Open-earphone manufacturer "Shokz": Firmly refuses 996, values both employee health and innovation | Autumn Recruitment Report

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

In 2024, "finding a reliable job" and "recruiting reliable people" remain mutually intertwined challenges. We firmly believe that aside from traditional large companies, there are still a large number of employer companies in the market that are in line with the dividends of the next era, waiting to be discovered. The potential of the track, business logic, personnel situation... Mastery and insight into this information determine the job seeker's perspective in choosing a company, as well as the quality and depth of the interview communication.

Anonymous company gossip may be helpful for avoiding job search pitfalls - but those career opportunities with scarcity and growth potential should not be missed due to an aimless comment on the Internet. During the spring and autumn recruitment seasons with a large volume of recruitment, 36Kr @ Workplace Bonus uses a professional scoring model to screen out a batch of "dividend companies" that are recruiting for on-site factory exploration. Combining multiple perspectives from investors and headhunters, we ask questions to the employers to bring you a "one-article understanding" of the recruitment reports of dividend companies.

Through the Valley of Death ╱ 01

"Build a Ship" ╱ 02

Even if it is inherently an overseas company ╱ 03

About "Shokz", you can learn these ahead of other job seekers ╱ 04

 

Workplace Bonus has learned that the autumn 2024 recruitment of the open-ear headphones manufacturer "Shokz" (hereinafter referred to as "Shokz") is underway. According to the HR department of Shokz, the positions it is recruiting cover the entire value chain, including R & D, supply chain, marketing, and functional lines. Key recruitment positions include Product Manager, CMO, Basic Technology Researcher, Pre-research Expert/SE Engineer, Front-end Development Engineer, Back-end Engineer, Overseas Marketing Management Trainee. Except for the Product Manager and Researcher roles, other positions are open for social recruitment. Social recruitment mainly focuses on work experience, and academic qualifications are not overly referenced.

Shokz has been engaged in the OEM business of professional audio equipment since 2004 and transformed to produce bone conduction headphones in 2007 [1] . Since then, it has been deeply cultivating in the field of bone conduction technology consumer electronics and has now become the world's only professional audio company that has solved the four major problems of bone conduction technology: "sound quality, sound leakage, power consumption, and vibration".

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

It took Shokz nearly ten years from the official launch of its first bone conduction headphones to achieving a sales share of 59% in the Chinese bone conduction headphones market in the first half of 2023 [2] , becoming the undisputed leader.

The Chinese market is only part of Shokz's global layout. As an inherently "overseas company", Shokz established its first overseas company in North America as early as 2011. Currently, it has established marketing centers in multiple countries and regions such as Europe, North America, Singapore, and Hong Kong, with overseas revenue accounting for as high as 70% of the total revenue.

With the expansion of the company's business scale, the size of Shokz's personnel has grown rapidly. Before 2016, the company's personnel size remained at around 100 people, but now it has exceeded 1,000 people. According to the prediction of the HR department of Shokz to Workplace Bonus, the company's personnel size is expected to increase by 30%-40% in the next year, reaching around 1,600 people.

Compared to the "fast in and fast out" of Internet companies, Shokz emphasizes "long-term valueism" in the growth and cultivation of talents: This is also the culture that once supported Shokz to cross the "Valley of Death", which has gathered the pure love for technology of the company's core backbone.

There always seems to be some subtle connection between the corporate culture and the company's founder. CEO Chen Hao advocates the "philosophy + science" thinking, insists on doing the right things at the right pace, and does not deliberately pursue profits and scale. He defines himself as an entrepreneur, an innovator, and an entrepreneur. In the eyes of employees, Chen Hao is more like an idealist - Doing the right things and bringing something different to the world.

