At the end of October 2025, 45 year old Meng Jianjun came from his hometown of Lianyungang to Hangzhou to find a job. With the help of the community staff, he opened Alipay and told his age, experience and intention to find a job. AI employment assistant "Xiaoye" matched him with a canteen job. After the AI interview, Meng Jianjun took up his post two days later. A few months later, he found a jockey job through Alipay.

According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, there are over 200 million flexible workers like Meng Jianjun who need to frequently search for jobs nationwide. At the same time, the demand for flexible employment is becoming increasingly urgent. Delivery stations need people, production lines need people, warehouses need people, and restaurants need people. Blue collar workers change jobs three times a year, resulting in billions of job mobility and employment demands. These positions are urgent, scattered, and short, but job seekers still have to wait for 7 to 15 days from registration, interview to final arrival.

For blue collar workers with a monthly salary of several thousand yuan, a week without income means there is a gap in rent and living expenses for the month; For manufacturing companies, for every one less person on duty during peak season, the production line loses one day's output.

How to use AI to reduce structural mismatch in the job market is not only an industrial issue but also a social issue. The "15th Five Year Plan for Implementing the Employment Priority Strategy" issued by the State Council lists "mismatch between supply and demand of human resources" as the main contradiction in the employment field, and explicitly requires the promotion of artificial intelligence to empower employment services. "More efficient matching of people and positions" has been included in the five project objectives of the plan. The government work report in March this year also proposed for the first time to "create a new form of intelligent economy".

On September 11, Alipay released employment business data: more than 160 million users, aggregating more than 18 million jobs; Its employment intelligent agent "Xiaoye" helps 10 million people find jobs annually. The "Xiaoye" AI open platform has been launched simultaneously, open to the entire recruitment industry.

More important than data is that 10 million people have increased their income and improved their lives due to work.

The AI driven recruitment industry is moving from peripheral tools to the entire process. The case of Alipay provides a large-scale sample from the front line of industry.

AI enters the 'second half' of blue collar recruitment

Sending a resume is often like throwing a stone into the sea, I don't know when there will be a response.

Recruitment websites have centralized scattered job information into one entrance, with a large number of manual participants involved in processes such as interviews, identity verification, and contract signing from submission to actual job placement. Screening resumes determines who can enter the recruitment process, interviews affect whether they are hired, identity verification is related to whether they can be hired in compliance, and signing contracts completes the final employment confirmation. These links are interconnected layer by layer, constituting the main reason why blue collar job seekers need to wait for 7 to 15 days from registration to employment.

This has also become the entry point for AI to enter the "second half" of recruitment. Consulting firm Gartner listed high-frequency frontline positions such as retail, customer service, and drivers as the most suitable for AI priority recruitment in October 2025, citing their high demand, stable processes, and high repetition rate. In the past two years, AI has gradually entered the recruitment front-end, from job recommendations, resume screening to job matching, mainly solving the problem of "finding who". But for blue collar job seekers, finding a suitable position is just the first step, and the real time-consuming process is often communication, interviews, and onboarding after application.

People who can cook may not necessarily be good at writing resumes; People with years of work experience may not necessarily know how to accurately describe their professional abilities. Veteran Wang Zhen is not good at "packaging" himself according to job search language, but after expressing his job ideas, "Xiaoye" helped him find a job as a chef.

In the past, it was the language that job seekers adapted to on recruitment platforms; Now, AI is trying to understand human language.

This change is also reflected in the immediate response after delivery. Niu Meng, a member of the "Xiaoye" team, told reporters that many blue collar job seekers have their peak application period late at night. By the time recruiters contact them the next day, their job seeking intentions often have changed or they miss the opportunity due to being busy with immediate matters. Nowadays, AI can automatically follow up on intentions, answer questions, arrange interviews, and further connect identity verification and electronic signing after registration. AI is not simply solving the problem of 'having one more customer service representative', but rather addressing the time gap in recruitment.

Interviews are the easiest part of waiting. At present, there are more than 150000 positions supporting AI interview on Alipay, and the AI interview room is open 24 hours a day, so job seekers do not need to ask for leave to travel back and forth, and enterprises can also complete decisions faster according to the quasi real-time multi-dimensional evaluation report. After the integration of AI interview into Hongfujin Precision Industry (Wuhan), the duration of individual interviews has been reduced from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.

