Summary of my experience at Baidu and Meituan: How to build an operations team from scratch!
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From entrepreneurship to Baidu, and then to Meituan, I have experience in building operations teams from scratch. What’s interesting is that these are three companies at different stages of development, so their salary packages, team atmosphere, talent requirements, recruitment channels, etc. are very different. My humble experience is summarized below, listed step by step in the order of execution. First, the scope of application: The operation team of Internet products has operation responsibilities such as users, content, and activities. The team size is 5-20 people and the background can be BAT or startup companies. Then, the text begins: 1. Clarify team responsibilities and goals I had never participated in the company's strategic decision-making, so when I came to him, I was given only one instruction: to form an operations team. I don't care whether the decision is correct or not, that's not my concern. Because of perspective and amount of information, I am not qualified to judge the decision. But in order to better implement the decision, I will pay attention to the background information of the decision. like: The company's long-term goals. The ways to achieve them. The goals at this stage. The existing resources the company can invest. This background information must be understood and it must be ensured that there is no ambiguity on the part of the superiors. This is also a reverse combing process. The reason for doing this is that the company's decision-making is a top-down process, and the information conveyed by your superiors is the basis for your future decision-making, so you must ensure that the information is accurate and complete when "transmitting". This is just like the " game of passing the message" that often appeared in variety shows many years ago, where several people stand in a row and pass on the information they have received one by one. So, if the information you receive is biased, then the next person will be more biased. The middle level is responsible for connecting the upper and lower levels and plays an important role. Based on this information, decide on the responsibilities of the team. It is divided by function, such as product, marketing, and operation team; it is divided by direction or module, such as user operation and community operation. There are pitfalls to note: the work content and interests of the new team should not overlap with those of the existing team. It is best if the new team’s work content supplements that of the existing team. If necessary, the work content of the existing team can be adjusted to ensure this. If the work content of the two teams overlaps, there will be communication costs and wrangling in the future. The root cause of conflicts is not that employees are selfish or have bad tempers, but a problem with the team structure. It is normal to put people in positions where their work content overlaps and to fight for the interests of their respective responsibilities. The most fundamental solution is not to criticize and educate employees, but to adjust the structure. From a certain perspective, employees are all chess pieces of the company. The chess players place us in different positions and also give us corresponding responsibilities. If the chess pieces are not placed correctly and the pits are not arranged properly, the chess pieces will fight. But the chess pieces are also pitiful. They will only point their spearheads at another chess piece with which they have a conflict of interest. In fact, the other party is also innocent. The one who should really be scolded is the chess player. Therefore, it is best to focus on the issues of overlap between work content and interests when setting up a team, and try to avoid this problem. 2. Determine the team size and division of labor This step is to determine the number of people in the team and the work content of each person. The basis for making this decision is the operating model, that is, what methods are used to achieve this goal at this stage. According to the operating model, human resources and division of labor are separated. Let’s make up a project as a case. There is a tool -type app that creates a community to improve user stickiness (I despise this decision-making process). This is a decision made by the superiors. The operating model is based on encouraging core users to contribute content, supplemented by planning high-quality content. According to the above operation model, we know that three roles are needed: users, activities and content. A brief description of each role's job description: User operations: responsible for introducing and managing core user activity operations, motivating users to contribute to content operations through activities , and planning high-quality content The specific number of people required for each role depends on the workload. Assuming that the expectation is just a cold start, to get the project running on a small scale first, rather than quickly bringing in hundreds of thousands of DAU, then one person is enough for each role, which means a total of 3 people. Issues to note: 1. Try to reduce the number of people to a minimum After all, this is the early stage of team building, the project has not started yet, and future operations are only estimates. Therefore, try to keep the number of team members to a minimum, assigning only one person to each role, and get the process running smoothly first. At the same time, it also leaves room for future adjustments. Regardless of increase or decrease, the cost of execution by a small team will be much lower. 