Online recruitment: reject homogenization

More than two million companies have posted job advertisements online; 90% of job seekers prefer to look for jobs online; in 2007 alone, the domestic online recruitment industry created a market value of 970 million yuan. Such figures show that online recruitment has become an undisputed golden industry, even though it only appeared in China in the late 1990s.

A group of figures from Analysys International stimulates the appetite of this emerging industry: In 2011, the size of China's online recruitment market will reach 2.03 billion yuan. From 2003 to 2011, the compound annual growth rate of the online recruitment market size reached 34.97%. Such a huge market cake, when encountering thousands of recruitment websites in China, it still seems that there are too many porridges, not to mention that more recruitment websites are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.

The industry is fiercely competitive, followed by questions of homogeneity—many people think this job site is no different from that job site. In such a market environment, how much of a pie an online recruitment company can share depends largely on how much effort it has made to create its own characteristics. In this issue, Zhang Jianguo, President of China Talent Network, Tao Huiqiong, President of Talent Network Alliance, and Huang Luzhen, General Manager of China Talent Hotline, will discuss with you the way of differentiated competition in the online recruitment industry.

ChinaHR.com: an innovator in a comprehensive recruitment website

ChinaHR.com (www.ChinaHR.com) was established in 1997 and is one of the earliest and most professional recruitment websites in China. The main products and services are: online recruitment, Yingcai recruitment treasure, Yingcai SSS, campus recruitment, Yingcai online hunting, video recruitment, etc.

You have been the president of ChinaHR since 2004. In your opinion, how was the domestic online recruitment industry different then?

Zhang Jianguo: At that time, Wucheng Wuyou was the dominant company. Others were regional websites, such as China Talent Network. At that time, the focus was mainly in Beijing. In addition to the small scale, the marketing methods of each website are relatively simple, similar to sales. Whoever opens the door of the customer first will own the customer. The services provided by the website are quite simple, and the customer's cognition of the website is also in a very blind state, and they will not choose a recruitment website in particular.

The situation is very different now. First of all, the choice of customers has a very clear pertinence and puts forward a lot of personalized needs. This has also led to the rapid expansion of the entire online recruitment industry. Several large recruitment websites are thinking about how to seize the market and how to form a brand advantage; some regional websites are also beginning to expand across the country, and competition is intensifying. Many companies have also developed from it. Take China Talent Network as an example, we have been building the Shenzhen market since 2006, and the sales in Shenzhen area have exceeded 35 million last year.

How did you do it?

Zhang Jianguo: First of all, our advertising investment is very large, coupled with the strong promotion of the brand, which makes the customer's awareness rise rapidly. More importantly, we have a good organizational system, such as our big customer marketing model. Large customers have different needs, some of which are very personalized. We provide them with personalized solutions, rather than simply providing a platform for publishing recruitment information. In addition to creating more value for customers, this personalized service can also bring us higher profits.

What kind of personalized service are they?

Zhang Jianguo: For example, for large enterprises, we have launched a 3S project service method, that is, Staff Solution Service—employee solutions. Specially set up project teams for companies in need, search for talents for them, and even provide preliminary interviews and screening, and finally determine more suitable candidates, which greatly improves the employment rate.

For SMEs, we launched the "Recruitment Treasure" in 2005. Enterprises can not only publish job information, but also query the salary standard of the position through "Recruitment treasure", and even include detailed descriptions of job responsibilities and qualifications. Once you encounter a labor dispute, there are some cases above that tell you how to deal with it. "Recruitment treasure" can solve many problems in human resource management, which is very necessary for small and medium-sized enterprises with relatively weak talent management capabilities. This product has been launched for 3 years and has more than 100,000 customers.

What makes ChinaHR.com develop these unique products?

Zhang Jianguo: I think it's a matter of concept first. The recruitment website should not be regarded as a platform for information release, but should consider what customers need and how to serve them.

The second is to have a strong development team. Our 3S service and "Recruitment Treasure" cannot be done by one person, and a special person is required to design its organizational functions and organizational structure. We have a "talent research center" composed of more than a dozen human resources experts, each of whom has at least five or six years of human resources management experience, and basically all have a master's degree or above, specializing in the study of labor market conditions and the needs of corporate customers.