The boundary of employment services is also extending from "finding a job" to "enhancing employability". Rider Tian Dan wants to switch careers to become a caregiver, and "Xiaoye" has provided a specific action list for "what courses to take", "what certificates to take", and "how to find corresponding positions". For workers who need to switch careers, the real challenge is often not just not having a job, but also not knowing what skills, certificates, and training channels are needed to enter a new profession that is trustworthy.

Wu Han, the elderly care teacher, has seen many middle-aged people who want to change careers spend more than 2000 yuan in third-party institutions for certification, but they are not recognized by the industry in the end. "Money has been wasted, but it has also delayed their job search." In her opinion, the platform courses on Alipay can provide national standardized skill level certificate information, helping to alleviate the long-standing information asymmetry in the process of blue collar job transfer.

From job hunting, interviews to training, the previously relatively fragmented links in the labor market are beginning to be interconnected.

Job hunting is just the beginning, what's important is continuous employment companionship

After completing a job matching, there are still many follow-up steps. Enterprises need to confirm the authenticity and compliance of candidates' identities and qualifications, and pay them according to the agreement after they start working; Job seekers are concerned about whether the position is genuine, whether the salary will be deducted, and whether there is basic protection for short-term employment. These processes involve identity authentication, payment, insurance, and fulfillment, which in the past were mainly completed by offline decentralized labor companies and enterprise human resources departments.

This is exactly what Alipay originally has.

In 2023, Alipay will launch the employment channel to aggregate job information and human services; In 2024, we will launch a secure employment solution to further cover flexible employment scenarios; After the launch of "Xiaoye" 1.0 in 2025, the service will shift from aggregating job information to understanding individual job seekers. These abilities are gradually embedded into the job search process: real name authentication is used for identity and qualification verification before employment, payment settlement extends to daily wage settlement, and insurance covers gig employment security.

A job search on Alipay is no longer limited to "finding a position", but forms a trusted transaction closed-loop from matching to performance.

Now, this set of abilities is beginning to open up to the industry again. The "Xiaoye" AI Open Platform standardizes six core competencies including AI submission, AI interview, AI follow-up, AI verification, AI employment, and AI training, as well as 38 digital atomic competencies. Enterprises and human resources agencies do not need to build a complete AI recruitment system from scratch, and can complete competency matching in as fast as one week.

According to public data, after the integration of Haina AI, the conversion rate of some positions has increased by 200%, and the interview cost has been reduced by about 80%; A certain training institution brought 2000 new potential users through AI operation.

Zhang Chenggang, director of China New Employment Form Research Center, said at the Alipay AI employment white paper conference in January this year that the digital economy platform is transforming from a pure information matchmaking channel to an employment service infrastructure integrating AI capabilities.

From the C-end job search portal to the B-end industry open platform, Alipay's role in the employment field has shifted from information matchmaker to infrastructure provider.

Who has changed?

The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2030, 170 million new jobs will be created globally, while 92 million jobs will be replaced, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs. Approximately 22% of existing jobs will undergo structural changes. This means that 'static qualifications' are giving way to' dynamic skills', and the frequency of labor mobility between different scenarios will far exceed the past.

The recruitment industry is already adapting to changes. According to LinkedIn's "Future of Recruiting 2025," 37% of recruitment teams are actively integrating or generating AI. In another 2025 recruitment survey, 99% of respondents stated that they have already used AI in the recruitment process.

For intermediary agencies, the industry threshold will shift from "how many positions there are and how many job seekers they have" to "whether they can continue to serve a person's entire career cycle".

For enterprise HR, basic tasks such as mechanical phone calls, collection of materials, scheduling interviews, etc. have been taken over by algorithms. The role of HR must transform towards deep employment compliance control, salary incentive design, and genuine care.

For workers, 24-hour interviews at any time reduce leave friction and daily wage settlement reduces the risk of salary claims. But on the other hand, we have to face whether the evaluation criteria for AI interviews are fair, whether job seekers know they are undergoing AI screening, and who is responsible for recruitment judgments.

Zhao Zhong, Dean of the School of Labor and Personnel at Renmin University of China, stated that AI is improving job matching and employment service efficiency, while also placing higher demands on workers' skills, employment security, and platform responsibility. Building an employment friendly development model requires the joint efforts of technology, institutions, and platforms.

Li Jun, vice president of Ant Group and president of Alipay Business Group, said that Alipay hopes to build a inclusive employment ecosystem with the help of digital intelligence and escort high-quality employment of tens of millions of workers. In the next two years, Alipay will link with employment ecological partners to help 30 million people find good jobs

To what extent this goal can be achieved will be an experimental field for observing how AI changes the Chinese job market.