Chinese startups have grappled with the so-called “capital winter” since the beginning of this year as funding shortage widens. In the midst of tight budgets, many companies choose to place a freeze on hiring or even downsize the team. Some industry insiders predict a gloomy prospect for hiring industry, but according to Ella Bao, co-founder and CMO of tech recruitment platform Lagou, the impact of capital winter is over exaggerated.
“In the third quarter of this year, we have done researches based on recruiting data across 25 verticals of internet and technology industry. For example, there’s a significant drop in the number of positions and hiring companies in O2O sector. But that’s not the case for all. Enterprises and cloud services are recruiting more. I believe it’s a natural shift as demands in some sectors go down, others will experience an uptake.” she said.
“To some extent, the market is saturated but only for those basic and highly replaceable positions. High-end talents with an annual salary of over 300k million RMB will find their ideal positions within five days after their resumes are being posted on our platform.”
Ella also shared her insights on the changes of tech recruiting over the past few years. “One of the largest problems in tech hiring industry is the high mobility of talents. When we started Lagou back in 2012, the average circle for talents to move from one job to another is around two years. But now the man power circle is far shorter than that, which indicates the whole industry is casted in an impetuous atmosphere.”
Established by the founding team of Beijing-based incubator 3W Cafe, Lagou is a job-matching platform to connect tech talents and companies to facilitate the recruitment process. After launching the commercialization move two years ago, the company started to record profits since last year and its revenue is expected to surpass 100 million RMB this year, according to Bao.