In addition, many of our managers are human resource experts with a lot of practical experience. I myself have been doing human resource management at Huawei for 6 years and built a human resource management system for Huawei. So we know the needs of our customers very well.

Where will ChinaHR.com focus on its future development? Why?

Zhang Jianguo: It is still online recruitment. There are more than 30 million small and medium-sized enterprises in China, and there are about 5 million companies with normal recruitment needs every year. At present, the number of customers of ChinaHR.com is about more than 1 million. Although it has increased by more than 100% every year in the past three years, it is far from complete. Covered, so the market space is still very huge, and the average annual growth rate of the entire industry is about 40%, the prospect is quite attractive.

Yingcai Wanglian: The founder of the recruitment website by industry

Yingcai Wanglian (www.800hr.com) was established in 2000. It is the first domestic recruitment website by industry. Ten recruitment websites for talents in different industries, such as Financial Talent Network and Medicine Talent Network.

Yingcai Wanglian is the founder of the domestic recruitment model by industry. What kind of convenience do you think this model can bring to recruiting companies and job seekers?

Tao Huiqiong: Before the emergence of Yingcai.com, there were already many comprehensive regional recruitment websites in China. The jobs provided by these websites were also comprehensive and available in various industries. In order to find a better model that can serve enterprises and individuals, we chose to recruit by industry. We believe that only through the analysis and understanding of industry talents can we provide more realistic information and services for enterprises in the industry.

Because of the different industries, job descriptions will be clearer, so that companies can quickly find matching positions and talents, and talents can quickly find matching positions provided by the company. The sub-industry website has two characteristics: one is the professional industry job classification standard, and the second is a huge database of industry-specific resumes. These two characteristics have become an important reason why more and more companies choose sub-industry recruitment websites in addition to comprehensive recruitment websites.

At present, some comprehensive recruitment websites have also set up industry channels. In this case, do you think industry segmentation is still the advantage of Elite Network?

Tao Huiqiong: We have also noticed that some comprehensive recruitment websites have opened some industry channels on their pages, but only opening industry channels still cannot reach the professional level of industry-based recruitment websites, nor has it formed a huge professional talent resource. As well as a full understanding of the industry's human resources, it is difficult to truly realize the professional characteristics of recruitment by industry. After more than 5 years of development and the practice of sub-industry models, Yingcai Networks has formed a scientific and professional industry job classification standard in the covered industries, accumulated a huge resource of sub-industry resume database and established an understanding of industry human resources. A team of professional human resources experts with resource requirements, these accumulations have become the unique core value advantages of Elite Network, and are also an important basis for ensuring the success and continuous development of our industry-specific model.

Some job seekers do not have high industry requirements, such as secretarial positions. Will the sub-industry settings of the Elite Network Network cause confusion for this part of job seekers, thus losing some users?

Tao Huiqiong: I think that just as any kind of goods and services have their own market segments and target groups, it is impossible for any recruitment website to meet all the needs of job seekers and recruiting companies at the same time. There will be so many types of websites to jointly promote the development of the recruitment market, jointly meet the diverse needs of job seekers or enterprises, and form their own unique value.

In any case, the final development of recruitment websites is based on customer needs. The diversity of customer recruitment needs determines the diversity of recruitment website types. Therefore, for comprehensive websites, industry websites and regional recruitment websites, they all have their own development space and target customer groups. Due to the different positioning, Talent Network has always believed that our recruitment services can complement those of other recruitment websites. Yingcai Wanglian is a talent recruitment website in different industries. The characteristics of our recruitment services are quality and professionalism, emphasizing the efficiency, accuracy and success rate of recruitment and job search, and respecting the industry background and characteristics of enterprises and talents; while the comprehensive website is characterized by Quantity and generality. Therefore, from the perspective of service provision, recruitment services can be complementary. In addition, although some job seekers do not have high requirements for the industry, in fact, there will be some differences in the requirements of individuals for the same position in different industries.

Does the industry-specific recruiting model place unique demands on the site's day-to-day work?

Tao Huiqiong: Yes. The first is to have accurate job classification and job descriptions. At present, Yingcai Wanglian has formed a professional team of industry human resources experts on various industry websites. When providing recruitment services for enterprises, it understands and analyzes the actual needs of enterprise recruitment through communication with the enterprise HR department. In this way, on the one hand, the job classification and functions of the recruiting company can meet the industry standards, and fully meet the long-term needs of the industry and the company's own business development; on the other hand, it can enable the company to accurately and efficiently recruit the talents it really needs.

