Analysis of Zhaopin's Competitive Products

The distinctive feature of BOSS Direct lies in its “direct chat” function, which solves the user feedback problem of job seekers and improves the user experience of job seekers to a certain extent, but cannot solve the chronic disease of the recruitment industry itself - matching accuracy. At the same time, the "direct chat" function is a burden for large enterprises, because it is difficult for HR to screen a large number of job resumes. To a certain extent, this also leads to the fact that the main companies of BOSS Direct Recruitment are small and medium-sized enterprises.

1. Introduction and Purpose of Analysis

What is a good recruitment app? (This article does not involve PC-related applications) What’s good about it?

Employees want to find jobs and they want to find good jobs. Companies hope to recruit talented people. However, different people and companies have different standards for "good". Therefore, an excellent recruitment app should serve as a platform connecting companies and job seekers, balancing the needs of employees who want to find good jobs and companies who want to recruit talented people.

In short, an app that helps employees find suitable jobs and companies recruit suitable talents is a good recruitment app. And on this basis, if it can enable employees or companies to get better experience and feedback during the recruitment process, then it will have stronger competitiveness than other competitors.

Therefore, taking BOSS Direct Recruitment as an example, with the goal of increasing the user scale and improving the user experience when applying for a job, we analyze the App's market, business, products, and functions to provide suggestions for the next iteration direction and functional points.

2. Macro Background PEST Analysis

1. P: Policy Background

The CPC Central Committee and the State Council put employment protection at the top of the “six guarantees” tasks, requiring all localities and departments to do everything possible to protect employment, implement employment priority policies, and simultaneously reduce burdens, stabilize jobs, and expand employment.

The General Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the General Office of the Ministry of Finance issued the "Notice on the Release of the Employment Subsidy Policy List and the First Batch of Local Online Application Platforms"

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting All-Round Shared Employment Services"

The National Development and Reform Commission and 13 other departments issued the "Opinions on Supporting the Healthy Development of New Business Forms and Models to Activate the Consumer Market and Expand Employment"

"Notice of the General Office of the Ministry of Education on Strictly Checking the Employment Data of 2020 College Graduates"

Conclusion: The country’s policy must be to ensure as much orderly employment as possible, so the recruitment market will not be cold in the short term from a policy perspective.

2. E: Economic Background

GDP over the years

Data source: National Bureau of Statistics

Between 2011 and 2020, my country's gross domestic product (GDP) continued to rise, shifting from high-speed growth to medium-high-speed growth. The national economy operated smoothly, and national strength increased year by year, but the growth rate gradually slowed down.

Number of registered unemployed persons in urban areas over the years

Data source: National Bureau of Statistics

Due to the impact of the new crown epidemic in 2020, the number of unemployed people increased. With the further spread of the global epidemic in 2021, this phenomenon will obviously continue and even intensify. Therefore, the economic environment has declined, which in turn has led to a decline in the recruitment market.

Conclusion: Due to the raging global epidemic, which has had a significant impact on China's GDP, China has also lowered its GDP growth forecast, indicating that China expects its economic growth rate this year to be slower than in the past. When economic development is in a downward trend, it is bound to affect the recruitment market. However, the economy is cyclical and will not go down forever, so the recruitment market will generally remain promising in the future.

3. S: Social context

Number of working population, number of graduates

Data source: National Bureau of Statistics

Number of companies

Data source: National Bureau of Statistics

The labor force population and its growth rate are increasing, and the number of enterprises is also increasing, and the growth rate is relatively fast. This creates a relatively balanced relationship between supply and demand. However, due to the impact of the epidemic in 2020, a large number of companies went bankrupt, but there were still 8.74 million graduates pouring in, which may disrupt the balance between supply and demand. The result may be more intense competition in the recruitment market, employees will submit their resumes to more companies, and companies will choose to conduct more interviews to recruit better employees. These actions will force both parties to pay more attention to recruitment and job hunting.

Overall industry turnover rate, overall employee turnover rate

Data source: 51job Human Resources Research Center

Judging from the employee turnover rate and employee job-hopping intention, current job seekers have low job loyalty, which may be due to unsatisfactory chosen jobs, etc. In any case, frequent job hopping is a lose-lose situation for companies and employees on the one hand, but it is a boon to the recruitment market on the other. Because they may use recruitment apps more frequently.

Job-hopping intentions of white-collar workers in autumn 2019-2020

Data source: Zhaopin.com's "2020 White-collar Autumn Job-hopping and Career Development Survey Report"

Conclusion:

1. From the current perspective, the demand has decreased due to companies reducing recruitment or even laying off employees, but the demand for job hunting/job hopping among the labor force has increased, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand, and in turn leading to fierce competition. To a certain extent, this has promoted job seekers' reliance on recruitment software.
2. As the willingness to job-hop increases, the recruitment market may gradually evolve into a high-frequency market rather than the lifelong career of our parents' generation.
3. There is an increasing trend in frequency of use and number of users. So it is good for the future of the recruitment market.

4. T: Technical Background

With the popularization of the Internet, the amount of information people receive is gradually exploding. The Internet is also gradually shifting from PC to mobile. The expansion of usage scenarios has resulted in more usage time.

Internet penetration rate and mobile Internet user penetration rate

Data source: CNNIC

With the gradual popularization of mobile Internet, people's usage scenarios have become more extensive. The recruitment market can also get rid of the "serious" usage scenarios of the original PC side. People can face recruitment in a more relaxed state on their way to and from get off work, which also promotes the efficiency of job hunting to a certain extent.

The technological changes in the past 20 years can basically be summarized as: offline local model - search and social model of PC Internet - algorithm recommendation model of mobile Internet. The timeline can be summarized as:

Job search platform establishment time

Data source: Getui Big Data

Conclusion:

The core needs of the recruitment market have been mentioned before: an app that helps employees find suitable jobs and companies recruit suitable talents is a good app. Therefore, in the PC Internet era, "search" was the core, allowing employees to find more companies through a huge database. However, in the era of mobile Internet, based on the existing large database, with "algorithm recommendation" as the core, the distribution efficiency has been enhanced. Through more usage scenarios and usage time, precise algorithms can enable employees to find more suitable companies, thereby improving recruitment efficiency. Therefore, changes in media and technology can improve the efficiency of recruitment apps to a certain extent.

