The employment situation in 2024 is severe, but BOSS Zhipin has bucked the trend and made a profit, earning 500 million yuan in net profit in the first quarter with a surge in users. It's difficult for graduates to find jobs, and it's also challenging for companies to recruit, so how did BOSS Zhipin become a winner in both parties' dilemmas?

Ride-hailing services are full, and food delivery jobs are saturated, with 11.79 million graduating students poised to enter the job market. The employment situation in 2024 may truly be the "hardest job-hunting season in history."

According to data released by the Ministry of Education, the number of college graduates nationwide in 2024 is expected to reach 11.79 million, an increase of 210,000 over the previous year.

The fall recruitment season of 2025 is approaching, but many graduates from the previous year may still be unemployed.

"Graduates of the class of 2024 can't find jobs, and they are constantly checking BOSS Zhipin late at night and early in the morning, sending greetings, submitting resumes, and scheduling interviews..." A recent business English major graduate from Jiangxi told Xinshang directly that she submitted 55 resumes on BOSS Zhipin but only received one interview offer, and no job offers at all.

The job-hunting army has overwhelmed recruitment websites like BOSS Zhipin, but companies are still struggling to recruit suitable talent, while BOSS Zhipin has emerged as a winner.

According to BOSS Zhipin's financial report, the company's adjusted net profit for the first quarter of 2024 was 531 million yuan, up 117% year-on-year. The average monthly active users reached 46.6 million, up 17% year-on-year.

The more anxious companies and job seekers become, the more money BOSS Zhipin will make.

01 "BOSS Zhipin Rejects Directly": Finding a Job is Too Difficult

Recently, netizens have joked about calling BOSS Zhipin "BOSS Zhipin Rejects Directly," as many recruiters simply "read and ignore" the greeting messages sent to them.

The fact that it's difficult for young people to find jobs is undeniable. Many people even joke, "BOSSes aren't hiring because they're also looking for jobs."

A recent graduate from Shanghai told Xinshang that he experienced a fruitless fall recruitment season starting in September 2023, followed by a slightly more successful spring recruitment season in 2024, and finally joined the social recruitment market, finally receiving a relatively satisfactory job offer near graduation, in July. After a year of searching, he considers himself lucky, as there are still a batch of graduates who remain unemployed.

According to the "2024 Fall Recruitment Unemployment Rate Survey" conducted by Niuke Community at the beginning of the year, a total of 2,623 people participated in the survey, with 38.9% of respondents receiving no job offers. Among them, there were not a few graduates from prestigious 985 universities who returned disappointed from the fall recruitment season.

The "College Student Employment Report" released by Zhaopin for the class of 2024 shows that the offer acceptance rate for graduates from ordinary undergraduate institutions is 43.9%, while the offer acceptance rate for master's and doctoral graduates from non-double first-class universities is 33.2%, a decrease of 17 percentage points from the previous year.

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the national urban unemployment rate in April was 5%, the lowest level this year, indicating that the overall employment situation in China is stable. However, when broken down by age group, the situation is less optimistic, with the youth unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 reaching 14.7%, and the unemployment rate for those aged 25-29 reaching 7.1%, both higher than the average unemployment rate.

In March of this year, the retailer Pangdonglai released job recruitment demands for 209 positions, all limited to those under 30 years old, with a maximum annual salary of 150,000 yuan. Finally, more than 30,000 resumes were received, including many applicants from prestigious 985 and 211 universities, resulting in a recruitment ratio of 151:1.

In fact, with the expansion of colleges and universities, the number of college graduates has been increasing in recent years, while the number of corporate recruitments has been decreasing.

According to the "Q2 Recruitment Survey Report 2024" by Liepin, about 33.85% of companies will increase their recruitment numbers, while about 24.14% will reduce them. Compared with the previous quarter's survey results, the proportion of companies increasing recruitment has decreased, while the proportion of companies reducing recruitment has increased.

From a trend perspective, in order to create more job opportunities, flexible employment has become another mainstream track.

As early as 2021, eight departments including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the National Development and Reform Commission issued a document stating that all new forms of employment should be included in the scope of basic public services for labor security. This includes jobs such as food delivery workers, ride-hailing drivers, and truck drivers who rely on internet platforms for employment.

It's no longer news for college students and middle-aged people to deliver food or drive taxis. However, with the "crowded track," even the so-called "new triathlon" is becoming difficult.

