Big Internet companies are all laying off employees, so what opportunities are there?

Today, I will make the key points clear all at once to help everyone prepare for the spring recruitment and strive to achieve satisfactory results.

1. Cognitive Key Changes

First, there will still be the spring recruiting season.

• Companies that have just experienced layoffs still need people to work and will recruit new people.
• Although the overall growth rate has slowed down, some industries are still growing and there is a demand for recruitment.
• The flow of people after the holidays is normal, but some people are preparing for it while others are just doing it randomly.

So, instead of worrying about not having a golden March or silver April, it’s better to worry about being the one who is not prepared.

When the environment is good or bad, the logic of companies recruiting people is obviously different, which is reflected in:

• The environment is good, the company is hiring a lot of people, anyone with a skill can be employed
• The environment is good, the company has sufficient budget, and they can spend a lot of money to recruit people.
• The overall environment is bad, the company is still laying off employees, and new employees need to be able to handle the situation.
• The overall environment is bad, there are many candidates for the position, and cost performance is the key to selecting people

Therefore, how to match the needs of the other party and reflect your cost-effectiveness is the key. However, many online strategies are outdated. A large number of bloggers are relatively young and have not even experienced the small recessions in 2008 and 2014. The strategies they share are also from the economic upswing period. If you hold the thinking of the upswing period, it is easy to fall into the trap. Specifically, there are four major pitfalls.

2. Avoid the four major pitfalls

Pitfall 1

Only look at your years of work experience, not your accumulated abilities. People often ask: "I have three years of experience, how much should I get?" Well, how much you get depends on how well you match your target position. This is not the time to be judged by seniority. Paying more attention to recruitment needs is much more useful than asking around in various chat groups about other people's salaries.

Pitfall 2

Only read the interview jargon, not the specific requirements of the other party. This unhealthy trend was started by a small book platform, which claims that as long as you are familiar with and memorize a few SQL, statistics, and machine learning interview questions, you can get a job in a big company with a high salary. As for the other party's recruitment requirements, they don't mention a word, don't assess the match between yourself and the target, and just lead people into the ditch.

Pitfall 3

Blindly copying templates and ignoring their own experience. Some students like to copy templates, but on other people's resumes:

• Academic qualifications cannot be copied
• Work experience cannot be copied
• I can't copy the project I was responsible for.

So what if you have read the template? Maybe the only thing you can copy is the internet celebrity projects written by the other party. But it is 2024 now. Internet celebrity projects such as Taobao user behavior, Brazilian e-commerce, and British credit cards have long been popular and have very low competitiveness. So don't always think about copying, try to explore your own advantages.

Pitfall 4

Blindly asking for a salary increase without paying attention to analyzing the matching situation. When applying for a job now, HR has at least 3 or 4 qualified people in hand, so why would the other party choose you? It is important to analyze your own advantages:

• I have a background in a large company and my last job was high-paid.
• I have rich experience, and the employing department likes it very much.
• I have little experience and poor background, but it's cheap! I'll buy it at a low price!

The key is to analyze the compatibility between yourself and the target position and give full play to your strengths. Many students have passed the business interview and saw that the other party's salary was 20-30K, so they directly asked for 30, and then the HR said "hmm" and disappeared. In fact, they were backstabbed by cheaper competitors, so don't bid blindly, it is important to analyze the situation carefully.

In the above text, the question of the degree of match between oneself and the target position appears repeatedly. If you want to show your cost-effectiveness, the degree of match is the key. So how to match? There are four major preparations that can be made.

3. Make Four Major Preparations

Preparation 1: Target position research

A recruitment position consists of four parts:

1. Company name: Check if the other company is in the same industry as yours/has similar business
2. Department name: see if the position is in business/technology. If it is not written, you can ask HR directly.
3. Job responsibilities: specific work content, with special attention to business topics/development task requirements
4. Ability requirements: working experience/education/software/stress resistance, etc.