Summarize the industry background:

1. From the current background: Through the PEST model, it can be concluded that the overall industry background is still promising. If you want to stand out, then the core needs are: how to enable the company to recruit the right people, how to enable employees to find the right company, and how to better balance the needs of both supply and demand sides and improve the user experience of both sides. And through technological factors, this "core demand" can be improved to a certain extent.
2. From the perspective of future growth: current employees tend to change jobs frequently, so the future recruitment market will gradually become a high-frequency market.

3. Analysis of Industry Status

1. Industry size

The market size of China's online recruitment industry increased by 45.3% in 2017, and then began to slow down in sync with the user scale. By 2020, there was only a 0.9% increase. Although there was the impact of the epidemic, the market forecast scale for 2021, 2022, and 2023 also shows that the overall growth will not be as rapid as in 2017 and 2018.

Market size of online recruitment industry

Data source: iResearch, iMedia Research

Conclusion:

The growth of market size has slowed down, and the growth of user size has gradually slowed down. Although the slowdown in market size growth in 2020 was to a certain extent due to the impact of the epidemic, the slowdown in the growth rate of user scale still indicates that the stage of rapid market development and land grabbing is coming to an end and gradually entering a mature stage.

The main tasks of the next recruitment app should be:

1. Tap into the last remaining new users and expand the user base.
2. Improve user experience and prepare for the fierce market competition after entering the mature stage.

2. Industry development stage and competition situation

In general, the current recruitment industry is divided into:

1. Local offline
2. Online PC
3. Online mobile terminal

As the population gets younger, the number of local offline recruitments will gradually decrease. Therefore, the competitive situation in the online recruitment industry has gradually shifted to online PC and online mobile terminals.

Monthly active mobile user scale of online recruitment industry from 2017 to 2019

Data source: TalkingData

The monthly active user scale of online recruitment mobile terminals has been increasing, which means that the current online recruitment market is in the development stage. However, as can be seen from the above figure, with the slowdown in user growth, the growth rate of monthly active users will gradually decrease in the future.

Competition landscape of recruitment platforms, market share of PC and mobile terminals in 2019

Data source: iResearch, TalkingData

As the current market is at the end of its development stage, it will gradually enter a mature stage in the future. At this stage, the industry's competition situation is basically divided into three tiers. Comprehensive recruitment is the first echelon, vertical recruitment is the second echelon, and others are the third echelon.

The first tier includes: Zhaopin.com, BOSS Direct, and 51Job.com.

It is worth noting that in the second half of 2019, the monthly active users of Zhaopin and 51job were declining, but that of BOSS Direct Hire did not. The reason may be that BOSS Direct Hire "seized" the users of the other two apps, or it may be because BOSS Direct Hire played a role in attracting new users.

In short, to a certain extent, it can be concluded that BOSS Direct Hire is more competitive in the first echelon.

It has been concluded above that BOSS Direct is more competitive than Zhaopin and 51Job because of their different strategic directions.

As can be seen from the figure, the monthly active users of BOSS Direct are increasing rapidly, while the monthly active growth rates of Zhaopin and 51job are gradually being caught up by BOSS Direct. The reason is that the two old recruitment websites have been established for a long time, so their primary purpose is commercialization. Since BOSS Direct Hire has capitalized on the era of mobile Internet, it was able to surpass the monthly active users of established recruitment websites in a very short period of time. However, due to its short establishment time, it does not need to focus on commercialization for the time being.

1. According to BOSS Zhipin's prospectus, the total revenue in 2020 was 1.944 billion yuan. Zhaopin’s 2020 financial report shows: 3.689 billion yuan.
2. According to BOSS Zhipin's prospectus, marketing expenses accounted for 69.3% of total expenditure in 2020. In 2020, marketing expenses accounted for 29.5% of Zhaopin's total expenditure. To a certain extent, it also reflects that the current huge marketing expenditure of BOSS Zhipin is most likely to acquire more users.

The huge marketing expenditure in the financial report data is combined with the analysis results of the previous industry development stage (increasing the user scale). These two points support my point of view: the user scale needs to be increased at this stage.

Comparison of installed capacity in online recruitment industry

Data source: Mob Research Institute, Analysys Qianfan

Compared with Zhaopin.com and 51job.com, BOSS Direct still has a lot of room for growth in MAU. This further proves the previous point: increasing the user scale.

However, as the user scale increases, it will gradually become difficult. Therefore, social recruitment software, mainly Maimai, will become a future competitive target.

Conclusions on industry development and competition situation:

As the current market is at the end of its development stage, it will gradually enter a mature stage in the future. Therefore, the current main goals are to increase the user base, enhance one's own competitiveness, and cope with the fierce market competition in the upcoming mature stage.

In this competitive landscape, among the three apps in the first echelon, BOSS Direct Recruitment is gaining momentum. Maimai, a second-tier company, is eyeing Linkedin with its unique social culture. They compete with BOSS Zhipin in a differentiated manner.

BOSS Direct is more competitive than the other two apps in the first tier. The reason is: the main purpose of the other two apps is commercialization and improving profitability, rather than increasing user scale and user experience. Therefore, at the current stage of development, their competitiveness is not as good as BOSS Direct Hire.

Therefore, considering the current stage of industry development and the different competitive strategies of different companies in the industry, the most suitable iteration direction for BOSS Direct Hire is:

1. Increase the user scale.
2. Improve user experience.

3. BOSS Direct Hire’s Five Forces Model

The previous section analyzed the current market size and market competition situation. Next, it is necessary to analyze the company’s own strengths and weaknesses in the competition and the sources of competition within the industry, and formulate relevant strategies for the strategic direction set previously.

Analysis of the Five Forces Model of BOSS Zhipin

From the supply side: With the downward trend of the overall economic environment, the impact of the epidemic. A large number of companies have reduced their recruitment or even laid off employees, resulting in a significant drop in recruitment positions. 82.6% of the companies on BOSS Direct are small and medium-sized enterprises. These companies have a strong desire for outstanding talents, and BOSS Direct is known for its recommendation algorithm. There is a certain bargaining power over these small and medium-sized enterprises, but the small scale of these enterprises leads to a general willingness to pay.

