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Wen/Traveler Editor/Mr. Dan
Source/Bullet Finance
BOSS direct recruitment finally went public in the United States.
On May 22, BOSS Direct Hiring submitted a prospectus to the Securities Regulatory Commission of the United States, which became the focus of capital attention. On June 10, BOSS Direct Hiring updated the prospectus and was officially listed on June 11.
According to the latest prospectus information, BOSS direct employment will publicly issue 48 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at a price of $19 per share, raising about $912 million, with a total market value of $7.599 billion at the opening.
This valuation has exceeded the public valuation of 51job, which is $5 billion, and the sum of Zhilian recruitment, which can only have a valuation of $1.7 billion in the private equity market due to delisting, becoming the highest valuation recruitment platform in China.
Of course, achieving such a high valuation, to some extent, indicates that BOSS direct employment has its own financial performance and has been recognized by the capital market.
Therefore, at the listing ceremony held at 20:40 on June 11, Zhao Peng, the direct founder and CEO of BOSS, said that he would like to thank this era. "We have caught up with an era of technological revolution and entrepreneurship, which gives us the soil and space for our survival and development."
Interestingly, because of the fear of breaking the deal at the opening or for other reasons, BOSS Direct Hire held a bell ringing ceremony at 20:40 Beijing time on June 11, but the shares still failed to be listed and traded two hours later. All investors could only stare at the sign of suspension of BOSS Direct Hire.
According to the data in the IPO application, as of the first quarter of 2021, BOSS has 85.8 million certified job seekers who have filled in their basic personal information and job expectations, and 13 million certified enterprise end users who have passed enterprise identity authentication.
Such outstanding data performance has made BOSS direct recruitment popular with many secondary market investment banks and considered it as a "breaker" to break the deadlock in China's online recruitment market.
According to the prospectus, the average monthly active users (MAUs) directly employed by BOSS in 2019 and 2020 were 11.5 million and 19.8 million, with an increase of 73.2%; In the first quarter of 2021, the average number of monthly active users has reached 24.9 million, with a year-on-year growth of 71.8%. Of course, as a recruitment platform, the MAU index calculation of BOSS direct recruitment includes both job seekers and enterprise users.
According to the financial statements, the revenue of BOSS direct employment at this stage mainly comes from online recruitment services for enterprise customers. According to different customer needs, it can be divided into two types: self-service small short-term services and direct sales team tracking large long-term services, namely the so-called pay per order or pay per year.
Therefore, the financial report shows that in 2019 and 2020, the operating revenue of BOSS direct employment will be 999 million yuan and 1.944 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 94.7%. By the first quarter of 2021, the revenue will be 789 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 179%.
In addition, from 2019 to 2020, the number of paying enterprise customers directly employed by BOSS increased from 1.24 million to 2.23 million, with a year-on-year growth of 80.1%; In the 12 months to March 31, 2021, the number of paying enterprise customers directly employed by BOSS has reached 2.89 million.
Because of this performance, the media also regarded BOSS direct recruitment as an emerging force "competing with traditional online recruitment websites", and some media even labeled the listing process of BOSS direct recruitment with the concept of "industry disruption rebirth".
However, if you study the business and financial statements of BOSS direct employment, you will find that this enterprise seems to have a good market performance all the way, but it has "hidden secrets".
one
Who is BOSS?
BOSS direct employment has been criticized by many people for a long time, among which the most puzzling point for job seekers is: Is the person who communicates with himself on BOSS direct employment the BOSS of the enterprise?
Looking back in 2014, BOSS direct recruitment entered the Internet recruitment arena, making the most core advertising language and the logic of the whole project entrepreneurship, which is to bring BOSS himself to the recruitment site to communicate with applicants one-on-one, forming a two-way choice of Internet instant communication space.
Thanks to such a novel and interesting recruitment logic, BOSS direct recruitment has achieved leapfrog growth in just five years, and even now its market value has exceeded that of the "traditional online recruitment" (51job and Liepin).
However, there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
The feature of "face-to-face communication with BOSS", which has been vigorously promoted by BOSS direct recruitment, has gradually become the focus of many attacks.
Although in the prospectus, BOSS direct recruitment identified that there were more than 66% of communicators on its platform, namely, HR, non professional recruiters, but the boss himself. Therefore, they believe that the business of the platform meets their own expectations and market promotion.
However, more and more applicants who submit their resumes on BOSS direct employment find that they do not communicate with the boss of the intended company at all, but have more opportunities for HR to communicate on behalf of them.
