Internal referrals are no longer the secret to wealth for employees at large companies

"Internal referral" is one of the important channels for corporate recruitment, but now employees are increasingly feeling that "internal referral has become difficult". The reason may not be due to changes in the internal referral channel itself, but more likely due to the shrinking "market". The author of the following article tells us why internal referral is becoming increasingly difficult. Let's take a look.

"No more internal referrals." This is what Sera wrote on her Maimai homepage.

Internal referrals were once Saira's sideline. In June last year, he had successfully recommended dozens of people to ByteDance, and his personal homepage on Maimai had hundreds of thousands of visitors. In January this year, Saira had already switched to JD.com and posted a message announcing that "JD.com helps with internal referrals," but that is now a thing of the past.

The reason for not doing internal referrals is very simple, Saira said: there is no HC anymore.

Saira is not the only employee of a large company who has given up the "internal referral" side job. Zizibang found the four interviewees mentioned in the article "When internal referrals become the wealth code for employees of large companies" published last year, and without exception, they said they no longer do this side job.

Companies encourage employees to recommend job seekers and give generous bonuses, which is the prerequisite for internal referrals to become a side job. In the Maimai Job Forum, netizens anonymously revealed the internal referral bonuses of companies: Kuaishou internal referrals of K3 level employees rewarded about 10,000 yuan, Tencent internal referrals of P9 level employees rewarded 6,000 yuan, ByteDance internal referrals of basic positions rewarded 2,000 yuan or less, and 2-1 level employees rewarded 5,000 yuan. The sufficient number of positions provides the soil for this.

Internal referrals are increasingly becoming one of the most important channels for corporate recruitment, and this has not changed. A person close to Tencent told AZB that Tencent's "Bo Le" channel has a history of more than 10 years, and now more than half of its employees are recommended by employees each year, and the ratio is relatively stable.

What employees feel like “internal referrals have become harder” is not due to changes in the internal referral channels themselves, but is more likely due to the shrinkage of the “big market”.

The bonuses are still there, and job seekers are still waiting in droves, but there are no longer enough jobs. The success rate of internal referrals has dropped to the point where the input-output ratio is no longer high enough to justify running a side job.

1. Fewer jobs, more job seekers

Liang Fan works in operations at Tencent and started doing internal referrals as a side job at the end of 2020.

At that time, she had just bought her first property. Her parents paid the down payment for the three-bedroom, one-living-room house, and she had to repay the monthly mortgage of 26,000 yuan. An email from the company's HR regarding the internal referral reward policy successfully aroused her interest.

By posting on Zhihu and other channels to "promote" his business and soliciting customers through public accounts, Liang Fan successfully put his sideline business on track. From November 2020 to June 2021, Liang Fan helped about 600 job seekers submit their resumes, successfully recommended dozens of people to join the company, and earned about 50,000 yuan in referral bonuses.

But around February this year, when the spring recruitment was underway, Liang Fan gave up internal referrals because the success rate was low. She told Zizibang that there were fewer positions available for her to apply for than before, and many positions were not promoted even if they were available: "In fact, they have already been locked in HC."

The situation has changed dramatically in a year, and the phenomenon of "recruitment reduction" can be seen from the scale of corporate campus recruitment. The autumn recruitment of major Internet companies in 2022, which is coming to an end, seems to be much quieter. ByteDance released about 3,000 job vacancies in this year's autumn recruitment, while the number was 8,000 last year, and the number of autumn recruitment positions was reduced by 60%. In addition, the scale of campus recruitment of leading Internet companies such as Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com has shrunk without exception.

The reduction in the number of employees is revealed in the financial report. Alibaba Group's third-quarter report disclosed that as of September 30, Alibaba had a total of 243,903 employees, compared with 259,316 employees as of December 31 last year. In the first nine months of this year, Alibaba Group had a net reduction of 15,413 employees. Tencent's financial report shows that as of September 30, 2022, Tencent had a total of 108,836 employees, while as of December 31 last year, Tencent had 112,771 employees. In the first nine months of this year, Tencent reduced a total of 5,423 employees.

Chen Lei, who used to work at ByteDance, also gave up his side job of internal referrals, along with the "private domain" he had worked so hard to build.

