Young people preparing for spring recruitment are striving for the "golden March and silver April"

The "golden March and silver April" are coming soon, and young people who are preparing for the spring recruitment have begun to pay attention to the job information of various units. So how is the spring recruitment market this year? What kind of job-hunting difficulties will young people face this year? In this article, the author analyzes the situation of this year's spring recruitment, let's take a look.

Xiao Liang received his first job interview since he started looking for a job, which made him very happy.

He is not the "other people's child" in his parents' eyes. Since last year's autumn recruitment, he has not received an offer from a second-tier university in Henan. His classmates are not in a better situation. Only one person in the entire major has received an offer.

The afternoon he received the interview invitation, he hurriedly went to buy a suit, hoping to at least leave a good impression on the interviewer with his appearance.

Data released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security show that the number of college graduates in 2023 is expected to be 11.58 million, an increase of 820,000 year-on-year. These 11.58 million young people are preparing for their first exam in society. Niuke, which has gathered tens of millions of graduates, and China Youth Daily jointly released the "2022 Autumn Campus Recruitment White Paper", which shows that about 65% of fresh graduates believe that the difficulty of job hunting in the 2022 autumn recruitment is 5 stars, which is 3.25 times the difficulty of recruitment.

An optimistic consensus is that 2023 should not be worse than 2022. A senior HR said that most of the positions released on the market from February to March this year were from established companies with stable businesses, such as banks and state-owned enterprises. Most of the companies that are still in the wait-and-see period will release positions in March and April, which is also the time when spring recruitment is most concentrated.

The latest data released by "Niuke" shows that 35% of companies plan to expand recruitment in the 2023 spring recruitment, and 22% of companies plan to increase their investment in campus recruitment, which is far greater than the proportion of campus recruitment positions and budget cuts.

Therefore, young people looking for jobs might as well let their resumes fly for a while.

1. Temporary Desolation

Opening the App Store on an Apple phone, you can clearly see the enthusiasm of job seekers. Among the top 10 apps in terms of downloads, two are related to recruitment - 58.com and BOSS Zhipin. Recruitment platforms want to seize the rare "golden March and silver April" period. In Beijing International Trade Center and Wangjing subway station, which is closest to Internet companies such as Meituan and Alibaba, you can see large advertisements of more than one recruitment platform at the same time.

In the past year, the 2023 graduates have just experienced perhaps the largest campus recruitment reduction in the history of Internet companies - Tencent has dropped from a few thousand people to three digits; Meituan has dropped from 10,000+ HC (Headcount, recruitment quota) last year to 5,000+ this year; ByteDance has dropped from 8,000+ HC last year to 3,000+ this year, and Baidu has dropped from 8,000+ HC to 2,000+ this year.

A graduate from a second-tier university in Henan told Tech Planet that he was excitedly looking forward to the arrival of the spring recruitment, and spent almost every day on recruitment platforms such as BOSS Direct. In his major, only one person in the class signed a job during the autumn recruitment.

Zhaopin.com released the "2023 Spring Recruitment Market Weekly Report", and data showed that more than 70% of companies are optimistic about the economic outlook after the Spring Festival. From the talent side, the number of job seekers in the first week after the holiday increased by 19.1% year-on-year.

A senior HR told Tech Planet that compared with the autumn recruitment, the number and quality of positions in the spring recruitment have obviously declined, and the open positions are more non-technical positions. This is not only true for Internet companies, but also for new energy vehicles, which are in the limelight. Last year, Geely Automobile had more than 5,000 offers in the autumn recruitment, but only more than 3,000 in the spring recruitment.

In the past, ByteDance would start spring recruitment within two weeks after the Spring Festival, but this year, three weeks after the Spring Festival, there is still no news. An insider told Tech Planet that the current situation of ByteDance is that some departments have HC, some do not, and some recruit on their own. This means that ByteDance may no longer open spring recruitment on a large scale.

An employee of a recruitment platform told Tech Planet that although the number of downloads of recruitment apps has increased, the number of active positions is significantly lower than the same period last year. In other words, there are a lot of people looking for jobs, but few people are recruiting.

According to past experience, it is normal that spring recruitment is quieter than autumn recruitment. Lin Fan, founder and CEO of workplace community platform Maimai, predicts that this year's recruitment market will show a trend of first decline and then rise, and mid- to high-end talents will become the ballast stone for enterprises' digital transformation.

A senior HR said that most of the positions released on the market in February and March this year were from established companies with stable businesses. Most of the companies that are still in the wait-and-see period will release positions in March and April, which is also the time when spring recruitment is most concentrated.

An optimistic consensus is that 2023 should not be worse than 2022, and the coldness is only temporary.

2. Employment: Students from non-key universities and colleges submit hundreds of resumes but receive no response

Few graduates can find a satisfactory job during the autumn recruitment. Cheng Cheng is one of the lucky few. He told Tech Planet that only two people in his major have found a job, while he has already confirmed the offer and signed a tripartite (student, school, enterprise) agreement. But the process was not smooth. As a student majoring in human resources management at a "double non-" (non-211, non-985 college) in the northwest, his academic background is not impressive. During the autumn recruitment, he submitted more than 200 resumes and finally received 30 interview invitations.

