Photo/Shetuwang

Mar. 21 (NBD) -- At 8:30 every morning, Cheng Bin (pseudonym) shoots a video in the dining hall of Foxconn, edits the video briefly and releases it on short-video app Kuaishou with the hashtag "Foxconn Canteen". Then, Cheng sends the screenshot of the video to a chat room, peddling, "Good news! Foxconn's Chengdu plant continues to hire workers aged between 18 to 45. Frequent overtime hours. Earn 6,000 yuan per month and above."

This is almost a routine for Cheng, who entered the world's largest manufacturer of consumer electronics Foxconn in 2009. On a lucky day, he can get several youngsters on the other end of the network to sign up for the job, and in return receive over 1,000 yuan as rewards.

Current Foxconn employees are rewarded with 1,000-3,000 yuan for introducing one new worker into the company's factories.

"In early years, we paid to get into Foxconn, let alone getting rewards," Cheng recalled. Ten years ago, workers had to pay 1,200-1,300 yuan for admission into Foxconn plants and the monthly salary for a common employee was a mere 470 yuan, according to Cheng.

It is the workforce shortages that drive the change of recruiting criteria and means. Statistics from Everbright Securities showed that 25.8 percent of college graduates chose the manufacturing sector and the proportion dropped to 19.2 percent in 2017. An increasing number of young people are turning their back on manufacturing.

Against the backdrop, many people like Cheng have found the business opportunity, recruiting workers for Foxconn on Kuaishou which is popular among youths, as targets of the video app and the manufacturer overlap with one another.

A Kuaishou user with the ID "Foxconn electronics factory @ sprinting towards 300,000" once revealed that he/she had successfully introduced 1,200 people into Foxconn, which means he/she had earned 1 million yuan (149,589 U.S. dollars) at least.

But, the process is not as easy as it sounds. During the recruitment season after the Spring Festival, Cheng spent nearly all his spare time, from 9:30 to 11 O'clock at night, answering questions by job seekers. He sometimes even does livestream on Kuaishou to attract candidates.

Before entering the factory, some job seekers would repeatedly confirm some details with Cheng for half a month and continue to ask him for help with all matters, big and small. What keeps Cheng patient is Foxconn's rule that one can get all the rewards only if the person he/she recommended has worked in the company for three months. "I felt like a customer service agent working for free," Cheng joked.

But he estimated that only 20 percent of the post-90s employees he recommended would stay for three months or above after working at the assembly line.

Cheng himself had thought of leaving, too. He images himself opening a store online, running a restaurant or recruiting worker full time to make a living.

"Fixed Foxconn, floating workers." With employees coming and going, the big manufacturer wouldn't stop running. While old employees like Cheng are planning on quitting, other people are walking into the factory.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn