I am inside the wall, suddenly went viral, first time being responded to, turns out so many people are watching my videos?! Today's blockbuster, a full record of the brutal reality of the autumn recruitment! Qiqi Baba TALK Episode 1018 20261102

In this episode, host Qiqi responds to comments left by netizens inside China under her video and explores the safety hazards of current housing in China. Subsequently, the program focuses on the brutal reality of the autumn campus recruitment for the class of 2027. Through the testimony of multiple fresh graduates and scenes at job fairs, it thoroughly analyzes the hell-mode job search difficulty, the torment of massive online assessments and AI interviews, early internships, workforce downsizing at tech giants, and other grim employment realities.

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Full Transcript:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Qiqi Baba. I'm Qiqi. First of all, I want to say I'm sorry, because I really didn't know that friend outside would actually watch my video.

Hey, my friend, don't mess around like that, okay? I am not like you; I cannot talk recklessly online. My parents are still inside China.

Right?

I'm not like you. You've already thrown caution to the wind over there, right? Ah, what am I supposed to do? My parents are over there, and I still have property in China, and money there. How would I dare to talk recklessly? Gosh, I still want to live my life normally. Figure some things out clearly before you post, okay? Ah, I'm not like you. You've already cast everything off online, so what about me?

Right?

I don't dare, don't dare to speak recklessly; I'm terrified.

Right?

Ah, well, oh dear, I don't know what I should say either. It's better to say less, better to say just a couple fewer sentences.

I didn't expect to see a response like this! First of all, I can understand that you wish you could speak freely like me, just as you said yourself. But, but that's not a reason for you to post your previous video—you can't just speak recklessly, even if it means staying silent instead. When facing this kind of issue, coming out to deliver such a passionate speech... what you said will actually mislead many people, and might incite the emotions of those who don't know the truth, subsequently escalating the situation. All I'm saying is, if you actually understand how things are in your heart, or if in essence you agree with me, then please stop aiding the tyrant in doing evil, okay?

This is what I mentioned before: the current housing issue in China isn't just about unfinished projects or plummeting house prices; the biggest issue is actually safety. Look at the condition of this house—there is no way it meets safety standards! I don't know how the inspection was done, or maybe there was no inspection at all. If the price of preventing housing from being unfinished is fixing the safety issue, then honestly, it would be better if it remained unfinished. Everyone probably thinks so too, right?

Next is the main topic we need to talk about today: let's take a look at the situation with this year's autumn recruitment.

The autumn recruitment for the 27th session this year is simply hellish in terms of difficulty. I actually thought that with two internships at major companies like Pinduoduo and Alibaba, and although I'm from a non-Project 985/211 undergraduate background, I am a Master's student from a 985 university, plus these three internships, I should at least have a safety net even if I don't land a top-tier result in the autumn recruitment. As it turns out, I don't have a single offer yet. Every day is just endless assessments, written tests, and AI interviews, and honestly, each one is particularly disgusting. For every assessment, you have to complete hundreds of questions, and after you finish, you still can't even get an interview. It's like being assigned homework every day; when you apply to a company, they send you an assessment and a written test, and once you receive it, you do it, and then there's no response. Then you apply to another batch, and it's an infinite loop. I haven't even had a single interview yet, and I'm starting to wonder if the autumn recruitment is already halfway through or if it's already over? And it wasn't like this at all during the summer. During the summer, my friends around me could all get interviews; as long as you applied, you would at least get an interview.

And in the end, everyone could get summer internships at major companies. But now? As for the entire autumn recruitment, according to my friends, even those who are from non-985/211 undergraduate backgrounds but have 985 Master's degrees, and some who have two internships at major companies, are basically in a state of having no offers, except for those who converted their internships into full-time positions. And I can see on the internet that many bloggers have better backgrounds than mine, and they are also very miserable. The whole autumn recruitment is just very torturous; every day I feel like a useless person, like a total failure.

And every day, what I fear most is the concern from my relatives. My sister asked me today how the autumn recruitment is going. Honestly, I can't even answer that question. I fear this concern from relatives the most; it just makes me feel like I'm breaking down. I even doubt myself now: how did I manage to get so many offers when I was interning in my second year of graduate school last year? I really can't distinguish between the me of the summer and the me of now; I really can't tell.

A 985 graduate student attending a job fair to look for work, sigh, I feel like I'm really going to be unemployed.

I'm unemployed, I can't find a job at all.

Let's go to the job fair! Let me see which companies are here today. I'm completely overwhelmed, my god, there are so many people! My ears are already starting to ring. Actually, many companies still need fresh graduates, and there is even resume guidance here.

Hey, it's quite comprehensive.

Ugh, I'm exhausted! I'm lying on my bed now, let me share some takeaways from attending the job fair. First of all, there were really a lot of people on-site, and everyone was very anxious. Then, a few larger internet companies came, but they didn't have HR representatives present; they probably just collected resumes uniformly and sent them to the company. So, for these well-known big internet companies, I didn't even look at them at the time. Then, there was a smaller internet company, and their HR was very nice and chatted with me. It's really too competitive now. They said they had never seen such outstanding resumes before, and they couldn't even screen them anymore.