In order to verify this, "Bullet Finance" invited 132 HRs from different types of companies to participate in an online survey on BOSS direct recruitment. The survey results show that more than 90% of companies using BOSS direct recruitment communicate with HRs throughout the recruitment process, rather than the boss himself.
In this regard, some users have raised questions in BOSS direct employment before, and the answer given by relevant personnel of BOSS direct employment is that HR is also one of enterprise managers, so it is also called BOSS.
However, there are two data in the survey of 132 HRs conducted by Bullet Finance, which completely "slapped" the above statement. The survey found that more than half of the HRs were between 25 and 30 years old. When asked whether they could make a direct decision on the relevant conditions of the candidate, more than 90% of the HRs said they were not good and needed to consult the boss.
This means that in actual work, the vast majority of HR employees in BOSS direct employment only play a role of microphone and resume screening. If such functions are considered as the responsibilities of enterprise managers, the level of enterprise managers will be lowered.
Ms. Dong, HR of a consulting company participating in the survey, also said to "Bullet Finance" that she only did two things when logging in to BOSS direct recruitment. One was to release the company's job introduction, and the other was to communicate with the candidates who delivered their resumes and found the candidates who met the job needs, hoping they would participate in the company's interview.
"In HR's understanding, BOSS direct employment is just an additional channel for direct communication and confirmation of the other party's interest in the company without calling. Because it has now become a channel and platform in HR work, it is impossible for the boss to participate personally. In fact, the company is slightly larger, and many interview bosses don't look at it, not to mention the first round of screening resumes or communicating with applicants during business trips, so I think most of the enterprises' accounts in BOSS direct employment are used by HR. " Ms. Dong said.
Therefore, from this point of view, the idea and logic of BOSS direct employment, which has been vigorously publicized and taken as the core of the business, has not been implemented in the real operational level, or is difficult to implement.
This may cause investors in the secondary market to doubt the integrity of the company.
two
Behind the payment business
Of course, BOSS is not only a gimmick for direct recruitment of BOSS, but also a source of their income. According to the BOSS direct employment prospectus, 99.1% of the company's operating income in 2020 comes from the employer.
In fact, according to the product policy of BOSS direct recruitment, if an enterprise wants to publish relevant positions on BOSS direct recruitment, it is free, but if it wants to let applicants see it, it must pay. Whether it is to purchase the display and communication authority of a single position for only one month, or to purchase one member in a package to release three positions, or to purchase members in a unified year to become key customers, enterprises cannot enjoy the recruitment services provided by BOSS direct recruitment without paying.
From this perspective, under the condition that enterprises must pay, the stability of the number of enterprises registered on the platform determines the degree of continuity and stability of BOSS direct employment business.
The problem is that from the data point of view, although BOSS direct recruitment has become the largest online recruitment platform in China, most of the real active ones are small and micro enterprises. According to the data in the prospectus, the key customers (big customers) directly employed by BOSS accounted for only 18.47% of the operating revenue, and the remaining 80% of the operating revenue came from small and medium-sized customers, which is often referred to as small and micro enterprises.
In China, the average life span of small and micro enterprises is 2.5 years, which determines that the BOSS direct employment of small and micro enterprises is more volatile in terms of operating income and less resilient.
For the use of mandatory fees for BOSS directly employed enterprise terminals, the 132 HR participants in our survey clearly divided into two main points of view: the number of people who think "can pay" and "unwilling to pay" accounted for nearly 50% respectively.
When asked "why do you make such a decision", HR Li Bin, a network technology company that chose "can pay", said to "Bullet Finance" that he understood very well that the long-term development of a platform must have a normal cash flow and business model, and they are also willing to pay the corresponding costs for the recruitment service of BOSS direct recruitment. But he also understands that those HR who choose the "don't agree" mode, "BOSS direct employment is not very friendly to enterprises, and even we spend money to buy services is not ideal."
The results of another data item in the survey just proved Li Bin's point of view. When investigating HR's views on the review function related to BOSS direct employment, 50% of the interviewed HR said that the biggest problem of BOSS direct employment is that there is no review mechanism for applicants and there are many fraudsters; However, the HR who chose "general review effect" and "virtual enterprise review" accounted for the remaining 50%.
None of the 132 enterprise HRs interviewed believed that the review function of BOSS direct employment was relatively perfect.
"Now, when enterprises log into BOSS direct recruitment, they are willing to pay if they can find candidates that meet the needs of the enterprise and communicate in detail, so as to improve the success rate of recruitment." Li Bin told "Bullet Finance", and he also believed that, BOSS direct recruitment does not control the candidates strictly enough, or even does not review them, which makes them have many concerns about the resumes on the platform. They must carry out multiple rounds of screening and comparison to make the final employment decision.