2. Each person’s work content does not overlap In the above case, three people are responsible for users, activities and content respectively. In fact, there is another feasible solution, which is that two people are responsible for users and one person is responsible for content. Because the workload of user operations will be larger during cold start, while activities will not be very frequent, the workload will be relatively small. However, if two people are responsible for users, there will be overlap in work content, which may affect enthusiasm and sense of accomplishment. Sometimes it is also impossible to intuitively judge who the work results come from, which is not conducive to team management. Therefore, either two or three people are appointed to be in charge of different contents. The Internet is not a labor-intensive industry, and the combat effectiveness of a small team is not necessarily poor. 3. Pairing of men and women and new and old Even if the team has only three people, we will try our best to have both men and women, with one old member guiding two new members. Let us think of the team as an "individual", like a "person". This person has to face various problems, big and small, and make various decisions in the course of work, so he needs to have many qualities and a multi-faceted personality. For example, some sensitive, meticulous, and routine work content requires the team to show a more feminine side; other dynamic and trendy work content requires the team to show a younger side. Therefore, if the team has a combination of men and women, as well as a combination of new and old people, the team can have more comprehensive qualities and be able to deal with more complex problems. There are many other reasons which I will not elaborate on, such as "men and women working together makes the work less tiring" and "old employees' mentoring and guidance". In short, only through the complementarity among team members can the real team effect be achieved. This is just a simple example. In order to express the analysis ideas and logic, there will be more situations encountered and factors to consider in reality, and the requirements for decision makers will be higher. 3. Publish recruitment information This step is about the recruitment channels for Internet operation talents. The following are the ones I often use, sorted by priority: Recommended by friends Douban Lagou Zhihu Weibo Moments HR There are no three traditional recruitment websites (Zhaolian, ChinaHR, 51job) here, because I believe that a qualified Internet operations talent should not use these three platforms to find a job, even if you are a newcomer. As an operator or a newcomer with an operational sense, Being familiar with popular Internet products means that you are interested in highlighting your own advantages and promoting yourself just like promoting products. Being familiar with the Internet circle, social skills are the basic qualities of operation. These three points are what I think are the basic qualities that operations talents should possess. People who meet these three points will never attempt to find a job on the three traditional websites. A few years ago, as an enterprise, I paid for recruitment on the three traditional websites, and soon after I paid, I received 30 resumes. At that time, I was still working in a little-known startup company. I was very moved by this scene, but it only took me 5 minutes to read through all 30 resumes. My requirement is that the person has experience in operations, regardless of the content or years of experience, and that startup companies are willing to train new people. But among these 30 resumes, none met the requirements. If job seekers do not read the job requirements and apply for jobs randomly, then the quality of users of the three major websites is low; if recruitment websites "recommend" resumes to companies without the knowledge of talents in order to satisfy the paying parties, then this is rogue behavior. I can't accept either. I have gone off topic, so let me talk about the six recruitment channels I usually use: 1. Recommended by friends The biggest problems in recruitment and job hunting are information asymmetry and lack of trust. Recruiters don’t know the situation of talents, and cannot tell their abilities and character from their resumes, and many resumes are even inflated; while job seekers don’t know the specific situation of the company or position, the development space, treatment, or whether their superiors are Virgos. Recruitment websites cannot solve these problems well. Friend recommendations can solve this problem to a certain extent, because the friend transmits information and endorses trust between the two parties. So when recruiting people, you can first scan a circle of friends you trust. This is the simplest and most efficient way. I had a colleague at Baidu named Xiaolu, who was a very good friend. Whenever I need to recruit talented people, I will look for her. Although she cannot respond every time, she has recommended several high-quality candidates, which left a deep impression on me as a "channel". Among them is Xiaolu’s friend, who is now my colleague and a rare user operation talent. But friend recommendations also have disadvantages, because there is a high degree of overlap between you and your circle of friends, and you cannot cover more people. For example, if you have worked at Baidu for three years and you ask your friends who also work at Baidu to recommend talents, the possibility of success will be much smaller. 