They even shared with me that they didn't even consider someone with a Fudan undergraduate and Master's degree and multiple internships at top-tier companies, and they were also looking for internship-to-full-time conversions. Anyway, that's the situation with the internet industry right now. I also learned that for some companies, after I applied online, there was no response, or they just defaulted to a silent rejection. But when I applied offline, the HR pulled me back in, saying that their system might be rigid sometimes, or the AI screening might not be very smart, so it screened out my resume. But applying offline allowed them to pull me back in; that's one point. Another problem is that sometimes when your resume is rejected, it's not because your resume is bad, but simply because that position isn't hiring. Because there was a company where I had a position I was interested in, and I felt I was quite a good match in all aspects, so I asked the HR why there was no response after I applied. The HR told me that this position had already canceled campus recruitment, but the posting was still up. I don't understand; this situation is quite common. Also, many education and training companies came online. To be honest, the education and training companies really offer quite a lot, and I feel that the teachers in the education and training sector are very enthusiastic, especially the HR.

Yeah.

It is really, really, really hard to find a job right now; things are no longer like they used to be. An HR person even shared with me that at our school, there were people who secured admissions through Peking University's summer camp but still ended up coming to our university. They shouldn't have come at all; they should have just entered the workforce straight out of Peking University with their bachelor's degree.

There was another company where, looking at the entire job description, my past internships actually matched quite well. But that HR person told me directly and very honestly that this position only recruits men. The reason was that it involves a lot of business trips, and we would have to go overseas to set up exhibitions. Much of it is actually physical labor, because during the exhibition setup you need to move a lot of things and so on. So he just told me straight out: it's not that I'm not good enough, nor that I don't match, but simply because, given the nature of the position, it is too exhausting for women. Ah, well, anyway, before attending this on-campus job fair, every day I was—how should I put it—just lying flat, and whether I had interview invitations or not, life was pretty fine. After attending it, I became even more anxious. I feel like I really won't be able to find a job.

Let me give everyone an overview of what job hunting looks like right now. After posting my last video, I realized many people still lack an accurate perception of today's employment environment. So let me lay it out for you: normally, our job-hunting process should be like this—for instance, if you graduate in June this year, the autumn recruitment starts in September of the previous year, right? September to December of the previous year is the autumn recruitment, and March to June is the spring recruitment. Whenever you land an offer you're satisfied with, you can give yourself a break and wait until July of the following year to start working. That was the standard process for us in previous years. But what is the situation like nowadays? First, before autumn recruitment, there's a summer internship. It's called a "summer" internship. Normally, we understand that to mean recruiting people around late June or early July, interning at the company for about two months, passing the defense, and securing a return offer; then you can enjoy your break for the rest of the year, right? But summer internships over the past two years have gotten increasingly outrageous. Under the banner of "summer," they start recruiting in March, or even as early as December. Autumn recruitment has also shifted from originally starting in September to launching early-bird batches as early as July. What's more, graduates from "double-non" universities (non-Project 985/211) basically can't even get a seat at the table during autumn recruitment. Some students might think: my undergraduate degree isn't very good, so I'll test into a 985 university or test into a top master's program. Well, autumn recruitment doesn't care about that; they look at your initial bachelor's degree. Because it's the kind of application system where you fill out forms online, the system basically filters you out directly. OK, so once we enter the full campus recruitment process, what does it look like? First, you have to do online applications. First, you have to locate the materials published by various enterprises. It's not like an exam where everything is stamped with one official seal and compiled into a single big spreadsheet—no, each company opens its applications individually, and each company opens at a different time. This requires you to collect and organize information. This part is relatively simple; there are job-hunting accounts that compile it for you, and spending a little money can take care of it. What do we do after getting the information? Online applications. I really don't understand why this garbage practice has persisted for so many years. Clearly submitting one resume across all companies should be enough, but they say no, it won't do; you must go to each company's official website and fill in your information field by field. Even with an AI assistant, it usually takes about ten minutes to fill in one application. Moreover, many companies ask questions that are extremely intrusive to privacy and completely bizarre. For example, your top five favorite books, your family background, or what your parents do for a living. Once that's done, you move on to the assessments. And these assessments take two hours, asking very tricky questions. For STEM majors it's not so bad, since they have some actual coding or engineering-related questions. But for those comprehensive aptitude assessments, they are basically indistinguishable from civil service exam questions. The most disgusting question, in my opinion, is giving you three positive adjectives and asking you to pick the one that fits you best and the one that fits you least. Furthermore, many companies use the exact same question bank for their assessments, yet your records can't be saved—you have to do them all over again for every single company. It is purely an obedience test; it is purely tormenting people. OK, after talking so much...

Only now have we reached the assessment stage. What comes after the assessment?