From the demand side: There will be 8.74 million college graduates in 2020. There will be 9.09 million college graduates in 2021. The number of new labor force has reached new highs, a large number of overseas college students have returned to China, and there are also a large number of people who want to change jobs or find re-employment, resulting in strong demand. However, because interviewers generally have multiple recruitment apps and there is fierce competition among them, although BOSS Direct has the advantages of direct chat + algorithm, its advantages for job seekers as a whole are not prominent. So overall, the bargaining power for the interviewer is average.

From peer competitors: Zhaopin.com and 51job.com. Both are comprehensive recruitment platforms. What they have in common is that they were established early, have good brand reputations, and have huge databases. However, BOSS Direct’s chat-style communication is its featured feature, which provides better user experience and is more popular among young people. In the short term, Zhilian Recruitment and 51Job will face fierce competition with BOSS Zhipin due to their huge database, user scale and brand advantages.

From the threat of substitutes: headhunters, social recruitment and vertical recruitment such as LinkedIn and Maimai have also eroded the high-end user scale of BOSS Direct to a certain extent. However, these vertical recruitment platforms are limited by their own user base. Therefore, the threat to the comprehensive recruitment platform Boss Direct is average.

From the perspective of potential competitors: With the advent of the big data era, big data + AI may disrupt the online recruitment industry in the future. However, big data requires a large amount of user portraits and data, and AI is not a problem that can be solved in a short time. Therefore, the threat posed by potential competitors to BOSS Direct is average.

Conclusions of the Five Forces Analysis:

As the number of jobs that can be supplied by corporate suppliers decreases, the demand from employees is relatively strong. This has led to an imbalance between supply and demand, and intensified the competition in the online recruitment industry. On this basis, the existence of peer competitors and alternatives requires BOSS Zhipin to try to expand new markets while strengthening its differentiation with them.

Combined analysis purpose:

1. Vertically target peer competitors and substitutes: Find competitors' target users and explore the needs of more potential and neglected user groups to increase the user base.
2. Horizontally targeting the supply side and the demand side: Through a more in-depth analysis of both the enterprise and the interviewee, we can find out the user's pain points, and then improve the needs to achieve a better user experience.

4. User needs analysis

Earlier, the five forces model was used to derive the current industry's competitive intensity and sources of competition. It also proposes to increase the user base by discovering more potential and neglected user groups. And through a more in-depth analysis of both the company and the interviewee, we can find out the user's pain points and then improve the needs to achieve a better user experience.

The next step is to analyze which user groups can become new users of BOSS Direct Hire, what needs these users have, and then fill in the gaps in existing products.

Frequency of use of online recruitment apps

Data source: iResearch

According to the above figure, job seekers use online recruitment websites less frequently throughout the year, but at the same time they use multiple recruitment software at the same time when looking for a job. On the one hand, it reflects the fierce competition in the market, and on the other hand, it shows that recruitment software is more like a tool for job seekers. Therefore, for such characteristics, it is difficult to improve the retention rate of recruitment apps and it does not conform to the functional settings of tool software. Therefore, the current priority is to develop the user scale and increase user retention if possible in the future.

Occupational distribution of online recruitment app users

Data source: Mob Research Institute, Talking Data

1) User profile of job seekers

Two-thirds of the users of online recruitment are male, mostly aged 18-34, living in first- and second-tier cities, and are corporate white-collar workers or college students with a bachelor's degree. These people are basically in the rising stage of their careers, but they lack social and work experience. Therefore, they would rather find a better and more well-known work platform as a springboard. The essence is the fear of encountering fake companies or companies with no qualifications.

Therefore, it is recommended to verify the authenticity of the company by having internal personnel score the company.

As can be seen from the figure below, for job seekers, salary and personal development are the primary factors to consider when changing jobs. Therefore, the real need of job seekers is that online recruitment apps can help them find companies that can give them salary increases and promotions.

Therefore, it is recommended to add a function for the interviewer to give feedback to the company after the interview. In the form of questionnaires, more precise support is provided to the algorithm.

Online recruitment app users’ motivations for job hunting

Data source: TalkingData

As can be seen from the figure below, the current main users of BOSS Direct Recruitment are corporate white-collar workers. Most successful people over the age of 35 use social recruitment apps and headhunters.

Therefore, for successful people over 35 years old, what they need is networking recruitment rather than regular resume submission. At the same time, according to the figure below, users prefer community atmosphere, and successful people also like Maimai, which focuses on community atmosphere.

Therefore, it is recommended to gradually open up community-related functions in the future.

Occupation and age distribution of online recruitment app users

Data source: Mob Research Institute

Conclusion:

Based on the above analysis, the needs found to improve user experience are as follows:

• For job seekers with 1-3 years of work experience, they are afraid of encountering fake companies or companies with no reputation or qualification.
• For job seekers, they hope that online recruitment apps can help them find companies that can give them salary increases and promotions.
• What successful and high-end people need is network recruitment, not traditional resume recruitment.

2) User portrait of enterprise groups

Online Recruitment App Enterprise Edition

Data source: Mob Research Institute

According to the above figure, companies are more concerned about the efficiency and effectiveness of recruitment, and the quantity and quality of resumes. Therefore, their need is to recruit suitable talents for the company more efficiently. The enterprise version of the App can help them achieve their needs. BOSS Direct has not yet launched an enterprise version of the App, but considering that BOSS Direct is a "direct chat" app, it is understandable that there is no enterprise version.

However, the demand to find suitable talents for enterprises more efficiently still exists. Currently, the main matching method is algorithm, but the algorithm cannot know the situation in the interview.

• Therefore, it is recommended to add a function for companies to provide feedback to interviewees after the interview. In the form of questionnaires, more precise support is provided to the algorithm.
• It is recommended to add a "whether hired" function after the interview. If hired, the candidate's resume will be used as a model to recommend resumes to companies in the future.

Online Recruitment App Voice/Video Interview

Data source: TalkingData

As can be seen from the above picture, with the outbreak of the epidemic, online interviews have gradually become mainstream. Although it improves the interview efficiency of the company to a certain extent, it is a bad experience for job seekers because they cannot experience the actual environment and atmosphere of the company.

However, despite this, this also increases the possibility of users applying for jobs in companies outside their area to a certain extent. For example, job seekers in second- and third-tier cities can more easily get job opportunities in first-tier and new first-tier cities through online interviews.

