The boss takes the lead in taking the civil service exam, "It's getting harder and harder to do business at Amazon"!

Operations are afraid to leave, and sellers "actively" switch to side jobs. In today's cross-border e-commerce environment, everyone sighs: it's getting harder and harder.

With the boss taking the lead, cross-border e-commerce companies have transformed into small teams for civil service examinations

"Cross-border business is a very popular track, and it will certainly remain a sunrise industry in the future, but this sunrise is destined not to belong to me," Li Feng, a former Amazon seller, said to Ennet.

Li Feng was one of the first to enter the cross-border e-commerce industry. In 2017, Li Feng, who was already a senior in college, faced the same job search problem as most college students and was confused about his future career plan. It was during the interview process that Li Feng came across the position of "Amazon Operations" and thus learned about cross-border e-commerce.

Slightly different from the growth trajectory of other sellers, Li Feng only learned about Amazon from an operations position. After that, he did not go to a related company to gain industry experience, but chose to be his own boss.

In 2018, after three months of exploration and understanding, Li Feng opened his first Amazon store before graduation.

"What category were you working on at that time? Why did you choose this category?" asked Yinen.com.

"There is no special reason, I just look at what sells well," Li Feng also admitted that he did not know much about the industry at that time, nor did he know how to look at the market. He just referred to the proportion of some categories of domestic e-commerce. "For example, on Taobao, there are a lot of clothing merchants."

Therefore, Li Feng sold clothes, shoes, accessories, etc. in the early days. However, Li Feng soon found that there were too many categories and they were too complicated. It seemed that everything was easy to sell, but nothing sold well . Within a year, Li Feng switched to the home furnishing track.

According to Li Feng, after switching to home furnishings, for three consecutive years, two or three of his products have been on the Best Seller list in Amazon's sub-categories , and the sales of other products are also very good. During big promotions such as Black Friday, the store can sell more than 3,000 orders in total . " It is no problem to make a small million a year . "

( *Note: Due to various personal reasons, Li Feng said it was inconvenient to show the performance chart for that year)

But the good times were short-lived. Affected by the epidemic in 2020, the return rate of Li Feng's store has become increasingly high. "Shipping is too restricted. If you wait for a long time but still can't receive the goods, of course people will refund the money."

This situation lasted for nearly half a year before it improved, but the decline of Li Feng's store was no longer under control.

I believe sellers will feel the same about the difficulties of cross-border trade in 2021 and 2022. Li Feng was deeply troubled by the congestion of shipping due to the epidemic, inventory backlog, and a serious decline in orders. He was also cheated by a bad freight forwarder. "I saw that all the profits I made before were going to be lost." So in June 2022, Li Feng decided to give up Amazon. "In total, I have been practicing on Amazon for four years."

So how did the group examination for civil service examination start?

When asked about this, Li Feng smiled happily, "I am from Shandong, and the civil service exam DNA is engraved in my body."

At a farewell meeting with the team, Li Feng mentioned that he was planning to take the civil service exam. Unexpectedly, this idea was shared by everyone else, so six people in the company, including him, "hastily" decided on the next direction of their lives.

At that time, the company's lease still had five months left, so Li Feng and his team members were busy selling products while preparing for the exam. Now, one of Li Feng's "public exam team" has been admitted to a public institution. "If the five of us work harder, maybe we won't be admitted and will come back to work for Amazon."

The recruitment market is still hot, but operations still can't find jobs

There are many Amazon sellers like Li Feng who have changed careers, especially in the past two years. In addition, it can be seen from major social platforms that many cross-border workers have changed careers to become administrators, teachers, civil servants, and even returned to school.

Most people choose to change careers simply because they see "no hope" in their original industry or jobs are too difficult to find, and cross-border e-commerce operations are no exception.

In the current situation of a general decline in sales of cross-border e-commerce, in order to optimize cost expenditure, the trend of sellers recruiting on demand has become increasingly obvious since this year, and salaries have generally decreased.

" In the past, no overtime and two days off a week were the core competitive advantages of cross-border e-commerce companies' recruitment. But so far this year, I don't even care about this. I can accept long and short weeks ," an operator told Yien.com.

Ah Cheng, with 3 years of experience in operating high-quality European websites, has created 3 hits. This resume should be considered quite good, but after a round of searching in the recruitment market, he returned “disappointed”.

In April, Ah Cheng resigned from his previous company and interviewed for a new company. He went through three rounds of interviews, which took nearly four hours. He was finally accepted and offered a salary of 7K, including a 12% performance-based salary. In his previous company, his base salary was 8.5K, and his commission was lower than that of his previous company.

After learning the "lesson", Ah Cheng said, "Before leaving your job, it is better to check recruitment websites like BOSS to understand the salary situation outside."

It's not just Acheng. Yien.com has found on many social platforms that many operations staff have reported that when looking for jobs this year, salaries are generally lower than last year, and the requirements are becoming more and more "excessive", such as requiring the creation of a hit product, passing the CET-6 English test, etc.

There was also an operation staff who smiled bitterly, " With three years of experience in Amazon boutique operations, I dare not offer a base salary of 9K in Shenzhen . "

In addition to salary, some operations staff also said that age is becoming more and more important in this job. Yien.com found that some Amazon operations recruitment requirements include "age 20-30 years old" and "under 26 years old". In addition, long and short weeks are basically standard.

The operators who have not yet resigned also said that they "want to leave but dare not leave" after seeing the cold market. One operator said that the commission system has been changed again and again, the performance has increased tenfold compared to before, and the salary is lower than before. He wants to leave, but there are too many Amazon operators recruiting with a base salary of 5K.

The operations department complained that it was difficult to find a job, but the HR department said they couldn't recruit anyone.

"I posted the job posting, but when I contacted the people I found the right match, I didn't hear back. Some people who were scheduled for interviews didn't show up in the end."

Some HR even shouted angrily: Where did all those laid-off Amazon operations go? Aren’t you looking for new jobs?

According to the talent report previously released by Liepin, this year's cross-border e-commerce operations are still in a situation where talent is in short supply.

Judging from the TSI index (Talent Shortage Index) , the shortage index of cross-border e-commerce operations reached 2.75 , which is much higher than other positions ranked after it.

*Note: TSI (Talent Shortage Index) : TSI>1 means that the demand for talent exceeds the supply

Zhiyouji data also pointed out that although the number of recruitments for Amazon operations positions has declined compared to the past few years ( a 70% drop in 2022 alone compared to 2021), data from the first few months of this year showed that the number of recruitments has begun to rise again, with an increase of 168% in March compared to the same period last year, and a surge of 588% year-on-year in April .

Judging from various data, the recruitment market for cross-border e-commerce operations is still very hot, but the situation where job seekers have nowhere to go and recruiters have no one to hire has not eased. An industry insider once summarized the current situation of cross-border e-commerce industry recruitment this year: job seekers and recruiters hate each other, and the talent gap cannot get out of a vicious circle.

(Interviewees Li Feng and A Cheng are both pseudonyms)

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