Today, Meituan's food delivery stations are packed with delivery workers. According to Meituan's data, in 2018, there were only 2.7 million Meituan food delivery riders, but by 2023, the number had increased to 7.45 million.

Ride-hailing drivers are also facing a situation of "too many people chasing too few jobs." According to data from the Ministry of Transport, as of December 2020, a total of 2.891 million ride-hailing driver licenses were issued across the country, while as of May 2024, a total of 7.033 million ride-hailing driver licenses had been issued.

Intense job competition is also occurring in the field of flexible employment.

02 Both Sides Face Difficulties, BOSS Zhipin "Makes Easy Money"

In recent years, due to adjustments in economic development trends, layoffs by companies have become common, and many re-employment groups have joined the already large graduate job market. Job hunting has shifted from a low-frequency behavior to a dynamic and even daily demand.

"It's not easy to find a job, and soon there will be many troubles. Every day on the subway and before going to sleep, I check BOSS Zhipin, not necessarily thinking about finding a better opportunity, but to see how bad the jobs on the market are and remind myself to keep working hard." This is the sentiment of an in-service employee. With industry updates and iterations, many companies have fallen into a bottleneck in their development, and internal business competition has become increasingly fierce, making it difficult for employees to maintain a stable work status.

It's easy to imagine that under such circumstances, the number of active users on BOSS Zhipin has increased significantly. From 2019 to the first quarter of this year, the monthly active users of BOSS Zhipin surged from 11.5 million to 46.6 million.

The surge in active users has also attracted more business owners to join the platform, conducting online recruitment from a larger talent pool. In fact, more than 99% of BOSS Zhipin's revenue comes from the online recruitment business of corporate customers. In the first quarter of this year, the number of paid corporate customers on BOSS Zhipin increased to 5.7 million, compared to only 1.2 million in 2019.

In fact, BOSS Zhipin was in the red from 2021 and earlier. From 2019 to 2021, BOSS Zhipin's net profits attributable to shareholders were -502 million yuan, -942 million yuan, and -1.071 billion yuan, respectively, for a cumulative loss of 2.5 billion yuan.

However, since 2022, both revenue and profit at BOSS Zhipin have been climbing.

According to financial report data, BOSS Zhipin achieved revenue of 5.952 billion yuan in 2023, up 31.9% year-on-year; the full-year net profit was 1.099 billion yuan, nearly a tenfold increase from 107 million yuan in 2022.

And in just the first quarter of this year, revenue reached 1.704 billion yuan, up 33% year-on-year; the net profit for three months was 531 million yuan, more than double that of the same period last year.

A closer look at the revenue sources of BOSS Zhipin reveals that they are basically derived from service fees paid by corporate customers. In the first quarter of this year, the company generated revenue of 1.684 billion yuan from online recruitment services for corporate customers, up 33.6% year-on-year, accounting for 98.8% of total revenue; other service revenue (mainly including value-added services provided to job seekers) was 19.7 million yuan, up 12.6% year-on-year. Last year, revenue from online recruitment services for corporate customers increased by 32% to 5.889 billion yuan, accounting for 98.9% of total revenue.

In other words, a wide range of business owners with online recruitment needs are supporting BOSS Zhipin. This is also true in reality.

Zhang Xiao, the HR of a small and medium-sized enterprise in Beijing, showed Xinshang a BOSS Zhipin invoice. The company purchased a one-year service for four VVIP accounts (one account per phone number) in June, with a unit price of 8,000 yuan, plus 10 search chat cards at a unit price of 328 yuan (discounted to 295 yuan), for a total payment of 34,950 yuan.

The company where Zhang Xiao works has fewer than 50 employees and uses BOSS Zhipin most of the time, occasionally using Maimai but not purchasing membership services from the latter.

It's easy to imagine that for larger companies with greater recruitment needs, the annual service fee paid to BOSS Zhipin will reach hundreds of thousands of yuan.

BOSS Zhipin was able to achieve significant growth over the past year largely due to its expansion into the blue-collar segment and the incremental space of the下沉市场, which also includes the aforementioned flexible employment track.

According to the "2023 China Blue-Collar Group Employment Research Report," among China's 747 million employed people, the blue-collar group accounts for more than 53% or 400 million people, nearly twice the size of the white-collar group.

In the blue-collar market, the largest recruitment demand comes from the service industry. According to the seventh census, China's employed population is 656 million, including 135 million in agriculture, 128 million white-collar and gold-collar workers, 169 million in manufacturing, and 220 million in urban services.