Therefore, online interviews meet the needs of companies who are eager to interview more job seekers.

Conclusion:

Based on the above analysis, the needs found to improve user experience are as follows:

• Companies hope to recruit suitable talents more efficiently, so they need to improve the compatibility between the company and job seekers.
• Companies can also increase the number of interviews to more efficiently recruit suitable talents for the company.

User analysis conclusion:

The above process analyzes a common problem in the online recruitment industry, namely, the low degree of compatibility between positions and job seekers. In this regard, the following strategies are proposed to improve user experience:

• Enterprises: Increase the number of interviewees and improve interview efficiency; through questionnaires, strengthen the company's feedback function to interviewees after the interview and add a "whether to hire" function.
• Interviewer: Verify the authenticity of the company; through the form of questionnaire, strengthen the interviewer's feedback function on the company.

Increase user scale:

• In order to attract successful people, community functions are established by meeting their needs for networking and recruitment.
• In order to increase the number of users in second- and third-tier cities, the "video interview" function will be improved to make it more convenient for them to interview with out-of-town companies.

5. Industry analysis summary

From the perspective of market development scale: the current market revenue growth rate is slowing down, and the user growth rate is slowing down. The market has entered the end of its development stage and is about to enter a mature stage. However, as the main users of the online recruitment industry are basically in the peak period of job hopping, the market size may continue to maintain a growth rate of 10% in the future.

From the perspective of market competition: the market is about to enter a mature stage. The competition landscape in the industry is also divided into three tiers. Although BOSS Direct is competing fiercely, second-tier companies such as Maimai are still eyeing it. Therefore, competition within the industry will become more intense. Under this competitive landscape, the main purpose of 51job and Zhaopin.com is to commercialize and increase profit margins. BOSS Zhipin, which is also in the first echelon, is not in a hurry to commercialize for the time being. Therefore, it can tap into new users and gradually "communitize" in the future to increase future user stickiness and commercialization.

From the perspective of the five competitive forces model: in order to enhance one's competitiveness in the industry, vertical enterprises should tap into potential user groups and further increase the user scale. Horizontally, we should improve user experience by exploring the pain points of companies and interviewers.

From the user demand analysis point of view:

User Experience:

• A common problem with online recruitment is the low efficiency of matching companies and job seekers. Therefore, both parties can improve the algorithm through [questionnaire feedback] to increase the matching rate.
• The enterprise can use [video interview] to provide more interview candidates for the enterprise.
• Job seekers are more concerned about the authenticity of the company, so they need to add [Rating] to complete the company's background information.

User scale:

• Adding [Video Interview] can make it easier for second- and third-tier talents to interview first-tier companies, which has increased the user scale to a certain extent.
• Adding [Community] can provide high-end successful people with the networking and recruitment needs, and in the future it can also improve the user stickiness of the product.

4. Competitive Product Analysis

1. Choose your competitors

According to the analysis of the industry's competitive situation, the first tier is: Zhaopin.com, 51job.com, and Boss Direct. All three companies are comprehensive recruitment platforms with similar monthly active users. Therefore, Zhilian Recruitment was selected as the main competitor of BOSS Direct for analysis. (Because 51job was removed from the App Store during the competitor research, only Zhaopin.com was selected.)

By analyzing the product positioning, user portraits, processes, and functions of competitors, we can draw conclusions about the differences between them and BOSS Direct Hire. Finally, based on the purpose of the analysis: to increase the user scale and improve the user experience, we try to find the next stage of iteration direction and functions for BOSS Direct Hire. (This analysis only focuses on the recruitment function of the App and only analyzes the job seeker function.)

2. Business comparison

1) Product positioning comparison

Zhaopin.com:

• There are three main groups of people on Zhaopin.com: students, white-collar workers, and high-end experts. Zhaopin.com provides these three groups with a recruitment system covering a large number of enterprises and offers human resources services to improve commercialization.
• Student: Zhilian Campus has formed a closed service loop from assessment, recruitment to education and training centered around the Zhilian Recruitment Platform.
• White-collar workers and high-end experts: provide assessment, recruitment, and education and training services to create a closed loop of the human resources industry chain in all aspects.

Zhaopin.com Business Model

Data source: iResearch

Conclusion:

Zhilian Recruitment’s target population is very broad, covering first-, second- and third-tier cities, and the job types include blue-collar, white-collar and gold-collar. At the same time, Zhilian Recruitment also provides these targeted groups with a full range of human resources services from recruitment to employment, which means that its commercialization is relatively mature.

Advantages : covers a wide population, has a large user base, and has wide business coverage. With the ability to commercialize, there is also a certain profit margin.

Disadvantages: Due to the large number of users covered and the complexity of the types of work, there are many user needs, which makes it difficult to distribute the App to users, making it difficult for users to quickly obtain the most suitable company for them, resulting in a poor user experience. As a recruitment app with tool attributes, its user retention performance is bound to be poor, and without retention it will be difficult to monetize. Moreover, the diversity of user coverage will also lead to difficulties in commercialization.

BOSS Direct Hiring:

BOSS Direct Hire’s target audience is mainly young people in first-tier cities, such as students and white-collar workers. BOSS Direct Hire provides a "direct chat + algorithm recommendation" method for targeted groups of people, allowing job seekers to receive feedback after submitting their resumes, improving user experience and recruitment efficiency.

BOSS Direct Business Model

Data source: iResearch

Conclusion:

Different from the "algorithm + search" format of Zhilian Recruitment, BOSS Direct's "direct chat + algorithm" allows job seekers to get feedback after submitting their resumes, improving user feedback, which is particularly in line with the usage habits of young people.

The advantages of this business model are:

• “Direct Chat” can directly enhance user feedback.
• The more "mobile" "direct chat" fits the positioning of mobile apps very well and is conducive to increasing the frequency of app use.

The disadvantages of this business model are:

• The user base is relatively vertical, consisting of young people in first-tier cities, resulting in slow growth in user scale.
• The “direct chat” model will bring a certain burden to the HR of large companies, and may lead to the loss of high-end talents.
• The current level of commercialization is low.

Summarize:

From the perspective of model: the main business of Zhilian Recruitment and BOSS Direct Recruitment is online recruitment, the difference lies in the way of providing feedback to job seekers. Zhilian’s approach is “algorithm + search”, while BOSS Direct’s approach is “direct chat + algorithm”.

