Lagou.
com
Vertical Recruitment Leads the New Mode of
Internet Recruiting for Young People Obtaining
Better Career Growth
lagou.com is a vertical recruitment website specially designed
for senior practitioners with 3 to 10 years work experience
in the Internet industry, offering job opportunities. lagou.com
provides more humanized and professional services to job
seekers, and also narrows the time and cost of searching
talents. lagou.com is devoted to helping people make better
career choices. It also lets applicants make every career
choice more sensible. lagou.com was introduced in July
20, 2013. At Present, 84,000 Internet companies have
chosen lagou.com, including both mature enterprises (Baidu,
Tencent, Alibaba, Sina, Youku and Letv) and newcomers in
Internet industry (qunar.com, jumei.com, Smartisan, xiaomi.
com and wandoujia.com). These enterprises cover 25 niche
markets in the Internet industry, for instance, mobile Internet,
e-commerce, gaming, O2O, big data, cloud computing, social
networking, Internet finance, online education and online
travel.
If you wish to identify a dark horse in China's Internet
recruitment industry, it must be lagou.com. lagou.com was
from 3W caf, Zhongguancun. After launched on July 20,
2013, it has received several rounds of financing in just two
years, including $25 million B round (RMB 150 million). It
accumulates about 2.6 million registered users and 84 000
Internet enterprises. In a competitive online recruitment
market, lagou.com with impressive brand image and strong
momentum of development is implementing a subversion and
"ambition".
Precise Market Positioning, Focusing on
Vertical Internet Recruitment
lagou.com is an Internet product derived from 3W caf. 3W
caf is originally dedicated to provide people in the Internet
circle a place for holding a party or salon. In the process of
communication among Internet professionals they gradually
created a strong demand for Internet talents. So 3W caf set
up their own executive search firm, which develops smoothly.
Because three founders Xu Dandan, Ma Delong and Bao
Aile all have Internet background, and puts forward the idea
14 Best 100 Human Resource Service Brands Ranking and Whitepaper in Greater China 2015
of changing the headhunting into Internet products. Online
recruitment, however, is the red sea market. It includes not
only a large number of mature giants but also homogeneous
products. It is more difficult for competitors to obtain higher
profit and occupy the competitive advantage than ever before.
In order to have its own place in the fierce competition, the
industry's rising star has to make its own characteristics and
finds a piece of blue ocean market. At the beginning, the three
founders of lagou.com choose a different approach to create
a "Compact but Cheerful" platform focusing on the vertical
recruitment in Internet industry. As Mr. Xu, chairman of lagou.
com, just said it overturned the headhunting by Internet.
It is noticeable that 58.com and ganji have already occupied
the recruitment of low-end labor market. The main
professional and business social network such as LinkedIn
and Dajie focus on the high-end recruitment market in the
financial, biological pharmaceutical industry. The recruitment
for the Internet industry is still blank. More important is the
development of the Internet industry is significant. The
demands for the new companies and talents are large. It
also strengthens the activities of talents. Xu Dandan pointed
out that these requirements showed that in the Internet
industry, to build a vertical recruitment website is feasible. At
the beginning, statistics of Lagou.com show that at present
there are about 5 million domestic IT professionals. 70% of
them change jobs every 2-3 years, which means that lagou.
com has about 1.2 million Internet recruitment target users.
The goal of lagou.com is to occupy 60% of the market, and
become a leader in a specific division market.
At this point, the brand market positioning of lagou.com is
very clear. Xu Dandan once said, "Our targeted population is
Internet practitioners who are under 300,000 of annual salary,
under 6 years of experience ". The quality of job seekers is
strictly checked. What is the next step of lagou.com? Over
the past years, China's employment market has shown a
trend that employers are more powerful than job seekers. For
job seekers, the process of job hunting is time-consuming.
lagou.com overturns the rules. It starts from the customers
needs which is different from the previous pattern. lagou.
com, meanwhile, pays attention to service, web traffic and
interpersonal relationship for improving the user experience. It
tries to capture new opportunities in a new type of recruitment
pattern.
Users Supremacy: New Recruitment O2O Pattern
At the beginning of the foundation, lagou.com hold a strong
attitude towards enterprises. It regards job seekers interests
as the first. It tries to solve the problems of job seekers finding
a job in time, feedback and respect. lagou.com requires
enterprise to release detailed information about requirements,
salary range, the scale of enterprise, the boss and rounds of
financing. Out of these principles, lagou.com once said "no"
to Tesla and JD those well-known companies. In addition,
through the lagou.com platform, job seekers can also directly
check the personal Weibo links of founders, the company's
home page and the office location. Due to the precise match,
job seekers will have the high possibility of being interviewed.
Meanwhile, lagou.com also adopted recruitment O2O
mode combining online recruitment and offline activities.
In general, by the end of the year, it is the slack season for
recruitment industry. In December 2014, however, lagou.com
invested 5 million to build "Internet Recruitment Storming
Week". The activity mobilizes talent market demand. It is
an unprecedented success. For a period of seven days,
"Internet Recruitment Storming Week" introduced e-business
thinking. According to the different job requirements and the
characteristics of the enterprises, it has a special recruitment
activity from online to offline. It held 18 special recruitment
online activities, for instance, design, technology, products,
e-business, finance, game, automobile and LGBT. Offline
recruitment is divided into two parts: the local tyrants (Tencent,
JD, Youku) and the promising industries (Internet finance,
Best 100 Human Resource Service Brands Ranking and Whitepaper in Greater China 2015
vertical social software, car rental, overseas online shopping).