Cheng Cheng once called the HR of a company he was interested in, but the HR replied that he did not pass the resume screening because his academic background was not impressive enough. Even though he had three internship experiences, including one at a leading manufacturing company, he was at a disadvantage when competing with a group of undergraduate/graduate students from 985 and 211 universities.

This is the dilemma faced by most non-university graduates when looking for a job. If you encounter the four major pitfalls of "biochemistry, environmental materials" that are rumored to be the top four, the situation may be even worse. A master's student in biology from Shanxi told Tech Planet that he had submitted hundreds of resumes but received almost no responses. "No matter how I applied for campus recruitment, no one paid attention to me. Only the recruitment platform paid attention to me, and they used me to improve my KPI."

Even if coders are needed everywhere, they will be rejected if their background is not good. Xue Xue, who graduated from a non-key university with a major in data algorithms, told Tech Planet that he knew that Internet companies were reducing their recruitment, so he chose to apply for banks. Even though he participated in the National Social Science Fund project, his resume was not accepted.

The only message they waited for was a thank-you letter from the company they applied to. The content was nothing more than: Thank you for your application, but your application was not approved, and you are welcome to continue paying attention.

A computer science graduate who received an offer from a bank said that in the past, if you were from a 985 university, you could basically get in as long as you were not unable to graduate. But this year, there are too many applicants, and the competition is very fierce. Traditional companies that Internet people once looked down upon have now become "big companies" that are difficult to enter.

The situation of 211 and 985 graduates is not much better. Yan Yan, a computer science graduate from a well-known 985 university in the north, told Tech Planet that only a few people in her major have signed contracts with large companies, and almost only one person in each of the top companies such as ByteDance and Meituan. They are all characterized by strong coding skills and high scores in all practical courses.

"Everyone has tacitly stopped working for big companies and turned to traditional industries," Yan Yan said. But the good news is that their employment rate is not bad. "As far as I know, one-third of the people around me have received offers."

They attributed this luck to BYD's expansion. In the fall of 2022, BYD's campus recruitment HC (Headcount) reached an unprecedented 30,000, including 15,000 places originally used for social recruitment. A master's student from a 211 university in Beijing lamented: BYD saved them, the fresh graduates.

3. Lower your sights and cast a wide net in spring recruitment

For most graduates who have not received an offer, the spring recruitment is almost the last window. Graduates are starting to become more realistic - the survey found that 35% of 2023 graduates aspire to work in new first-tier cities, a year-on-year increase of 7%, with Xi'an's intention increasing by 5%; at the same time, the proportion of students in first-tier cities who aspire to work in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou decreased by 4%, 6%, and 1% respectively, with only Shenzhen's intention slightly increasing.

A master's student told Tech Planet that he was delayed in preparing a short paper during the autumn recruitment last year. When he started to submit resumes, the autumn recruitment was almost over. This left him no time to prepare, and the big companies all failed in the written test and personality test.

Graduated from a non-key university and without internship experience, his job search was extremely difficult. Just a few days ago, he received a call from a software sales company, which said it was willing to offer him a basic salary of 4,000 yuan, which is difficult to survive in Beijing. He is still struggling. "Maybe I can only go to a small startup company in the end," he sighed.

For these fresh graduates, once they lose their fresh graduate status, they will face more intense competition and increasing self-doubt.

A fresh graduate from a 985 university with a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science told Tech Planet that she had submitted her resume to more than 70 companies and received nearly 30 interviews, most of which made it to the final round, but she didn't receive a single offer. She began to doubt herself: Am I really that bad?

There is no other way. The only solution is to cast a wide net and lower your sights during the spring recruitment. Fortunately, the background of a 985 university can help her get an admission ticket.

Xiao Liang, who does not have a good school background, is now looking for an internship, hoping that this will bring him more recruitment opportunities. After applying to more than 50 companies, he finally had his first interview this year.

In a recruitment group for fresh graduates, Xue Xue shared his resume hoping that his classmates could give him some suggestions for revision. Soon, group members began to analyze the situation, such as "remove the student union experience" and "you don't need to write about this internship" and so on.

Past experience shows that there are fewer positions for spring recruitment than for autumn recruitment, and the time is shorter. Wang Tian, ​​a computer science student in Hangzhou, submitted more than 50 resumes in the past month and received two interviews. This is better than the autumn recruitment.

However, the good news is that the latest data released by Niuke and China Youth Daily in the "2022 Autumn Campus Recruitment White Paper" shows that 35% of companies plan to expand recruitment in the 2023 spring recruitment, and 22% of companies plan to increase their campus recruitment investment, which is far greater than the proportion of campus recruitment positions and budget cuts.

The shadow of the epidemic is gradually dissipating, the economy is recovering, and companies are welcoming a new spring. This means that perhaps soon, the situation will change.

Author: Lin Momo

Source public account: Tech Planet (ID: tech618); focusing on cutting-edge Internet technology and new business.