From the perspective of users and commercialization: Zhilian Recruitment's advantages are its huge resume database (first-, second-, third- and fourth-tier cities + blue-collar, white-collar and gold-collar workers), corporate database, and certain commercialization capabilities. The advantages of BOSS Direct Hire are that it is more in line with the usage habits of young people (white-collar workers in first- and second-tier cities), emphasizes user experience, and has great commercialization potential.

2) User portrait comparison

Purpose: By comparing the user portraits of the two apps, we can analyze the comparison of the two apps in terms of structure and function, and then learn from each other's strengths and overcome their weaknesses.

User geographical distribution:

Geographical distribution of Zhaopin.com and BOSS.com users

Data source: Baidu Index

Zhilian Recruitment mainly focuses on first-tier, new first-tier and second-tier cities. BOSS Direct Recruitment mainly serves first-tier cities. Although the total number of BOSS Direct Recruitment users is close to that of Zhaopin.com, they are mainly concentrated in big cities. Therefore, BOSS Direct still has growth potential in new first-tier and second-tier cities.

The current analysis purpose of BOSS Zhipin is to increase the user scale. Therefore, based on the user distribution of Zhilian Zhaopin, we can explore the pain points of users in new first-tier and second-tier cities to achieve the goal of increasing the user scale. Alternatively, you can tap into businesses in new first-tier and second-tier cities and provide them with interviewers from first-tier cities.

User age distribution:

Age distribution of BOSS Zhipin and Zhaopin users

Data source: Baidu Index

Most of BOSS Zhipin’s users are between 20 and 29 years old. Most of Zhilian Zhaopin's users are between 30 and 39 years old.

30-39 years old: People at this stage are more concerned about connections and relationships, so they pay more attention to workplace socializing. Therefore, they are not sensitive to paying for knowledge, but are more interested in social functions such as Q&A, and networking.

Combined with the previous data, Zhilian Recruitment also has many users in new first-tier and second-tier cities. However, in new first-tier and second-tier cities, there must not be many users aged 30-39 who are using recruitment software to find jobs. Therefore, it is speculated that users aged 30-39 who are still using recruitment software are most likely high-end talents in first-tier cities.

The reason why there are few people aged 30-39 on BOSS Direct Hire may be because of the "direct chat" function, which makes HRs of large companies too busy to chat. Therefore, in order to increase the number of this group of people, it is recommended to add a [community] function or introduce a headhunting mechanism, such as adding a [talent market] function.

User usage time distribution:

The usage time distribution of BOSS Zhipin and Zhaopin users

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

Time spent using Zhilian Recruitment: Since the overall trend of Zhilian Recruitment is relatively stable, I personally think it may be because the main population opens the App relatively infrequently. The reason may be that their jobs are relatively stable so there is no need to change jobs or there is no feature that attracts them. Combined with the previous age distribution, it is speculated that the main users are white-collar workers over 30 years old. Their needs are social interaction, but Zhaopin.com cannot meet their needs, which leads to a lower usage time.

The usage time of BOSS Direct Hire: working hours. Since BOSS Direct Hire was at a stable peak from 9:00 to 16:00 and dropped during lunch, and considering that BOSS Direct Hire is a "direct chat" that requires connecting HR and job seekers, and HR's working hours are from 9:00 to 17:00, it is inferred that the main usage scenario is the conversation between job seekers and HR. But it also indirectly reflects the weakness of BOSS Direct's other business functions, resulting in no other growth points in usage time.

If BOSS Direct wants to gradually commercialize in the future, its weak business capabilities may become a limitation.

Summarize:

BOSS Direct’s current main target group is young people aged 20-29 who are in the first-tier cities. According to the regional distribution analysis of Zhilian Recruitment, there is room for user growth in new first-tier and second-tier cities. Also, due to the tool nature of recruitment software, there is no need to seize the market, so it is not difficult to increase users.

If you want to increase the user scale, you need to increase:

1. High-end talent users in the age group of 30-39 years old.
2. White-collar users in new first-tier and second-tier cities.

Zhaopin.com’s current main target group is white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, and high-end professionals aged 30-39 in first-tier, new first-tier, and second-tier cities. Since Zhilian Recruitment's current main purpose is commercialization, the number of users and coverage areas have basically reached the ceiling.

In short, we hope that BOSS Direct will be able to form a user scale effect in first-tier cities and new first-tier cities in the future. In order to achieve this goal, through the comparison of structure and function with Zhaopin.com, we can find out what kind of functions Zhaopin.com uses to meet the needs of users in new first-tier and second-tier cities, and then get the iteration direction of BOSS Zhipin.com in the next stage.

3. Product structure analysis

Zhaopin.com:

Zhilian Recruitment is mainly divided into five sections. They are Positions, News, Job Q, Job Help, and Mine. Among them, ZhiQ is a community module, and Zhaoshoubang is a paid course and service.

As can be seen from the product structure diagram, Zhilian Recruitment’s functional modules are quite diverse, including job recommendations, community services, and paid courses, proving that its functional structure is relatively mature.

Combining Zhaopin's product positioning and commercial business direction, we can see that:

Their current focus is commercialization, so they try to increase product retention through [community] to achieve commercialization. However, the frequency of interaction within the community is relatively low. We speculate that the reason is that the diversity of the population on Zhaopin.com is too complex, and as a tool-based app, it is difficult to achieve "communityization" without major changes to the product structure.

BOSS Direct Hiring:

The red area marks the difference between the recruitment-related functions and those of Zhaopin.com

BOSS Direct Recruitment mainly consists of four sections. From the perspective of functional modules, BOSS Direct’s current business positioning is still in the “recruitment” stage. Because most of the functions of [Youyou] are answers to workplace knowledge and skills as well as useful articles, there is less "community-based" content.

Recruitment: BOSS Zhipin's current business positioning is mainly in the [recruitment] stage, so the difference between it and Zhaopin is:

BOSS Direct Hire has the [Keyword] function and the [Region] function, which make the company's classification more detailed and vertical, allowing job seekers to know more accurately whether the company meets their needs during the interview, improving the user experience.