The second is to provide customers with products and services that meet their various needs. Therefore, we take online recruitment as an integral part of the customer's recruitment channel needs, extend along the recruitment service value chain of customer needs, and provide customers with in-depth customized services. A multi-service combination such as meeting, industry talent assessment, demand matching, and talent planning will provide industry recruiting companies with flexible customized solutions through a combination of multi-services, while taking advantage of large-scale standardized services, Elite Network will form its own product competitive advantage.

China Talent Hotline: Leaders in the Pearl River Delta Region

China Talent Hotline (www.cjol.com) was established in 1997 and is the earliest talent website in China created and cultivated by the human resources market in western Shenzhen One, pioneered the membership fee model in the domestic online talent market.

How many clients does China Talent Hotline currently have? Why do you think these customers choose China Talent Hotline?

Huang Luzhen: We currently have more than 300,000 corporate members at home and abroad, including more than 150,000 domestic corporate members and nearly 9 million individual members. What you want is that the top 10,000 enterprises in Shenzhen must be customers of China Talent Hotline.

I think the reasons why these clients choose China Talent Hotline are: First, over the past ten years, we have grown into one of the largest talent websites in Shenzhen and even the entire Pearl River Delta region. The online recruitment industry is different from other industries. If any company wants to recruit people, it must choose the best talent website, because it has the best effect and can recruit people at the first time. The same is true for job seekers. Since all recruitment websites don’t charge money, if I put my resume on the best talent website, my chances of getting an interview will be much better. In this way, a virtuous circle has been formed. Like a snowball, companies like to recruit more and more people. The more companies there are, the more they can attract talents. On the other hand, small websites are different. If job seekers put their resumes on those unknown talent websites, although they do not need money, they will not be notified for interviews by the company for a month or two. This will form a vicious circle, like melting a snowball, with fewer and fewer job seekers, less and less companies recruiting people, and the end result is that the snowball is getting smaller and smaller.

So scale is a big advantage of China's talent hotline, isn't it?

Huang Luzhen: Not only the scale advantage, but also the scale advantage in a specific region. Because talent websites have a strong regional nature, many recruitments are targeted. For example, when recruiting people in southern China, it is best not to post job advertisements in Beijing, because job seekers are generally unlikely to come all the way for interviews. Therefore, it is useless for a talent website to claim that it is the largest in the world. You must be the first in a specific region, so as to attract companies to publish recruitment information and attract excellent job seekers to register their resumes.

Our advantage is the most obvious in the Pearl River Delta, but in the end we still have to be nationalized. At present, we also have a branch in Shanghai. It’s just that our business philosophy is steady and pragmatic. We rely on the money we earn to build a city. After making a profit, we will continue to build the next city, and we will work steadily step by step, which can avoid many risks.

Many people think that the homogeneity of domestic recruitment websites is quite serious. How do you view this problem?

Huang Luzhen: I think homogenization is just an appearance. Homogenization refers to its profit model, its charging method, and its service method. However, in fact, several major talent websites in China are Each has its own characteristics. It should be said that we are talking about talent websites. No one product is perfect, and no one is useless. Each has its own talents and strengths. In one place it may have obvious advantages, in another it may have more obvious disadvantages. But no matter what, differentiation is based on the premise of ensuring the recruitment effect.

How do you ensure recruitment effectiveness?

Huang Luzhen: There are a large number of high-quality corporate customers and a large number of excellent job seekers, which is the key. In addition, whether your website interface is easy to operate and whether it can accurately interact with customers and job seekers is a very important issue. Take China Talent Hotline as an example, in order to make it more user-friendly, we have revised the website several times. Currently, version 7.5 is used, and there are many very user-friendly designs. We are also investing heavily in a new recruiting management software.

Furthermore, many talent websites were originally designed with a college degree, because job seekers with lower education degrees don't use the Internet very often. But now with the popularization of the Internet, more and more people are beginning to contact the Internet, so we have adjusted the options down accordingly. You can also register your resume with a technical secondary school degree and a high school degree, thus expanding the scope of talent coverage.