Offline small shops in cities such as hotels, restaurants, and beauty salons have such unfixed and long-term recruitment needs. These service industries are typically highly mobile, and these small businesses often recruit a small number of people at a time but with high frequency.

Workers, customer service representatives, confinement nurses, drivers - these blue-collar users have driven the growth of BOSS Zhipin's user base. Financial report data shows that BOSS Zhipin's blue-collar job authenticity service "Hailuo Selection" covered more than 27 million job seekers in the first quarter.

However, due to the increase in small and medium-sized customers, the number of paid corporate users has increased significantly, affecting the average amount paid per corporate user. As of the end of 2023, BOSS Zhipin's small and medium-sized customers (corporate customers with annual payments below 50,000 yuan) contributed nearly 4.6 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for 78.6%. In the first quarter of 2024, the average amount paid per corporate user was 1,107.6 yuan, a slight increase of only 0.4% year-on-year.

It's worth mentioning that in February of this year, BOSS Zhipin spent US$52.7 million (about 383 million yuan) to acquire approximately 77% of the equity of W.D Technology Investment Group Limited, a company that mainly provides blue-collar recruitment services.

Whether white-collar or blue-collar workers, their strong job-seeking demand has driven a significant increase in the number of active users on BOSS Zhipin; and a sufficiently active talent pool attracts business owners willing to pay long-term fees, hoping to recruit the talent they need on this platform.

03 Who Can Help the Job Market?

While BOSS Zhipin's revenue and profit have surged, job seekers and recruiters still face a dilemma, and the job market continues to experience an imbalance between supply and demand.

Zhang Xiao mentioned that using BOSS Zhipin to search for job seekers has issues with inaccurate matching. For example, when recruiting for a "short video copywriter" position, most of the recommended candidates do not have relevant experience and cannot be matched, requiring her to spend a lot of time screening them manually.

For VVIP accounts, there are 200 "active chat privileges" per day for recommending job seekers, consuming one chat privilege each time. To actively search for and communicate with job seekers, 30 chat privileges are required. In other words, while there are ostensibly 200 opportunities to chat with job seekers, if active searching is required, only six job seekers can be chatted with.

Regarding job seekers' active "greetings," Zhang Xiao's perception is that "it's not as exaggerated as what's said online," with only about ten greetings per day.

While recruiters have a poor experience, job seekers feel it even more deeply.

"To find a job, I need to talk to the boss," was once BOSS Zhipin's main precise job-hunting positioning. However, with the increase in small and medium-sized enterprises, white-collar job seekers will find that the positions on this platform become mixed in quality, making it difficult to find their ideal boss. One job seeker told Xinshang that compared to BOSS Zhipin, they prefer to use Liepin, which has fewer positions but appears more "high-end."

Of course, on BOSS Zhipin, job seekers are also saddened by the fact that while there seem to be many job postings, after private chats, they are either marked as "delivered" and unread, or marked as "read" but not replied to.

BOSS Zhipin operates a platform business. When both recruitment and job-hunting demands are high, and both parties rely more on the platform, the platform can earn more money. When the matching accuracy between the two sides is not precise enough, it can prompt paid behavior and "pay to win" to improve accuracy.

Of course, BOSS Zhipin benefits from the overall job market. At present, mid-to-high-end enterprises are generally cutting costs and reducing recruitment, while the job demands of highly educated talent continue to increase year after year. They are unwilling to "work in factories," leading to a severe imbalance between supply and demand in the job market.

In its 2023 Spring Recruitment Report, Maimai Higher Jobs highlighted this phenomenon: "From the demand side, the number of newly posted mid-to-high-end positions has decreased alongside the overall reduction in new positions. From the supply side, the availability of mid-to-high-end talent continues to increase, with the proportion of such talent reaching 68.61% in the 2023 spring recruitment period. This clear supply-demand mismatch has forced some mid-to-high-end professionals to accept lower-level jobs."

Job seekers are struggling to find employment, and employers are having difficulty finding the right talent, leading them to rely on recruitment software. In a sense, BOSS Zhipin has "hit a good patch" thanks to these changing times.

However, when the job market eventually recovers, BOSS Zhipin might find it more challenging to continue making substantial profits. Yet, under these circumstances, recruitment platforms should efficiently facilitate employment and strive to add value to the job market, which is a responsibility they should uphold.

(Note: The name "Xiao Zhang" in the text is a pseudonym.)