Two years of failure, botong the entrepreneurial experience. Two times sail

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Two years of failure to touch the product experience

Botong Tong CEO Feng Tao want to enter the online recruitment, is from a few years ago in the watercress to do recruitment team, after two years of accumulation, in the above released the recruitment of more than 100,000 enterprises.

Feng Tao realised that although the traditional three recruiting sites occupy nearly 60% of the recruitment market, but since so many companies are still in the watercress community recruitment, there is clearly some market demand has not been met. As a result, in the second half of 2011, Feng Tao with several partners to another portal, a separate online recruitment website, which is also the predecessor of the Botong Recruitment network.

The first month of the Web site, the results are very gratifying, one months to obtain 100,000 registered users. But then, a series of problems surfaced: User growth was slow, product features were poorly done, and LinkedIn's social attributes were not being bought by users.

In addition, has made the wrong decision in the financing, although has talked many investment institutions, among them also has several to Feng Tao throws the olive branch. But the whole team felt the funding was too small to find a higher valuation for the next investment agency. Finally, Feng Tao missed the best time to finance, causing the company to fall into an awkward predicament, the partnership is also gradually born to Italy.

Feng Tao the whole team at the end of 2013, and only one of the original partners chose to stick around.

This time, Feng Tao will adjust the positioning of the Zhou Botong: increased focus, narrowed the gap, and made a more fragmented market-only for Internet recruitment, especially in the mobile internet market.

There are also a lot of subtraction in the product, "before the product has a strong social properties, similar to the functions of LinkedIn." Recruitment tools and social integration do not do a good job, just cut off as much as possible, to ensure that each function is done to do other things. For example, resume, post and other details of the function, do a full user experience and then realize the next step. Feng Tao said, feeling suddenly found a solid product of the secret.

After the product revision, the results are significant, in less than 6 months, the number of registered enterprises in Botong more than 6,000, these companies have released more than 30,000 job opportunities. Users posted more than 700,000 resumes, the actual registered users are more than 400,000.

And this time, Feng Tao also tightly grasped the favor of capital, from the new line to obtain NetEase capital a round of financing only in less than six months time.

With regard to the use of a round of financing funds, Feng Tao said that part of the fund will be used for product research and development, improve the user experience, and will use a lot of resources to launch a series of recruitment support programs to help the outstanding start-up enterprises to solve the initial recruitment challenges.

Where is the new online recruiting site?

With the recruitment network of 70 million U.S. dollars in the round of financing, pull hook network within one year to get a round, b round of financing, Feng Tao obviously feel, online recruitment site began to regain the attention of the capital market.

Compared with the traditional three recruiting websites 51job, Zhaopin and Chinahr, where is the new online recruiting website?

"The traditional recruiting site is a sales-oriented company, resulting in a large amount of redundant information that makes efficiency less efficient and far from meeting the needs of emerging industries." "Feng Tao Think," and a few new recruitment sites, in the direction of subdivision, the field, the focus of different, product refinement. In addition, the industry's competition is not sufficient, the Internet financial competition is much greater than the recruitment industry. ”

Botong is positioned to serve the mobile Internet recruitment community; Pull the net also only do the Internet enterprise recruitment; The Recruit network is focused on more than three years work experience, the annual salary of more than 100,000 of the elite crowd. "Vertical, subdivision" is a big feature of this new online recruiting business.

In addition to positioning, the three products on the product is also very "grounding gas." In the product style, Zhou Botong very encouraged the "title Party" recruitment information. "The same recruitment information is meaningless, we hope that enterprises can be the most attractive keywords on the topic." For example, the shell network to find product Manager--MOOC College Product manager! Interesting souls will meet!; Another example of an online education start-up companies recruit technical personnel-Green Lake Villa + Daniel Team + Internet education + tens of millions of financing: high salary node.js development. Feng Tao said the most obvious information is very clear to job seekers, which can greatly improve the efficiency of browsing information.

In addition, the experience in watercress tells Feng Tao that community-style interaction is the key to making Zhou Botong stand out. The general recruitment site between the job seekers and the enterprise between the simple flow of information and information flow interaction, but Zhou Botong is the interaction between human beings and people. In addition to some basic enterprise introduction, there are user UGC content. Feng Tao said, "in Zhou Botong is recruiting, only less than 60% is HR, the other is the person in charge of the Employment Department, so that with the job-seekers to communicate more directly smooth." ”

Based on the above reasons, Zhou Botong and pull Hook network interview and entry efficiency are relatively high, you can do the traditional recruitment site 六、七倍, the average user 3~5 a resume can participate in an interview, and every few interviews will be able to successfully get an offer.

The future: Transition from "Tools" to "social"

Feng Tao not satisfied let Zhou Botong only do a recruiting tool, in the future of product planning, Feng Tao still want to let Zhou Botong add "social" element.

"In the future, I hope that certain people will find their careers in Botong," he said. For example, a product designer will discuss which company is paying a high salary and which company has a good career prospects. People with the same career form a circle in which business can be discussed in addition to recruiting. Feng Tao said, but all of this must be Zhou Botong is a very useful recruitment tool for the premise, otherwise none of the implementation.

In fact, LinkedIn is the "recruitment + social" model, but it has not been successful in China. However, the job of social networking in August received 20 million U.S. dollars in the B round of financing, but its users only 800,000, valued as high as 100 million.

Innovation Workshop Partner Chu Hao, who has invested in the intranet, said to NetEase technology that there are many opportunities for online recruitment, but the future development will be slow. In addition, the product model is also the primary stage, there is no way to say which of the certain success, which must fail.

With the current market positioning of Zhou Botong, there are about 3.005 billion potential target users. According to the Internet field, people's average job-hopping time is 1 years, according to the calculation of the market size of more than 1 billion yuan.

In the business model, Zhou Botong admits that it has not yet considered charges, but is expected to be similar to the traditional recruitment site, according to the interview, the effect of the entry fee. However, Feng Tao said, headhunters charge 20% annual salary to do intermediary fees, Zhou Botong can reduce the cost to 1%.

Feng Tao has worked for IBM, after leaving the internet direction of the continuous business start-up, has created a watercress on the largest recruitment team, with more than 300,000 active users, a total of 100,000 companies through the group posted post information.

Feng Tao said, "The traditional recruitment site is a tool for the application of strong attributes, such as the toilet, the user has the need to come, run out, and we hope that the future of Botong to build a reception room, not only have job information, more people behind the post." ”

In addition to CEO Feng Tao, Zhou Botong also has two founders, a technical partner (CTO) Yang De, who has been a technical director in the 115 network. Another is from the "traditional three recruitment sites," The Enterprise executives, responsible for the relevant market operations, is not convenient to disclose their names.

Innovation Workshop Partner Chu Hao: 51job, Zhaopin and other enterprises recruitment mode is too old, after more comfortable survival 10 years, now also should have a new model to subvert them.

But this industry to find a breakthrough, very difficult, at present all enterprises are also doing a try.

At present, China's recruitment is still in a more coarse ore model, the mainstream business model is to rely on spending money, smashing brands, resume, and then sold to enterprises. But the Silicon Valley model is very detailed, from the tool point of entry, social point of entry, service point of entry.

In addition, pull hook nets, Zhou Botong, etc. are still around the Internet field to do recruitment, because the internet demand for talent is more refined, the acceptance of online recruitment is also higher. From tools to breakthrough, Chu Hao that this may be a breakthrough, but the future path will go more slowly than imagined.

While many online recruiters are now getting a lot of money, it does not mean the market is maturing, just that the companies are valuing the money.