Number of companies: Although BOSS Zhipin provides a better experience for job seekers in the recruitment process, Zhaopin's advantage lies in its huge company database. Therefore, in general, the advantages and disadvantages between Zhaopin and BOSS Zhipin are not significant in this aspect.

Social: The main functional module of BOSS Direct Recruitment is [Social]. Overall, it is free knowledge content, which includes functions such as interview skills and career development, and is more like tailor-made for college graduates. It not only solves the needs of people aged 20-29 who are eager to improve their competitiveness, but also solves the needs of college students who are just entering the workplace and are confused about their career and future.

In the future, BOSS Direct can try to become a "community-based" company, where its users will be young people from first-tier and new first-tier cities, all of whom will gather at BOSS Direct to find jobs. This can be used to produce content related to job hunting, hoping to attract user retention. Moreover, "communityization" will also help attract high-end talents to increase the user scale.

Commercialization: The main difference between BOSS Direct and Zhaopin is the lack of commercialization. Zhaopin has [Job Hunting Help], while BOSS Direct does not have a similar commercialization module. But this is also in line with BOSS Direct’s current business positioning.

Summarize:

1. Zhilian Recruitment’s business positioning is commercialization and profitability. Therefore, they promote the "community" of the App through [ZhiQ] and obtain value-added services and profit margins through [Zhaoshubang].
2. BOSS Direct Recruitment is still in the development stage, so the requirements for profit and monetization capabilities are not high. It is more concerned with designing customized functions for major groups to improve user experience and increase user scale.
3. Overall, the product structure of both parties serves their product positioning - expansion and monetization.

4. Product function analysis

First, both software are recruitment software. Therefore, the main functional analysis focuses on recruitment-related functions. Secondly, due to the different development stages of the two companies, Zhilian Recruitment has more diverse users.

Therefore, the purpose of functional analysis is to analyze how Zhilian Recruitment can serve high-end talents aged 30-39 and people in second- and third-tier cities in terms of function, and learn to see if it can be used for BOSS Direct Recruitment.

Recruitment function process:

Edit resume—Search/recommendation—View company—Communication HR—Submit resume—Service after submitting resume

Resume function:

in conclusion:

About privacy settings: BOSS Direct Recruitment is placed in a conspicuous location. Zhilian Recruitment can also set privacy, but it needs to be set in the settings. Therefore, the conclusion of the comparison is that BOSS Direct Recruitment focuses more on hiding resumes, and its purpose may be related to BOSS Direct Recruitment's product positioning. It emphasizes the "communication" between the two parties, rather than the one-sided "resume submission" like Zhilian Recruitment. Therefore, the interaction of BOSS Direct Recruitment is more like a "mobile end", while Zhilian Recruitment is still focused on the "PC end" thinking.

About the attachment resume: Both BOSS Direct Recruitment and Zhilian Recruitment can add [Attachment Resume] on the mobile terminal. However, the [attached resume] of BOSS Direct Recruitment needs to be sent separately, while Zhilian Recruitment is embedded in the [Online Resume]. This function has a huge effect on design work such as work that requires the portfolio to be viewed.

About resume templates: BOSS Direct Recruitment has templates to set, but Zhilian Recruitment does not. BOSS Direct Recruitment is more suitable for beginners and new job seekers.

About custom bonus points: BOSS Direct Recruitment: [Qualification Certificate], [Social Home Page], [Volunteer Service]. These three categories are more like bonus points for students. Zhilian Recruitment: [Project Experience], [Training Experience], [Language Ability], [Certificate Obtaining]. These four categories are more like bonus points for job seekers with certain work experience. The purpose of functions meets the needs of positioning people.

Summary: [Resume] The requirements for functions are based on the characteristics of the targeted population and the needs of HR recruitment. BOSS Direct Recruitment focuses more on resume privacy and students who are just entering the workplace, which is related to its "direct chat ecosystem" and "product positioning". Zhilian Recruitment has positioned people as job seekers with certain work experience, so they designed "professional skills" and "project experience". Overall, the [Resume] function is not very differentiated.

Search function:

in conclusion:

The user needs solved by the search function are targeted and purposeful. The search content is divided into: company, position, and content. They are basically targeted, but it cannot be ruled out that some users search without understanding this position. For this type of population, you can just develop the recommended positions for related positions appropriately.

In general: the search function is generally purposeful, so there is no need to do more complex and redundant designs.

1) Recommended enterprises in first-tier cities

2) Company recommendation filter

3) Recommended companies in second- and third-tier cities

The purpose of company recommendation: Through screening and algorithms, we can find companies that meet the requirements of job seekers as much as possible. Conclusion:

Filtering part: BOSS Direct Recruitment has [keywords], while Zhilian Recruitment does not, resulting in positions in any industry, which cannot accurately meet users' job search needs. The content of [Keywords] is mainly to disassemble the industry in a more segmented and vertical manner. To provide job seekers with more accurate industry/company recommendations.

BOSS Direct Recruitment has a [×] next to [Company Location]. This [×] can help users filter out the reasons they don’t like, and thus achieve the purpose of optimizing recommendations. To provide job seekers with more accurate industry/company recommendations.

The push logic of the algorithm: When "Salary 8K-10K" is set and "work experience is 1 year" is set: the logic for recommendation for me by BOSS Direct Recruitment is [work experience] first, and he will first push jobs that meet work experience. The logic behind Zhilian Recruitment is that [salary] is preferred, and a higher salary will be pushed first. It reflects the different focus of the algorithms of Zhilian Recruitment and BOSS Direct Recruitment, and to a certain extent, it reflects the different needs of the targeted population of both parties.

Number of enterprises in new first-tier cities: In order to increase the scale of users in new first-tier cities, enterprises in new first-tier cities must be included. On this basis, the results were obtained by screening "Salary 8-10K": Zhilian recruits more medium-sized enterprises with a scale of 100-500 and 500-1,000 than BOSS Direct Recruitment, and the scale of BOSS Direct Recruitment is divided into more than 10,000 and 20-99.

Zhilian Recruitment has a more even distribution among small and medium-sized enterprises, and is available in large, medium-sized enterprises. The companies directly hired by BOSS are distributed in polarized areas, and are basically large and small. (Part of the reason may be: BOSS Direct Recruitment prospectus shows that 82.6% of enterprises are small and medium-sized enterprises.) Among the companies similar to Zhilian Recruitment, 50% of enterprises are small and medium-sized enterprises.