2. Douban The Douban mentioned here refers to Zhou Botong's recruitment team. It was first created by Shoutaimu, the founder of the recruitment website "Zhou Botong". It currently has 360,000 members. Postings on weekdays will be sunk within seconds. It is suitable for recruiting talents in Internet operations, marketing, etc., with work experience of 0-3 years, including interns. In my experience, this is a very effective recruitment channel. Whether it is Baidu or Meituan, the resumes received are very reliable and the interview conversion rate is very high. But there are a few tips to make it effective: ①Recruitment post is published by team leader Don’t think that recruitment is the responsibility of HR. You are the ultimate beneficiary and person responsible for this matter, so you must be at the forefront when recruiting. The advantage of recruiting people in Zhou Botong's team is that the team leader and talents can communicate directly, and interaction is very convenient. Not only will it feel intuitive and friendly, but it will also alleviate the problem of information asymmetry to a great extent. Therefore, the leader must write the recruitment post himself and post it using his own Douban account. Don’t underestimate Douban accounts, as they are also an endorsement of the person publishing the information. Just imagine, if a job seeker clicks on the recruiter’s profile picture and sees a personal page that is rich in information and shows that he is not a new user (as shown below), wouldn’t he also feel that the recruitment information is much more reliable? ② Language style that caters to the target audience Know what kind of person you are looking for, and then attract him with content that may be of interest to him. For example, if you want to find a community operator, the language style of the recruitment post must be community-oriented and trendy, so that people will find it interesting and fun. The picture above is a post I made before. It received 114 replies and 16 likes, which also turned into several interviews, but I forgot the exact number. At the time, we hoped to find "movie experts", but it was difficult to convey such a vague and non-standardized concept. So I first highlighted the level in the title. Liking and true love are different. Secondly, I subjectively defined the standard for movie experts, which is three thousand movies, as the filtering standard. Don't worry about this number being too high, you won't miss out on candidates who have the same qualifications but have only seen one or two thousand, because they will ask you for flexibility. ③ Participate in interactive responses If the original poster never appears in the replies again, people will think that he or she will not come back to read the posts, and the enthusiasm for participation will naturally decrease. If your reply is more interesting, it can also be seen as a highlight and may even attract onlookers. I've taken screenshots of some of my replies for you to see, they're quite entertaining. 3. Make a promise There is not much to say about this. When I was recruiting people at Meituan, I received a lot of reliable resumes from Lagou. It felt like there were a lot of Internet talents, so it was relatively accurate. 4. Zhihu As a high-quality content platform, Zhihu is bound to be a channel for poaching talents. You need to have eyes that are good at discovering. It is generally difficult to poach big Vs on Zhihu who have a lot of fans, after all, there are too many people looking for them. You and he are not on an equal footing and there is no way you can cooperate, at least on this platform. Some people may not have many answers, likes, or followers, but as long as they have one answer that is profound enough, they can prove their value. Therefore, we cannot rely solely on Zhihu's data and rankings, but also need to learn to discover more interesting people. 5. Weibo Moments The above mentioned "friend introduction" as a recruitment channel, and the role of "Weibo and Moments" is similar, both of which use personal connections to spread recruitment information. The only difference is that the former is a precise 1v1, while the latter is casting a wider net in a wider circle of contacts. 6.HR HR colleagues are recruitment channels and resources that you can utilize, and are more suitable for mid- to senior-level talents. Junior talents focus on execution, and the range of talents that meet the standards is very broad. It is difficult for HR to accurately judge whether junior talents meet the team requirements. The scope of mid- to senior-level talents is much smaller, and the number of high-quality talents that can surface is not large, so it is easier for HR to identify and target them. Therefore, the most reasonable way to utilize HR resources is to specify companies, industries, and people and let them recruit them in a targeted manner. 4. Interview matters An interview is to judge whether the other party meets the requirements through several core questions. Of course, the other party can also assess you, it is a two-way choice. Therefore, the most important things are these “core questions”, which depends on which factors you value more in job applicants. My point is that when screening resumes, select candidates who are similar to the target position; during the interview process, focus on examining people's qualities and potential. My previous approach was to pay close attention to the match between the candidate and the target position, focusing on business matters during the interview and paying less attention to basic qualities and potential. But it turns out that in the young people’s world of the Internet, in the field of operations that are closely connected with human nature, learning ability and potential are more important. I have hired some colleagues whose business capabilities met the requirements during the interview, but they made almost no progress within a year after joining the company; whereas some colleagues who had no experience in the Internet industry made rapid progress and took on important responsibilities. Analyzing the reasons, we will find that students who make rapid progress have better learning ability, execution and comprehension, and are diligent and positive enough, and have a positive attitude. However, students who are standing still lack the above-mentioned characteristics. In summary, the focus of the interview is on quality and potential. I am concerned about these issues: ①Hobbies What are your hobbies and interests? What do you like to do in your spare time? In-depth discussion on this