In order to expand internal referrals, Chen Lei posted intensively on platforms such as Douban, and after several bans, he gradually established 14 WeChat groups, each with more than 100 members. He also applied for a WeChat public account to post recruitment information from time to time.

On average, Chen Lei could earn four to five thousand yuan a month from this side job. Although his salary was not high as an auditor, this income was satisfactory enough.

Before last year’s fall recruitment, Chen Lei’s worry was that he received three to four hundred messages every day on Boss Direct Recruitment, but his resume screening and internal referral delivery processes were not “automated” enough, and the official account had not yet achieved the small goal of daily updates.

But a few months later, Chen Lei completely gave up his side job of internal referrals: "It's not easy to do." Today, Chen Lei's public account "Brother Internal Referrals" has basically stopped updating, and he himself resigned from ByteDance not long after giving up his side job of internal referrals.

There are fewer jobs, but more job seekers.

The number of college graduates has been increasing year by year. According to public data, the number of college graduates in 2021 is 9.09 million, an increase of 250,000 year-on-year. The number of college graduates in 2022 has exceeded 10 million, reaching 10.76 million. According to the online video conference on employment and entrepreneurship of graduates from ordinary colleges and universities in 2023 held by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on November 15, the number of college graduates in 2023 will further expand, and is expected to reach 11.58 million.

On the other hand, the number of people who have been released due to layoffs and other reasons and are now seeking jobs is also increasing. Tencent News Guyu data shows that in March this year, the number of people who left the Internet industry reached 2.76 million, an increase of 2 percentage points over the same period last year, with an average of 3.1 competitors per position.

2. The referral code is not important, what is important is the referral person

People who are still doing the internal referral "business" have two choices: one is to be satisfied with the small amount of side income; the other is to find ways to diversify profits.

Wen Zi, who works at NetEase, belongs to the former. She only started her side job of internal referrals in May this year.

At the beginning, the investment of time and energy was quite large. Wen Zi posted internal referral information on Xiaohongshu and directly contacted job seekers to express her willingness to help with internal referrals. In addition, she also founded a public account and even made her own tools to "crawl" the information of candidates who submitted their resumes to help them better match the positions.

After half a year, Wen Zi successfully promoted three full-time employees and three interns to NetEase. The bonus she has received is only 16,000 yuan. Another 6,000 yuan bonus can only be received if the new employees are successfully converted to full-time employees.

But Wenzi is quite satisfied with the income from this side job. Today, Wenzi's internal referral side job has changed from active to passive, with job seekers coming to her one after another, and the input in the "input-output ratio" has been reduced.

"You work so hard (internal referral), you would have made a lot of money last year." When Wen Zi asked the company's HR about the success rate of internal referrals, a colleague exclaimed.

Chen Xin's "Neituijun" has chosen a more diversified profit-making method. Like many employees who do internal referrals, Neituijun does not charge any fees for job seekers, but instead takes commissions from employees' internal referral bonuses. Now, Neituijun's internal referral employees are no longer limited to Internet giants, but also include some small and medium-sized companies.

"Last year, graduates from 985 universities generally had no trouble finding jobs. But this year, many small and medium-sized companies have received a lot of resumes from these outstanding fresh graduates."

In addition, Chen Xin also provides paid training for job seekers. For example, the training for fresh graduates is charged 1,800 yuan, which includes everything from resume optimization to interview training, until they find a job.

Under such a diversified model, Chen Xin's income from internal referrals is not low, but it is still significantly lower than last year. He started to be an "internal referral" in April last year, and his income was about 400,000 yuan by the end of the year. This year, his income has dropped, and his income from January to now is about 300,000 yuan.

Nowadays, there are still many active "internal recommendation posts" on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douban, and Maimai. Some people bluntly say that they "don't make money from this bonus", but want to help their juniors find jobs, which seems to have returned to the essence of internal recommendation.

Wenzi also found satisfaction beyond money from internal referrals: "I didn't expect this (building up connections), but now I feel very happy. New colleagues will give me gifts. So far, I have received tea, sports car model building blocks, and dolls."

Wang Peng, 24, moved from Beijing to Shanghai with his girlfriend. He is looking for a job and finds that unlike when he graduated and applied for a job last year, he can no longer easily find "internal referral codes" of various companies this year: "When I was looking for a job at the beginning of last year, internal referral codes were everywhere. I didn't understand them at the time and thought they would be useful if I filled in the code." Wang Peng "found the company himself" when he joined after graduation, but he has not heard from the two companies for which he filled in the internal referral codes.

