On October 15, human resources service provider 51job officially released its 2025 Model Employer Awards list. This year's selection focused on "resilience" as the core theme, with 113 companies making the list, including 19 first-time winners from industries such as FMCG/retail and intelligent manufacturing.
Physical industries dominated the list of winning employers, including FMCG/retail, energy/chemicals/raw materials, and automotive/parts, accounting for 41% of all listed companies. Foreign enterprises comprised the majority of winning employers, with private enterprises and state-owned enterprises representing equal proportions. Among them, 51% of the employers are Fortune 500 companies for 2025.
The listed companies have a total workforce of 2.606 million employees and plan to recruit approximately 189,000 experienced professionals in 2025. Diversified conglomerates provided the most job opportunities, followed by technology-enabled logistics and transportation, and intelligent manufacturing sectors. Additionally, 23% of the listed companies expanded their business focus overseas in the past year, seeking new growth points and potential markets.
**AI Comprehensively Penetrates Recruitment Processes with Human-Machine Collaboration Becoming Mainstream**
The application of artificial intelligence in corporate talent management is entering a deepening phase. Since 2025, 75% of model employers have significantly expanded their investment and application of AI technology in human resources, representing a 16-percentage-point increase compared to the same period last year, marking AI as a "standard configuration" in corporate talent strategies.
Data shows that recruitment is the area where AI technology penetrates deepest and is most widely applied. "Intelligent resume screening and matching" leads with a 78% adoption rate, up 8% year-over-year. The application rates of AI interviews, intelligent phone invitations, and chatbots also show universal growth trends.
Notably, the once-popular "video interviews" showed a slight decline in application proportion, reflecting that corporate recruitment strategies are shifting from simple digitization toward pursuing refined operations that emphasize human-machine collaboration and full-process efficiency improvement.
Meanwhile, 77% of listed companies have implemented HR shared service centers, with their model evolving from traditional centralized transaction processing to AI-driven intelligent operations, integrating information through data platforms and comprehensively optimizing HR management chains.
The deepening application of technology directly influences the reconstruction of corporate talent capability requirements. Data shows that model employers' requirements for employees' "AI tool application capabilities" and "digitization capabilities" have both exceeded 40%, surpassing average levels. This means that proficiency in using various intelligent tools has become one of the key factors affecting job seekers' and employees' development.
**Resilience Strategy: Compound-Skilled Talent is Essential**
Against the backdrop of uncertainty becoming the new normal, resilience has become the core keyword in corporate human resource strategies. Data shows that over half of model employers (55%) achieved year-over-year growth in employee scale during the same period in 2025, conveying confidence in steady development.
More positively, over 70% of model employers indicated they will maintain or expand social recruitment scale in 2025, with nearly 80% of employers maintaining stable or growing trends in campus recruitment. Particularly noteworthy is that 67% of model employers stated their planned recruitment numbers for 2026 graduates will at least match or further increase compared to last year.
This series of data indicates that leading companies are not adopting contraction strategies but are rhythmically expanding talent reserves.
From the talent demand structure perspective, technical positions (54%), marketing positions (35%), and production positions (31%) show the most robust recruitment demand. This difference also highlights the dual approach to corporate resilient growth: on one hand, relying on technological innovation and production optimization to strengthen the core, and on the other hand, enhancing external adaptability through market development.
While actively "expanding," companies are more focused on two internal strategies: retaining core talent and cultivating compound capabilities to enhance organizational resilience. The primary goal of corporate human resource strategies in 2025 focuses on "retaining and motivating core employees," differing from 2024's top priority of "organizational transformation and innovation."
Meanwhile, 2025 employee capability development goals show that building a compound talent system has become a core corporate demand. Three major objectives are evenly distributed: functional specialized skills (55%), organizational and employee adaptability and agility (46%), and AI application capabilities (45%), with digitization capabilities and leadership skills equally weighted (both at 40%).
Companies expect employees to break through single-skill boundaries and form synergistic compound competitiveness through organic integration of cross-domain capabilities, enhancing organizational and individual resilience, enabling teams to maintain vitality and adaptability in complex environments while calmly addressing various challenges and changes.
Resilience is reflected not only in soft power but also in hard investments. In welfare improvements, nearly 60% of companies chose to enhance standards for individual benefits such as commercial insurance and fitness care, while half (50%) focused on optimizing office environment comfort. This emphasis on employee physical and mental health and work experience serves as an important material foundation for achieving "talent retention" and "talent motivation."
**Structural Talent Contradictions Highlighted with Internal Training Becoming Key to Breaking the Deadlock**
Currently, listed model employers are facing prominent structural contradictions in human resources. Data shows insufficient supply of urgently needed senior technical personnel (56%) and business sales talent (49%), with the shortage degree further expanding compared to 2024, while emerging AI talent demand (31%) continues to rise.
Simultaneously, supply-demand structures at job levels show differentiation. Demand for frontline employees (non-R&D) continues to expand, with the shortage proportion climbing from 40% last year to 44%; conversely, demand for senior management has notably contracted, with the shortage proportion dropping from 28% to 22%.
Additionally, there exists a significant gap between employees' current capabilities and companies' future development needs, particularly in strategic thinking (73% difference) and adaptability (50% difference).
These contradictions have also prompted changes in corporate talent strategies and business strategies. Data indicates that although campus recruitment geographical distribution remains concentrated in first-tier cities, 77% of model companies have quietly shifted their approach to acquiring core talent from relying on external markets to strengthening internal cultivation, signifying that the concept of "developing people" rather than "poaching people" is becoming consensus.
Meanwhile, 70% of listed companies indicated they are undergoing deep organizational transformation to address new challenges in the era of "uncertainty."
A stable talent team provides the foundation for internal capability building. Data shows 75% of model companies achieved core employee income growth, with the proportion of companies having employee turnover rates below 10% increasing by 10 percentage points year-over-year. Talent stability and motivation make systematic cultivation possible, prompting nearly 80% of companies to recognize the increasingly important strategic value of human resources departments.
**Selection Criteria**
This year marks the 18th consecutive year that 51job has held the "Model Employer" selection. As one of the authoritative awards in China's human resource management field, this year's selection lasted over four months, screening finalist candidates from hundreds of thousands of companies and collecting and analyzing data across multiple dimensions including recruitment, compensation, performance, and social responsibility through questionnaires and interviews, while requiring companies to provide practical cases as evidence.
Finally, through comprehensive evaluation and peer comparison, awards were granted only to those companies with leading comprehensive strength and performance above industry average levels.
The following are the results of the 2025 Model Employer Awards selection.
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