issue can help you understand the other person's personality and world outlook. As the first question in communication, it can easily make the other party relax and ease the atmosphere between strangers. ② Ideal job What industry do you like and what kind of job do you hope to do? Do not limit yourself to the current position in communication and give the most ideal answer, even if it is to work hard to make money so that you can travel around the world after you turn 40. You can understand the other person's work attitude and career plans while still including the interest factor. I hope everyone is doing a job they like, or at least the direction matches. This does not mean that if you like football you should become a football commentator, but rather let colleagues who are extroverted and like dealing with people do business and BD jobs. ③Success and failure In your previous job, what was the most fulfilling and most disappointing thing? "Sense of accomplishment" can help you understand your strengths; "disappointing things" give you an opportunity to complain and examine your mentality when facing difficulties and pressure. ④Features and highlights What do you think are your strengths and advantages at work? Examine your self-awareness and understand your highlights. ⑤Business capabilities If you were asked to do this job, what would you do? Give the other party an open topic and let them talk. It doesn't matter if they have too little information or are not well prepared. Just see how they can respond in a short period of time. After all, it is not about getting a correct answer, but about the way of analyzing the problem. ⑥Summary of the interview How do you feel about this interview? How do you feel about the communication? Examine self-awareness and judgment ability, and also ensure that both parties have the same feelings. This situation often occurs where I feel that the other party is extremely inappropriate, but the other party feels that the communication is very pleasant. As an interviewer, I would pay attention to the following questions: ① Don’t be late After all, it is a meeting at an agreed time, and this is the most basic respect for others. In my interview career, I have only been late twice, and I explained the reason to the other party in advance and apologized when we met. ② Do not allow the other party to introduce themselves I have never understood why many interviewers ask the candidates to introduce themselves right away. How can they introduce themselves? Who knows what you want to know? If it is basic information, it is all on the resume and you can just look at it yourself. Any interviewer who asks this kind of question is someone who doesn't read resumes, doesn't know how to start, and has a lazy brain. ③Exchange and communicate feelings Most interviewees are confused when the communication ends and have no idea whether the interviewer is satisfied with them. In order to avoid this problem, I will honestly tell my feelings at the end of the interview, which aspects I am satisfied with and which aspects are still lacking, so that at least the other party will have an idea. ④ Allow time for the interviewer to ask questions At the beginning of the interview, I always tell the interviewer that it is divided into two parts. In the first part, I ask questions first, and in the second part, the other party asks questions. Because I always believe that job hunting and recruitment are two-way choices, and we must give the other party the most basic respect. The worst interview result is that the job seeker enters the "interview state" rather than the "communication state". Such job seekers think that the interviewer's questions are like exams with correct answers, so they try hard to answer in that direction. They only think about trying to satisfy the interviewer instead of expressing their own opinions. For example, as an interviewer for Maoyan Movies, I asked more than a dozen job applicants whether they liked movies. 100% of them answered yes, but some of them last watched a movie three months ago. For example, when I asked people what apps they like to use, many people tried hard to tell me how they use Maoyan Movies. I don't really want to hear this, it just makes me feel fake. Of course, there are times when I am misled by the "interview status". Looking back on my career as an interviewer over the past few years, there have been several times when I made mistakes that I regret deeply. The apparent manifestation was that the other party's state during the interview and after joining the company were completely different, the difference was huge. When I started my business, there was a female colleague who was very talkative and cheerful during the interview. During the time I was waiting for the interview results, she often chatted with me on QQ. Her words were very appropriate and her attitude was very positive. After joining the company, I found that she was actually very dull, didn't like to communicate or talk, was full of negative energy, and liked to shirk responsibility. I always wondered if she had a twin sister to take her place during the interview. There are two more cases like this with similar situations. 5. From Interview to Onboarding From the interview to the start of employment, the team leader also shoulders a lot of responsibilities, which should not be ignored. There are two situations: 1. If the candidate fails the interview, remember to tell the other party We always talk about user experience, but in fact this concept is reflected in every little thing around us. Treat the interview as a project. The other party is your user, and the user experience is at every stage of the interview process. It is estimated that most job seekers judge that their interviews are over when there is "no movement". It doesn't matter if they wait anxiously for a few days, but if it delays other offers, they will suffer losses. Therefore, the interview results should be informed to the other party. If informing each candidate one by one is too much work, you can also agree on a time with the other party during the interview, such as "I will let you know within three days if you pass the interview." In fact, there were a few times when I forgot to tell the other party, and I felt very guilty. 