The "internal referral codes" that Wang Peng mentioned are everywhere. Thanks to the abundant campus recruitment quotas, employees of some well-known companies will post their internal referral codes online, but there will be no point-to-point contact. Job seekers have to submit their own referral codes, using a "sea" strategy to win. The effort required is small, but if someone is hired, they can get a bonus.

"I know much more when I look for a job this year. The referral code is not important. What's important is the referral person. And I didn't see any referral codes flying around this year. I had to send private messages to people on Xiaohongshu and ask them to help me with the referral."

3. Chaos in the “internal referral” channel emerges in an endless stream

Internet practitioners who are still doing internal referrals can clearly feel the difficulties and anxieties of job seekers.

In Wenzi's opinion, the anxiety of job seekers is obvious. During the communication process, many job seekers told her that they had submitted many resumes but none of them were accepted. Some people would try to submit their resumes many times, just hoping for an interview opportunity. There are also a small number of people who were "rejected" and after a period of time, they came to Wenzi to ask if there are new opportunities.

Weaknesses are easy to be exploited. In the context of Internet industry recruitment being less lively than in previous years and further intensified competition, chaos surrounding the "internal referral" channels has emerged one after another.

On a second-hand e-commerce platform, a large number of referral codes of Internet giants are sold at a price of about 10 yuan: "HR will give priority to review, but there is no guarantee of 100% restoration and admission! Welcome to consult! The code will be sent after the photo is taken!"

"This behavior is extremely shameless," Li Xin said, expressing anger when talking about the practice of charging job seekers for internal referrals. Li Xin said that any internal referral should not charge job seekers fees, and the company will reward employees who refer new employees, and if fees are to be charged, they should be divided from the bonus.

"Many people don't understand and think that if they have an internal referral code, they will definitely get an interview opportunity. When they see that the code is only a few dollars and not expensive, they buy it. In fact, they have been deceived."

Li Xin also said that many Internet companies will "lock" the resumes of job seekers who have not passed the screening, and they cannot submit again during the lock-up period. He has encountered many job seekers who "abuse internal referral codes": "Many fresh graduates do not understand, and randomly find those codes and submit them, but find that there is no effect. When they want to submit again, the resume has been locked."

Another type of "paid internal referral" drives up the price to tens of thousands of yuan.

Ziyibang searched for "internal referrals on the internet" on an e-commerce platform and saw many products for "internal referrals for internships" with prices ranging from 100 yuan to several hundred yuan. Ziyibang talked to one of the merchants as a job seeker, and the merchant revealed that the internal referral fee for internships at large internet companies for on-site internships (not remote internships) was 100 yuan and "guaranteed an offer".

For formal positions in campus recruitment, the fees range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan, and the promise is "guaranteed results". Whether the order can be accepted and how much the fee is depends on the position and the candidate's resume. "It's not that easy to get a formal job in a big company." When Zizibang expressed surprise, the merchant's customer service responded.

On social media platforms, there are many posts warning job seekers to beware of "paid referrals". One netizen said: "These are scammers. They are all 'human resources' who rent offices in office buildings. My friend was fooled and it was very troublesome to get a refund."

In fact, such scams have been reported in the news for a long time. In September last year, The Paper pointed out in a report that the root cause of this scam is information asymmetry. There are two common routines. One is to "make money out of nothing", creating anxiety and selling courses during the communication process. Even if the recommendation is unsuccessful, you can still earn course commissions; the other is to simply bribe internal employees of the company to provide recruitment information or internship certificates.

Even so, there are still people asking for help online, asking whether "paid referrals" are credible. Those who did not post may have either blocked the scammers on the spot or have already taken the bait.

Wenzi, who is 32 years old this year, also lamented the pressure of this year's graduates. She recalled to Zizibang that when she graduated in 2013, "it was easy to find a job," but "this year, companies basically don't want fresh graduates."

Li Xin is positive about next year's recruitment market: "It shouldn't be as cold as it is today." He will continue to operate his internal referral business, and hopes that one day he can turn his side job into his main job.

Author: Bian Di

Source: WeChat public account "Alphabet List (ID: wujicaijing)"