Despite the urgent need for talents, Shokz's expansion is not blind. In the past few years of personnel expansion, Chen Hao personally oversaw a large number of final interview sessions, trying to strictly adhere to the fit between talents and the company's cultural values - Of course, the side effect of this is that "speaking too much can lead to mistakes". There are many interviewees on the Internet who do not like his questioning style and perspective. But in Chen Hao's view, the "team culture" that the company wants to build and emphasize is one of complete trust in each other, and the honesty of knowing each other well should at least start from the final interview.

[1] Bone conduction headphones: Traditional headphones, whether in-ear or over-ear, use the air in the external auditory canal as the transmission medium. Bone conduction headphones, on the other hand, transmit sound by vibrating the bone structure and do not need to pass through the external auditory canal and eardrum.

[2] Data source: The authoritative market research institution IDC released the "Quarterly Tracking Report of China's Wireless Headphone Market". The report shows that in the first half of 2023, in the Chinese bone conduction headphones market, only Shokz accounted for 59.0% of sales, ranking first.
 

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

Through the Valley of Death
 

When talking about the initial impression of Shokz, "shabby" is the keyword that most old employees would smilingly give. And: "dilapidated", "feels not well-decorated", "the first impression is not very good, a bit of a gap".

When Workplace Bonus visited the two office buildings of Shokz in Shenzhen, which are a 15-minute walk apart, one is being newly renovated, and the other still retains some of the atmosphere and shadow of the OEM business it used to do. Nowadays, the office environment here is not the kind of elite office building with a hint of urban luxury, but it has the necessary characteristic areas and layouts: a book lending room, a gym (with an AED automatic external defibrillator worthy of praise), a coffee machine, a product exhibition hall... Passing through a row of meeting rooms named after world-famous sports venues, an ancient-style bonsai appears at the corner. The terrace on the second floor seems to be a good place for lunch and meetings, and there is even a vegetable-growing area on the rooftop - and there are actually employees who are seriously taking care of the crops here.

Shokz is trying its best to build the buildings it has leased into its own characteristics bit by bit. What you can feel is that the business here is also growing bit by bit in a similar way.

Fifteen years ago, bone conduction technology was still a "niche track". At that time, there were already some companies in the market developing related products of bone conduction technology, but they were mainly concentrated in the professional communication field. Shokz aimed at this market gap, introduced bone conduction technology from the professional field into civilian consumer electronic products, and actively invested in R & D and production. They wanted to provide the market with high-quality bone conduction headphones.

Looking back, although the OEM business can serve as the old business to support the innovative business, the entrepreneurial transformation path of Shokz has not been easy. In the early days of its establishment, bone conduction headphones were a "niche product", and the market recognition and acceptance were not high. Jiang Zhuyang, the director of the Human Resources Department, recalled to Workplace Bonus that when he joined Shokz in 2013, the company team had only about 100 people, and this number hardly increased until 2016.

"Those few years were the 'Valley of Death' that I and the company experienced together," Jiang Zhuyang's tone is calm. "At that time, the bone conduction technology was not yet mature, and the two problems of poor sound quality and sound leakage made many consumers hesitate. When the growth brought by the early adopters disappeared, how to open the mass market was a difficult problem."

The turning point came in 2015. After spending 9 years, Shokz finally successfully made breakthroughs in the sound leakage elimination technology and the suspension shock absorption technology, significantly improving the sound quality and reducing the sound leakage, making the performance of bone conduction headphones reach a level that most people can accept. After crossing the "Valley of Death" from the root of product power, the company's scale began to usher in high growth.

"We have always insisted on product and technology iteration. If we pursued short-term interests, we might have given up the bone conduction track long ago." In Jiang Zhuyang's view, the successful crossing of the "Valley of Death" benefits from Shokz's insistence on long-term valueism. This HR leader, who smiles a bit like Yu Minhong, showed many models and methodologies sorted out by Shokz at the human resource planning level in the conference room through a projection screen.

"Behind the technology is the support of talents." Why was Shokz able to gather so many excellent talents when it was still a fledgling company full of uncertainties in the early days? This question once made Jiang Zhuyang curious. And by combining the answers of all the interviewees, we found that CEO Chen Hao's high attention to talents is an important factor that attracted talents to join Shokz in the early stage.

