Beijing, November 11th - According to a report by the China National Voice "News Evening Peak" (by reporter Li Xin), yesterday (the 10th), 51job, the largest recruitment website in China, announced its third-quarter financial report showing a net profit of 97.5 million yuan, continuing the profitable trend from last year. The quietly approaching graduation and job-hunting season has also added fuel to the online recruitment market. However, with the increasing popularity of online recruitment, issues such as excessive commercial advertisements and cutthroat price competition have been frequently criticized by industry insiders and job seekers alike.
Some believe that China's online recruitment has reached a turning point for change. Is the online recruitment market really as bustling as the financial reports suggest? How can the job-seeking industry achieve worry-free prospects? Listen to the report from Central Radio.
With winter approaching, this year's graduation and job-hunting season has begun to stage an early "talent war." Zhao Xiongwei, a student at China Agricultural University, spoke about his online job-hunting experience with considerable insight.
Zhao Xiongwei: I think websites like 51job and Zhaopin are more focused on non-graduates, offering many positions that require several years of work experience. I think it requires mass resume submissions. Some websites screen resumes based on keywords, such as key universities, or the 211 Project or 985 Project. If you didn't graduate from one of these universities, then you're out of luck. Additionally, some companies have their own websites where you log in to submit your resume, mainly recruiting recent graduates.
With the development of the Internet, online recruitment has increasingly become the mainstream method for job hunting. In every job seeker's bookmarks, there’s never a shortage of various recruitment websites. According to data from iResearch Consulting, the revenue scale of China's online recruitment market continued to grow significantly in the third quarter of 2011.
However, upon opening the profit reports of China's top three recruitment websites, while 51job maintains profitability, the financial statements of the other two major recruitment giants, Zhaopin and ChinaHR, can be described as lackluster. Zhang Peng, the executive editor of the magazine "Business Value," believes that under the traditional model, online recruitment companies have not truly grasped the essence of Internet recruitment.
Zhang Peng: I think the core issue is that they are not truly meaningful Internet-based human resource platforms. They merely digitize people's resumes but still haven’t fundamentally addressed the cost issues related to human resources. They are now facing some changes and challenges.
Previously, industry insiders stated that the online recruitment industry in 2011 had reached a turning point, with industry competition entering a phase of product and service comparison. There is a need for websites to provide specialized services and differentiated products. Facing new trends in online recruitment such as SNS and Weibo recruitment, Zhang Peng believes that the traditional recruitment website model and market pose a double-edged sword for development.