Medium-sized enterprises are crucial in new first-tier cities and second-tier cities. Therefore, if BOSS Direct Recruitment wants to increase the user scale of new first-tier and second-tier cities, it must increase the number of enterprises in new first-tier cities. In this regard, Zhilian Recruitment is even better.

There may be two reasons for the problem that BOSS Direct Recruitment has fewer recommendations in new first-tier and second-tier cities:

• The logic of algorithm recommendation is different: BOSS direct recruitment may give priority to large and small enterprises. Zhilian Recruitment is relatively average.
• The number of companies is different: BOSS Direct Recruitment may indeed be less than Zhilian Recruitment in the number of medium-sized enterprises. If you want to solve this problem, you must invest a lot of marketing and advertising to achieve the purpose of economies of scale.

4) Company Information (Zhilian Recruitment)

5) Company Information (BOSS Direct Recruitment)

in conclusion:

Company photos: Based on the survey using the App, companies with a size of 20-99 people were selected. BOSS Direct Recruitment, the number of companies with valid pictures on the company page is at least 50%. Zhilian Recruitment is less than 50%. The BOSS direct recruitment function makes job seekers more confident in the authenticity of the company and makes it easier for job seekers to find the company's location, improving the user experience.

Company evaluation/benefits: This function is done by Zhilian Recruitment better, while BOSS Direct Recruitment does not have this function. However, it is important to note how many effective evaluations are there, because the comments are more subjective, and there may be a navy army and may mislead job seekers. Therefore, this function needs to take into account the authenticity of the evaluation.

Overall, BOSS Direct Recruitment has relatively few company descriptions in text category, and it provides more with the company's hardware conditions. The reason may be because the company is afraid that the company will buy water army, which will affect the authenticity of the company's evaluation. Therefore, in order to meet this needs, it is recommended to add third-party external links, which can jump to third-party company evaluation software such as "Kanzhun.com".

6) Chat function/resume delivery

in conclusion:

The job requirements are basically the same. The difference is:

During the delivery process, BOSS Direct Recruitment: Only after the HR responds can the resume be sent. And Zhilian Recruitment: sent out the resume from the beginning. The result is that the feedback is not timely, and the job seeker does not know whether the HR has received my resume. This user experience is a frustration for young job seekers.

[Direct Chat] function improves the user experience of young job seekers to a certain extent, but in turn reduces the recruitment efficiency of HR in large enterprises, which may in turn lead to high-end talents not using BOSS direct recruitment to find jobs. Therefore, in order to solve this need, it is recommended to independently add a special [high-end talent market] to grasp the needs of high-end users.

7) Post-delivery service function

Service function after submitting resume: More efficiently know the results, how much communication is done, how much interview is required, and the conclusion:

Compared with Zhilian Recruitment, BOSS Direct Recruitment has a simpler function. It unifies the [Viewed] and [Unable to be communicated] of Zhilian Recruitment into [Communication]. One of the steps has been reduced, effectively improving the recruitment efficiency of job seekers and recruiters.

The [Unable Interview] function of BOSS Direct Recruitment is in the main interface, while the [Unable Interview] function of Zhilian Recruitment is in the secondary interface. The purpose of this function is to prevent job seekers from forgetting to interview, so the user experience of BOSS Direct Recruitment is better than that of Zhilian Recruitment.

Summarize:

Both software are recruitment software, so their main function is recruitment.

The recruitment process is divided into: Fill in your resume - Search/recommend the company - View company information - Communication HR - Submit your resume - Service after submitting your resume.

Combined with the purpose of analysis: to increase user scale and improve user experience. By comparing the analysis results obtained by Zhilian Recruitment and BOSS Direct Recruitment:

Improve user experience:

In terms of resumes: The user experience for those who are aged 20-29 is better, but the disadvantage is that the separation of the attachment resume and the online resume causes redundancy in operation.

In terms of algorithm recommendation: it is more accurate than Zhilian Recruitment, and users can filter it themselves, further enhancing the accuracy of algorithm recommendation. At the same time, Zhilian Recruitment's algorithm focuses more on salary and benefits, and BOSS Direct Recruitment's algorithm focuses more on work experience, which to a certain extent also meets the needs of both parties' respective users.

Company information: BOSS Direct Recruitment can view the company's pictures even for small and medium-sized enterprises, further enhancing the authenticity of the company. The disadvantage is that there is no employee's text evaluation of the company, which may cause job seekers to receive some invisible impacts such as chaos in the company's system. It is recommended to add external links for third-party evaluation to increase the function of company evaluation.

Communication HR and resume delivery: The "direct chat function" of BOSS Direct Recruitment improves the efficiency of recruitment. At the same time, job seekers must wait for the HR to reply before sending resumes. To a certain extent, job seekers have given sufficient feedback to alleviate anxiety during job search. At the same time, BOSS Direct Recruitment and Zhilian Recruitment both support the video interview function, which enhances the user experience.

Increase user size:

Talents in new first-tier and second-tier cities: Through the analysis of Zhilian Recruitment, Zhilian Recruitment has obtained that the number of medium-sized enterprises in new first-tier and second-tier cities exceeds that of BOSS Direct Recruitment. Medium-sized enterprises occupy a backbone position in new first-tier and second-tier cities, attracting local basic labor and surplus labor in first-tier cities. Therefore, if BOSS Direct Recruitment wants to increase the user scale in new first-tier cities, there are two solutions:

• Talents from new first-tier and second-tier cities still work locally. This requires increasing the number of medium-sized enterprises in new first-tier and second-tier cities
• Attract talents from new first-tier and second-tier cities to first-tier cities. This requires more convenient and complete online interview functions for users who are looking for a job or are looking for a job after working and are looking for a job after leaving.

High-end talents: [Direct Chat] The function reduces the recruitment efficiency of HR in large enterprises, but is beneficial to small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, [Direct Chat], as the foundation of BOSS Direct Recruitment, cannot be changed. Therefore, if you want to increase the user scale of high-end talents, you need a special [high-end talent market] to achieve this goal.