AI interviews—wow, those AI interviews are also extremely disgusting. Its text recognition really has issues, and many companies buy the exact same AI interview system. You might be interviewing with different companies, but you're facing the exact same AI persona avatar, which is just really bizarre. Also, these assessment AI interviews are way too aggressive. Many of them are sent out right over the weekend with strict time limits, giving you only one day to finish, which is really so awful. After passing the AI interview, it's an endless series of rounds—first round, second round, third round, fourth round. Campus recruitment interviews are a level higher than internship interviews. Basically, it goes from your team lead, meaning your +1 manager, then +2, +3, and in some smaller companies, you might even interview with a big departmental leader, or even the second or third in command of the entire company. Because these big shots have very tight schedules, your interview process gets stretched out indefinitely. OK, after going through this whole process, do you think it's over? Obviously not. Even if you pass all the interview rounds, there is still a horizontal comparison. For example, if a position hires five people, but ten people have all fully passed the interviews, then in this final filtering stage, they take forever to screen. The most excessive one is Huawei. With Huawei, you might have passed all interviews by December, but you might have to wait until March, April, or May of the following year for them to release the results. Endless waiting in the talent pool—we call it the "Huaqing Pool". Right, you'd think that after such a long, disgusting process, the job you're interviewing for must be a high-spec, high-paying position, right? Sorry, excuse me, throughout the entire interview process, you have no idea what your salary will be. Only after you receive the offer will HR discuss the salary with you, and only then do you find out how much the job actually pays. You might put in all that effort interviewing for ages, only to discover that the job pays a mere 8k or 8k, a salary you could easily find anywhere through regular experienced hiring. There's even worse. A friend of mine told me he interviewed for a position, and when he finally asked about the salary at the end, HR told him it was confidential. Wow, I'm looking for a job and my salary becomes confidential information? Nobody is an idiot, okay? Then there's the advance internship trend that has proliferated over the past two years. In the past, with normal autumn recruitment, after receiving an offer, you only needed to report after graduation; it didn't matter if you didn't show up during those few months in between. But starting from last year's Class of 2026, for what was originally an autumn recruitment position, after you interviewed so many times, they tell you to do an advance internship before a conversion defense. Or, if you're lucky, they give you an offer but keep pushing you to do an advance internship. Now, if everyone else comes, how can you feel comfortable not coming? And if you go against the team before you even officially join, will you feel comfortable after joining? Can you survive? Can you pass the probation period? Right now, it's just a test of very, very absurd obedience.

Yes, and another reason is because of the current development of AI. Although many AI-related positions have been created, downsizing is also extremely severe. The leader of my friend's team explicitly stated that if there is no particularly matching candidate, the budget used for headcounts would be better spent directly on tokens. Today I also scrolled across a post saying that ByteDance had 5,000 headcounts last year, and it dropped to just over 1,000 this year. Tencent also seems to have dropped to just over 1,000 headcounts this year. I'm not sure if this data is accurate, but overall everyone is indeed cutting headcounts. And do you think that after going through all kinds of hardships to get an offer and start working, everything will be smooth sailing? Not at all. My friend works at a company—I won't say which one. Although they are in hard tech B2B sales, there is a two-month training period upon joining, and these two months of training will genuinely weed people out. If they fire you by then, you will only have two months of training experience rather than work experience. In addition, because the employment environment has been getting worse over the past two years, more and more companies don't even bother to put on an act anymore; they directly lay off fresh graduates. Laying off a fresh graduate only costs them a few thousand yuan in compensation, whereas laying off an old employee might cost over 100,000 yuan. Previously, companies might have felt that laying off fresh graduates would ruin their reputation and be unfavorable for recruiting new people later. But now, since everyone can't find jobs anyway, enterprises are in an absolute position of strength. So what if their reputation is bad? If I still offer you a job, there are still so many people willing to take it. Therefore, reputation doesn't matter anymore; everyone is simply being shameless. If you search for various topics about major tech companies rescinding offers to fresh graduates, you can find a huge number of entries. Once you start working, do you think you're in the clear? Because everyone knows that major tech companies are currently on a downward trend, all the new directions they are trying out, especially in AI, are just burning money to test the waters. This means many projects cannot be sustained, and there is a lot of bubble inside. They throw money, resources, and manpower at getting everyone to try out these projects. If a project fails, the entire thing might be scrapped. After joining, what you face is a lack of systematic training; everyone is figuring things out as they go. You will also face a six-month probation assessment, annual performance appraisals, and the company will continuously recruit newcomers and refresh its blood. What you will face is an endless stream of evaluations. At times like this, it is very hard for you to slack off, and it is also very hard to accumulate and build up your personal capabilities. Sharing these with you today, I think this is all relatively open and transparent information. Perhaps for younger students, there is a bit of an information barrier, so I came to sync up with you. This is truly not fear-mongering; this is the current reality.

And then? Right beside me, I will display the comment section of this video. Friends, if you don't have time to watch, you can pause and take a look, and you will understand the situation of this autumn recruitment season. It's not just about one or two people, or one or two cities, or certain regions in China—it's everything, absolutely everything, nationwide without exception. When employment in a country is difficult to this extent, who could look at this and not say: it's almost over.

Alright, the above is all the content for this episode. If you want to support me, please join the membership channel. Also, I really hope that during live streams, we can chat and talk in real time. If you have any questions, feel free to throw them at me and ask; I will answer everything I can. That's all for this episode, see you in the next one.