Following Alibaba's reduction in recruitment, Baidu announced that it would stop recruiting from outside the company starting today. If you want to join, you need Robin's special approval.

On October 20, an internal email about Baidu's suspension of recruitment was circulated. The content of the email showed that Baidu would stop recruiting from that day on. For those with special needs, they would need Robin and I to give special approval before they could recruit. The signature was Lee, and this Lee was Liu Hui, the vice president of human resources at Baidu. Fanxiao was the colleague of this HR executive, who was in charge of recruitment.

Baidu's public relations department has confirmed the authenticity of this email. However, they emphasized that "the reason for stopping recruitment is that Baidu wants to focus on attracting the best talents from society." They also emphasized that Baidu's campus recruitment activities will proceed as planned and will not be affected in any way - it is said that Robin Li will go to Fudan University to give a speech for campus recruitment recently. In other words, social recruitment has stopped, but campus recruitment is still going on (college students can relax).

Baidu is not the first to stop recruiting. In fact, Alibaba also broke similar news before. According to Tencent Technology:

During the military parade holiday this year, Alibaba announced that it would reduce the number of fresh graduates to be recruited in 2016: from the original 3,000 to the rumored 400. Some students have already received verbal offers, while most have been notified that they will have to participate in more intense competition. The salary of the employees who finally succeeded in joining Alibaba has also dropped significantly compared to the past: the monthly salary for algorithm, R&D, and product technical positions is about 10,000 yuan, and the monthly salary for operation positions is about 6,000 yuan.

However, the head of Alibaba's campus recruitment team later denied the claim that the number of employees had been reduced to 400, saying: "So far, Alibaba has issued 1,407 letters of intent for 2015 campus recruitment. We will abide by our promise unless the students voluntarily give up their intention to be employed... Alibaba recognizes all the offers and letters of intent issued, and there is no question of taking them back."

But it is an indisputable fact that Alibaba is freezing its headcount. Six months ago in April, Jack Ma said at Alibaba's annual meeting in Beijing that Alibaba would freeze its headcount this year: "This year, the number of employees in Alibaba Group will not increase by one person. One person will leave and one person will join. The purpose of this is to adjust our team. I think more than 30,000 people are enough."

Baidu currently has 50,000 employees, the largest number of employees among BAT. One of the main reasons for the suspension of recruitment is to solve the current situation of bloated internal staff and low efficiency. Indeed, for any company, managing 50,000 people is a big challenge. Li Yanhong's call for wolfishness a few years ago was also a response to Baidu's "low efficiency and lack of initiative".

In any case, Baidu and Alibaba's "freezing" of social recruitment is not good news for those who have been working in society for several years and want to switch to a large company. In addition, the news of Alibaba and Baidu's "freezing" of people successively, does it also indirectly confirm a certain market trend at the moment?