"There are many fraudsters applying for BOSS direct employment, which has become a hindrance in the HR circle." In Li Bin's opinion, if this problem is not solved properly, enterprises will be less motivated to pay for BOSS direct employment services in the future.
"After all, it is impossible for us to get a pile of worthless resumes for payment, which is actually the biggest problem that BOSS direct recruitment faces now," said Li Bin. He thought it was a pity that BOSS direct recruitment was listed now, but he still did not see effective improvement measures on this issue.
While almost all of the income of BOSS direct employment comes from the payment of enterprises, which means that its main customer is the enterprise side, so serving the needs of enterprises well is the most important thing for this platform.
The problem is that the entire platform is not active in dealing with the above issues at present, and these issues may directly affect the stability of BOSS's direct employment revenue in the future.
three
Weakening of the sole advantage
In fact, for BOSS direct employment, serving the enterprise well and gradually obtaining stable and growing income should be the top priority. However, after several years of advertising and brand marketing, BOSS direct employment has not yet achieved profitability.
The prospectus shows that in 2019 and 2020, the net losses of BOSS's direct employment were 502 million yuan and 942 million yuan respectively, and the adjusted losses were 468 million yuan and 285 million yuan respectively, narrowing year on year, but it is undeniable that the losses are still continuing.
The key is that the so-called loss adjustment is carried out on the financial statements, but there is no increase or decrease in the actual losses. In fact, the high growth of BOSS direct employment and the current high loss are due to its efforts in market launch.
The prospectus shows that in 2019, BOSS direct employment invested 917 million yuan in marketing and advertising, and by 2020, this figure will rise rapidly to 1.347 billion yuan, with a growth rate of more than 60%.
This means that BOSS direct employment has invested nearly 1.4 billion yuan in advertising in 2020, but has obtained a net loss of more than 900 million yuan.
By the first quarter of 2021, the advertising marketing of BOSS direct employment had spent 619 million yuan, nearly double the amount of the first quarter of 2020. It still failed to make a profit, but lost nearly 176 million yuan.
If the trend in 2021 continues, the annual advertising and marketing investment of BOSS direct employment may reach a record high, but the amount of loss may be almost the same as that in 2020.
What's even more ironic is that BOSS Direct Hire explicitly stated in the prospectus that nearly 35% of the funds raised after the listing will be used for the next stage of marketing activities. This means that BOSS direct recruitment will also carry out large-scale market launch in exchange for the rapid growth of user data.
From the perspective of business logic of BOSS direct recruitment, we can easily understand its current development situation of "burning money for investment to increase growth".
After all, the important reason that BOSS direct recruitment attracts enterprise payment is that it has an increasingly large application database and resume database. However, because there is no mandatory requirement that "every enterprise must have its boss participate in recruitment activities and negotiate with candidates online", the turnover rate of high-quality candidates on the BOSS direct recruitment platform is not low.
In order to solve this problem, BOSS direct employment has to carry out large-scale advertising, and constantly expand its influence in the C-end by "fishing through the sea net", making more and more applicants register for BOSS direct employment and deliver resumes.
Graph/photo network, based on VRF protocol
Only by maintaining such a positive cycle can it continue to obtain stable revenue from the enterprise side.
However, the problem is that BOSS direct recruitment only focuses on market launch and ignores the construction of service capacity. The platform does not provide sound services for enterprise recruitment, and its willingness to pay for BOSS direct recruitment is also gradually reduced.
This may be the most important problem encountered by BOSS direct recruitment, rather than how to expand the data of newly registered job seekers or recruiters.
Perhaps, the team directly employed by BOSS should slow down, sort out their products and services, and increase their ability and stability to serve enterprise users.
Because only by doing this, the willingness of enterprises to pay can be gradually strengthened, and BOSS direct employment can officially enter the positive cycle of "getting rid of losses".
Otherwise, even if the listing is successful, I'm afraid that BOSS direct employment will still have to hand over a loss report. The money raised may only buy loneliness for shareholders.
In a sense, BOSS directly hired Internet companies to meet all the mistakes they might encounter in the process of "fighting high and growing fast". However, how to stop losses and correct mistakes in time to seek more competitive barriers for enterprises is the long-term plan. Otherwise, a successful listing may also be the beginning of another adventure.
*The title in the article is from: Photographic Network, based on VRF protocol.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