2. Candidates pass the interview and follow up on the subsequent process After passing the first interview, there are two more interviews, one with HR, which also involves communicating salary and determining the start time. We need to follow up on the work at this stage and promote its quick and smooth completion. At this stage, the candidate has to face the boss and HR separately, and the team leader becomes a third party. In addition to transmitting information such as time and place in the middle, he or she also has to "mediate" between the two parties. This relationship is very delicate. After all, the candidate has passed the first interview and is favored by the team leader. In the next communication stage, the leader can "guide" the candidate, assist him/her in passing the second interview, and help him/her get better treatment. The advantage of this is that the candidate has established a relationship of trust and dependence with the leader before joining the company, which is of great help in subsequent work. The bad thing is that if the leader makes a mistake in the first interview, the second interview and HR will also lose their role in screening you, and the result is that you hire an unsuitable person. So, it depends on how the leader handles this degree. The problems encountered at the HR stage can all be attributed to inconsistent expectations between the two parties, including salary, job level, benefits, and even cognitive expectations. When the negotiating parties are at a stalemate, the candidate will generally come to the leader for help. At this time, the leader has to find a way to balance the expectations of both parties, of course, from the company's perspective. I have interviewed some candidates who have worked in BAT for 1-3 years. Some of them have overly high expectations, thinking that since they have worked in large companies, their salary should double and their position should be promoted by at least one level after changing jobs, because they heard that a colleague of theirs did this. Such friends do not focus on the match between position and ability, but on salary and position, and their expectations are too high. It's not that such a salary cannot be given, and other colleagues do receive such treatment, but this is the result of a combination of many factors, and it does not mean that you deserve this treatment. There is no causal relationship here. Moreover, a fast-growing company like Meituan has high requirements for talent. The overall quality of BAT employees is not higher than that of Meituan employees. This objective fact must be faced. It is not entirely his fault to encounter candidates with this mentality, but rather it is caused by the impetuous environment. Moreover, many BAT employees have not changed jobs and do not understand the outside world. Therefore, the leader needs to communicate with the candidates at this stage, tell them about the external situation as objectively as possible, analyze the situation from the other party's perspective, and let them make their own decisions. Never try to fool others. A forced melon is not sweet. Companies like BAT and Meituan are better off, but it is more difficult for startups to find outstanding talent due to their lack of popularity. I clearly remember that when I was a dispatch agent, I had to spend a lot of time communicating online and having meals offline with each outstanding talent. Although I succeeded more times, I can't forget the times I failed. Several people chose to go to Sina and Baidu after hesitating for two weeks; and a few others left the company soon after joining, with the shortest stay being half a day and the longer being a week. They just made a normal choice, so I don't blame them, but I did feel very regretful at the time and felt that starting a business was so difficult. At that time, there were 40 people in total, at least half of whom were recruited by me. Most people are doing well nowadays. There are several CEOs and VPs, and there are even more PMs and operations people in large companies. On the one hand, I feel very gratified, and on the other hand, it proves that the criteria and methods I used to select people at that time were effective. 6. Rapid integration after joining the company After a new employee joins the company, we need to help him integrate into the team quickly. I would do the following: 1. Introduce the company and team structure so that newcomers can have a general understanding of the overall picture, even if they can't remember it at all. 2. What stage is the AC product currently in, what problems are it facing and what solutions are they? This is the general background of the project, which newcomers must understand before starting work. 3. My expectations for newcomers in business. That is, the new employee’s job content and expectations should be clearly communicated to him on the first day. 4. Six suggestions I summarized for newcomers. I will make these six suggestions on the first day to help them integrate into the team more quickly and better understand the team culture. Click here to read the details of these six points. 5. Organize team dinners. A very old-fashioned but indispensable method, because it requires a free and relaxed occasion to blend the old and the new. Conclusion The above is my experience in forming an operations team. It may not be suitable for other situations, but it can be used as a reference. I believe that in this process, you must have "your own style", so that you can build a team that better suits your requirements and characteristics. 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