5. Conclusion of Competitive Product Analysis

Industry Summary: At present, the online recruitment market is generally in the late stage of its development stage and will gradually enter the maturity stage. In the current market stage, the competition is relatively fierce. The main competitor of BOSS Direct Recruitment is Zhilian Recruitment, so BOSS Direct Recruitment needs to further improve its competitiveness.

Since BOSS Direct Recruitment’s current strategic positioning is to increase user scale and improve user experience. Therefore, he is used as the analysis purpose of this article, and then choose Zhilian Recruitment as the main competitor, and compare and analyze the competitors of BOSS Direct Recruitment from the perspectives of product positioning, crowd portraits, product structures, and product functions, hoping to find the direction of the next stage of version iteration.

1. Product positioning and crowd portrait

Zhilian Recruitment:

1. Positioning groups: white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, and gold-collar workers in first-tier, new first-tier and second-tier cities.
2. Product Positioning: Through its own huge corporate database, we provide more corporate positions for the targeted population.
3. Profit model: Taking positioning people as the core object, providing three services through three channels: evaluation, recruitment, and education and training, and creating a closed loop of the human resources industry chain in all aspects.

Therefore, the characteristics of Zhilian Recruitment are that it covers a wide range of people and covers a large number of cities. Have your own commercialization process and have certain profit margins.

BOSS Direct Recruitment:

1. Positioning group: young people aged 20-29, new front-line, college students who are just starting to enter the workplace.
2. Product Positioning: Through the "algorithm + direct chat", it fully adapts to the usage habits of the targeted population, improves the feedback after submitting a resume for the targeted population and improves the user experience.
3. Profit model: value-added services and online recruitment services, with a low degree of commercialization.

With its unique technological innovation, BOSS Direct Recruitment has improved the recruitment and job hunting experience of small and medium-sized enterprises and young people, and has thus become a dark horse in recruiting young people in first-tier cities.

Product positioning and crowd portrait summary: Comparison of crowd portraits through Zhilian Recruitment and BOSS Direct Recruitment: BOSS Direct Recruitment’s current main users are young people in first-tier cities. Zhilian Recruitment covers more people and has a wider range of areas. Therefore, through comparison, BOSS Direct Recruitment also has a large potential for user increment in new first-tier and second-tier cities, and high-end talent users in first-tier cities also have a certain increment in user increment. Because of the tool attributes of recruiting software, there is no "seizing the market", so it is not difficult to grow users.

2. Product structure

Zhilian Recruitment: As Zhilian Recruitment is currently seeking commercialization, it will increase its profit margin. Therefore, it eliminates the main [recruitment] sectors, and the other two important sectors are [Job Q] and [Job Searching Help]. [Job Q] is a free knowledge content community, while [Job Searching Gang] mainly includes some paid courses and services. They try to attract traffic and content through the free knowledge community of [Job Q], and then use the paid course of [Job Hunting] to solve the user's knowledge payment needs.

BOSS Direct Recruitment: Since BOSS Direct Recruitment has not been established for a long time, they are in the development stage. The focus at this time should be to strengthen their own advantages and improve the scale of users. Therefore, his main sectors are [Have] and [News]. [Message] represents the special direct chat function of BOSS Direct Recruitment. [With] provides content Q&A and community functions for their main users to provide job seekers with workplace-related knowledge.

Product structure summary: The product structure reflects their respective product positioning. Zhilian Recruitment focuses on commercialization, and BOSS Direct Recruitment is still polishing its own products.

3. Product Features

Combined with the purpose of analysis: to increase user scale and improve user experience. Through industry analysis, it is concluded that:

• Enterprise: Increase the number of interviewers and improve interview efficiency. Improve the function of "video interview" to provide convenience to interviewers while also providing convenience to enterprises.
• Enterprise: To attract successful people, build community functions by meeting their networking needs.
• Interviewer: Verify the authenticity of the company. Through third-party external links, the function of evaluating the company is added.
• Through the questionnaire, after the interview, the interviewer and the company will be asked. In turn, the feedback function is achieved and the algorithm is improved.

Based on the analysis purpose, through the analysis of Zhilian Recruitment's competitors, it is concluded that:

• It is necessary to increase the number of companies directly recruited by BOSS in new first-tier and second-tier cities to increase the user scale. This goal can be achieved through marketing methods such as ground promotion, operation, and advertising.
• It is necessary to increase the demand for high-end talents in first-tier cities. A platform for providing special services to headhunters and HRs of large enterprises can be developed by developing an independent [high-end talent market].

6. Industry analysis and competitive product analysis summary

Through the PEST model, the online recruitment industry has been developed in the overall background, in the short term and long term, and is a market with high user volume and high frequency.

Against this background, it is found through industry development analysis that it is currently in the development stage and will be in the mature stage in the future. Therefore, the current goal is to increase the number of users and improve the user experience. At the same time, through the analysis of the industry competition trend, referring to the number of users of the two giants Zhilian Recruitment and Qiancheng Wuyou, it also proves that the number of users of BOSS Direct Recruitment has a large room for incremental users, and the high marketing costs of BOSS Direct Recruitment also support my current view. After determining the direction, the competition model is used to meet the user needs from both vertical and horizontal directions, and thus the purpose mentioned above.

With the direction determined, Zhilian Recruitment was selected as the competitor of BOSS Direct Recruitment. In terms of business positioning and organizational structure, Zhilian Recruitment focuses on profitability, and BOSS Direct Recruitment focuses on user scale. The two goals are different, so the strategic goals of BOSS Direct Recruitment are relatively easy to achieve.

Moreover, through the analysis of competitor users of both parties, it was found that BOSS Direct Recruitment has a small user base in new first-tier and second-tier cities, while Zhilian Recruitment has a large user base. Therefore, based on the business goals, we can think about why Zhilian Recruitment has such a large number of users in new first-tier and second-tier cities through comparison, and learn its functional design, and then make the next stage of iteration for BOSS Direct Recruitment to complete its business goals.

In short, the ultimate goal of analysis is to obtain requirements and convert them into functions. Therefore, through industry analysis, I found that the iteration direction of BOSS Direct Recruitment is to increase user scale and user experience. On this basis, combined with the comparative analysis with Zhilian Recruitment, I thought about a series of requirements and functions for the iteration direction in the next stage:

The results of thinking are as follows:

Author: Wang Zai 5438

Source: Wang Zai 5438