Some people have a bad habit of only focusing on whether the skill requirements include Python, R, SPSS, Excel, or models when they get a job description. In particular, they get scared when they see the word "model," and always feel that they don't know how to do machine learning. Well, the truth is: many skill requirements are casually filled in by HR. To know what kind of people they really need, you have to read the entire description.

Data positions are usually divided into two types: technical and support (as shown in the figure below). Distinguishing whether the other party is more business-oriented or support-oriented is very helpful for matching your own abilities.

Preparation 2: Exploring your own strengths

Note! The advantage here refers to the relative advantage. If your current monthly salary is 10K, and you go to interview for a job with a salary of 30K, there will definitely be a lot of people who do not meet the requirements. But if you go to interview for a job with a salary of 15K, you may be able to match 60% to 70%. To tap your own advantages is to find this 60% to 70% match, and then make the best use of it.

for example:

• Some students are very timid, thinking that they are SQL Boys, who usually only know how to retrieve data, and the success rate of matching support types is high
• Some students have just changed careers and have done a lot of operations/delivery/promotion with the business before, so the success rate of matching the business type is high

In short, only by playing to your strengths can you achieve good results.

Preparation 3: Shortcomings

There are some shortcomings that can be improved upon in a short period of time.

• From the regular reports, sort out the indicator system and basic analysis ideas. Which indicators should be looked at for a business, which dimensions, how often to review, and how to troubleshoot regular anomalies are actually already contained in the regular reports, but many people just update them numbly and forget to sort them out. Sorting out in advance can not only increase experience, but also benchmark the target company's business model and think about the other party's needs in advance.
• From regular reports, we can organize project experience. Anything with clear goals and results can be organized into project experience. For example, in daily work, through reports and temporary data collection, we can find problems in the conversion process/evaluate the effectiveness of activities/find the characteristics of high-quality products. These can be packaged and output in project format to enrich experience.
• Supplement analytical thinking and improve analytical ability. Conventional business topics, such as business analysis, user analysis, product analysis, activity analysis, channel analysis, etc., have fixed routines. In daily work, you may not be able to do in-depth work due to time constraints/data volume constraints. You can study hard before the interview to supplement your knowledge. Even if you have done a superficial job in your work, you can still talk about the whole set of analytical thinking during the interview to demonstrate your ability.
• Maintain technical proficiency. Entry-level positions usually require SQL questions, so it is a good idea to regularly practice questions on Leetcode/Niuke.com. For BI-related positions, you can refer to the Fanruan Visualization Competition and use public data sets to create dashboards, which is convenient for interview presentations and helps maintain proficiency. For newcomers with little experience, it is also a good opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

Although cramming in the short term cannot 100% make up for your shortcomings, at least you can have something to talk about in the interview and won't be confused by the questions at the beginning and fail.

Preparation 4: Interview Record

Records must be kept for the three stages of search, submission, and interview:

1. Search: Try different keywords, such as data analysis, data development, data operation, data specialist, and business analysis. Check out the positions, salaries, and requirements under each keyword. This way you can find many opportunities.
2. Application: Don’t apply to too many companies! Apply to about 10 companies every day, evaluate yourself, and select the three companies you are most confident in. Record the company name, position name, job responsibilities, ability requirements, and salary. Record the feedback so that you can review whether your resume is of good quality and what type of companies are more attractive to you.
3. Interview: Don’t just say “the interviewer asked XX question”. The interview is divided into several stages. The interviewer may be HR/colleague from the hiring department, direct supervisor or director/whether there are parallel departments involved in the interview. Keep detailed records so that when you review the interview, you will know where you did not answer well.

Students often come to ask: Why don't I get any response after applying so many times? If you really ask them to take a look at the records, there is no record at all, it's all blank. How can you tell whether your resume is not good or you applied in the wrong direction? Since you want to do data analysis, you have to use data to speak in your job search process so that you can find opportunities.

Author: Down-to-earth Teacher Chen; WeChat public account: Down-to-earth Teacher Chen