"I still remember that during the final interview, the boss came wearing big shorts and carrying a water tank for the interview." Tang Lei from the Product Innovation Department joked. He knows that perhaps not everyone accepts the boss's interview style, but in terms of his interview experience, the friendly and simple atmosphere gave him a new understanding of Shokz.

"When I came for the interview, I could feel that Mr. Chen values talents very much. He would spend a lot of time having in-depth exchanges and communications with us, involving multiple aspects such as work, life, and even family." Chen Zehua, the Marketing HRBP of the Human Resources Department, believes that Chen Hao's such communication with the candidates who enter the final interview is essentially hoping to fully understand them and also judge whether the candidate's values match the company's.

Jiang Zhuyang told Workplace Bonus that during the interview, Shokz will examine job seekers from their passion for the position, depth of thinking, project experience and other aspects to determine whether they fit the company's values. For campus recruitment, Shokz will refer to the job seekers' transcripts. In addition to GPA and ranking, they pay more attention to the score distribution of professional courses."

"Those who can stay in Shokz need to recognize long-term valueism, have a sense of mission and responsibility, and be willing to strive for it together." Jiang Zhuyang concluded, "For the formal employees who pass the interview screening, Shokz will not give too much management and constraints. We are free enough and fully trusted, but the requirements for people are very high." This may explain why Shokz never assesses human efficiency, but allocates human resources according to the long-term development plan.
 

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

"Build a Ship"

For hard technology enterprises, technology and the appropriate commercial application are the keys to building core competitiveness. Shokz calls its growth model the "dual helix drive" under the "Technology Spiral + Marketing Spiral".

Workplace Bonus learned that Shokz's R & D system is divided into three departments - The Research Department is responsible for prototype research, The Development Department is responsible for product engineering, and The Product Innovation Department follows up on specific product lines based on market research and user needs.

"Bone conduction technology is highly difficult, and typical problems such as large sound leakage, strong vibration, and poor sound quality were once not optimistic about." Wu Chenyang joined Shokz through campus recruitment after graduating with a master's degree in Instrumentation Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2021. Before he joined the company, the team had made many attempts and efforts in the design of bone conduction devices to address the problem of sound leakage.

After joining the company, he joined the hearing aid team of the Research Department, mainly responsible for the algorithm research in the hearing aid field - this is also the latest business that Shokz is advancing, and he was able to witness new technological breakthroughs here.

The five major foreign manufacturers of hearing aids (Sonova, GN Group, Demant Group, Starkey Hearing Technologies, WS Audiology) have an early start and a long history of development, and have established a strong moat. Compared with overseas manufacturers, when Shokz first started to make bone conduction hearing aids, its technology was significantly behind.

Wu Chenyang and his team will based on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) principle, make a simple model when developing a product, test it, collect user feedback, and quickly iterate to continuously correct the product so that it can finally meet the market demand. "We will also evaluate and study the latest foreign products and technologies as soon as they are launched, and humbly polish our own technology."

Hearing aids belong to medical machinery, and bone conduction hearing aids are still a completely new category in China, which means that the supervision will be more strict. On this product line, Shokz spent three years conducting large-scale research and clinical trials, and only passed the clinical verification and obtained the medical registration certification in 2023.

"The applicable groups of bone conduction hearing aids include patients with conductive hearing loss and mixed hearing loss. With the aggravation of aging, the proportion of the hearing-impaired population is also continuously increasing. Compared with Western developed countries, the overall wearing rate of hearing aids in China is relatively low." In Wu Chenyang's view, researching how to apply bone conduction technology to hearing aid products is a beneficial and valuable cause for society, and this is also the place where the CEO Chen Hao described the company's vision during the interview that moved him - to do difficult but correct things.

Nowadays, Shokz's product stage settings are gradually becoming clear, divided into 0-1 (early exploration),