Different from the traditional sense of the offline recruitment
exhibition, companys founders are at present in the lagou.
com activity, and can give the offer immediately.
lagou.com focuses on the user experience and help people
make better career choices. Meanwhile, it tries to decrease
the time and cost of seeking talents for enterprises.
Compared with the CV, lagou.com believes that high-end
talents are more willing to face-to-face communicate with
CEOs. In early 2015, lagou.com launched "lagou Banquet"
an Internet O2O program. With a more relaxed atmosphere,
it provides the private meeting place for high-end Internet
practitioners with more than 5 years and CEOs. This new
type of recruitment attracted much attention of the Internet.
In order to meet the emotional needs of the users, lagou.com
also did a lot of humanized design and service. The system
of company E-mail signature uses lagou.com Product
Manager instead of Lagou.com. The users feel that this is a
real person rather than the unemotional information sent by
the computer. And products are updated with services, "lagou
Plus" and "Pai.lagou" are two new products launched in
2015. Under the agreements of users, "lagou Plus" can help
enterprises actively find talents. " Pai.lagou" provides high-
end services for Internet practitioners with more than 3 years
working experience and the annual salary over 300,000.
It cooperates with DIDICHUXING to pick up the interview
applicants.
Event Marketing Achievement Brand
Promotion
During the startup, the connections of 3w cafe brings lagou.
com great money and attention. Through the Internet and
social media platforms, lagou.com has been well publicized.
The founder and CEO of lagou.com, Ma Delong, once said
that every time a new product launch, he will forward the
message in his own WeChat. The number of forwarding
is often more than the number of his friends. In the age of
Internet, if the enterprise wants to develop, it must have
enough visibility. How to obtain? The marketing strategy of
lagou.com is closely linked to its pioneering Internet O2O
recruitment mode. By making use of hot issues, it achieves
the market branding with its own attitudes.
In December 2014, lagou.com built "Internet Recruitment
Storming Week", followed by the annual planning of
"Ambitions - future Open Day of lagou.com". It was
successively held in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, lead to
15
the local Internet people participate in it. Data show that three
offline activities of lagou.com had more than 3500 people.
This move is to justify ambition that ambition is a feature of the
modern time. Combined with two events lagou.com enhances
the viscosity of users.
The event marketing of lagou.com is also embodied in the
rapid reaction. On March 18, 2015, after the news of Yahoo
will close its Beijing research and development center was
released. On that afternoon, lagou.com launched a recruitment
project shows its humanistic care. lagou.com stresses the
outstanding contributions to the global Internet made by
researchers, and encourage them to join the outstanding
Chinese Internet companies. On the next day afternoon, lagou.
com led more than 20 Internet companies including Tencent,
Baidu, JD to recruit Yahoo laid-off workers. Recruiters are
crowding at the spot, companies such as Microsoft also
temporarily send to the site and joined the activity.
lagou.com has many similar marketing events. For example, in
May 2015, after PM Li Keqiang arrived at 3w caf. lagou.com
announced to start financial recruitment at the same day. PM
Coffee is popular on the social media platforms, lagou.com
attracted a lot of fans. In short, in the marketing level, lagou.
com is good at using news and hot issues related to their
focus. It uses the Internet and social media to get extensive
attention. It enhances exposure in the popular events and
promotes brand influence.
16 Best 100 Human Resource Service Brands Ranking and Whitepaper in Greater China 2015
Build the Internet Professional Growth Platform
in the Future
From its establishment, lagou.com in two short years won
several rounds of financing. It accumulates about 2.6 million
registered users and 84 000 Internet enterprises. It creates
brilliant achievements. According to lagou.com, recruiting
industry, as a traditional industry, is the earliest industry
transformed by the Internet. But more than 20 years have
passed, the service of recruitment has never upgraded. It
still just to "provide positions & talents". Only the scene of the
service changed from talent market or computers to mobile
phones. The brand proposition of lagou.com is to help every
young people get a better career growth. The future of lagou.
com is not just "Compact but cheerful".
On July 24, 2015, lagou.com announced that its development
strategy will shift from "the Internet recruitment" to "Internet
professional growth platform". It will build the China's largest
Internet career growth platform. lagou.com hopes young
people through the platform obtained more than a job. They
still can obtain professional growth. Since the second half of
2015, lagou.com will gradually launched a series of plan: first,
from the perspective of the original content, it will provide
Internet related information to the user. And then, it will set up
special training team for offline BBS, offline club, and offline
training. lagou.com will also form a business college in the
future.
At the business level, lagou.com will strengthen its service.
Internet finance is now the hottest subdivision industry.
Driven out of the market demand, on May 7, 2015, lagou.
com has announced the service extends to the financial
sector, and establish vertical financial sector recruitment
service platform. Into the financial sector, it does not mean
that lagou.com will change the company temperament. In the
future, according to the needs of the market, lagou.com will
expand into one or two high technology fields. As Xu Dandan
said, "We will never cover the whole industry. We will always
focus on the high income and high-tech talents in three or
four industries."