Live video anchor agent firms are fixing their eyes on undergraduates

Agents promise the undergraduates of 10,000 yuan salary per month but end up offering only several hundred yuan.

Web star agents promise to offer several thousand yuan per month to undergraduate anchors

Shortly before summer vacation, Wang from Capital Normal University noticed a recruitment poster in the campus. The recruitment was for live video anchors and potential web stars. “We’d like to recruit good-looking anchors who are enthusiastic about performing, singing, dancing, and modelling, etc.", said the poster, “students who received professional training are preferred.”

Such posters and leaflets from different agent firms were soon distributed across several campuses in Beijing. The rewards seemed quite attractive. Some agent firms claimed to offer RMB 3,000 to 5,000 per month for 2-3 hours’ live video streaming work per day.

Recruit poster in campus

The agents said that many undergraduates took the anchor job with a monthly earning of 2,000 to 10,000 yuan.

The anchors are requested to dress up and chat

Our correspondent got in touch with a manager of one agent firm in Beijing and sent him a candid photo. The manager suggested that she’d better improve her appearance and replace the glasses with contact lenses. The manager invited her to a face to face interview after some chatting. “Do remember to put on your make up and dress well”, he reminded.All conference rooms are filled with applicants when the correspondent came to the company for the interview. So, her interview was taken place in one of the live video streaming rooms. 

One live video streaming room in Beijing

The correspondent is requested to come every day and work for 4 to 6 hours per day to amass fans. Otherwise, she would need to purchase for the live video devices herself and work from her dormitory.

To become a web star, you need to work as an anchor first

The web star agents were recruiting good-looking versatile anchors when they claimed to look for potential web stars. “It’s not easy to make the anchors web stars. You don’t need to become web stars to earn money”, said one manager.
The “web stars” would be graded by their appearance, talents and performance, and their payments would differ depending on the grading. The basic salary for the lowest ranking anchors is 1,500 yuan per month plus commission of 40%; for the highest ranking anchors, it is 10,000 yuan per month plus commission of 50%. To get a basic salary, they need to work at least 2 hours a day, and 22 days per month. They also need to secure ten high-quality videos per month.

“Sexy figure” is a plus

One manager from a web star agent showed the correspondent a sample popular video. In the video, a scantily-clad young lady was playing guitar. “This is the kind of video we want, we just need to avoid being caught by the platform”, said the manager, “some graduates already earned 30,000 yuan this month in this way.”

Chatting history with the agent

Some anchors only get 200 to 300 yuan per month

Li Ru from Capital Normal University has worked as a part-time anchor for a few months. Her purchased her own devices and worked in her dormitory. What she needs to do is singing, chatting and dancing. "Although the basic salary is 2,000 yuan per month, I've never achieved the basic work hours. Usually, I can only get 1,000 yuan, and there's only several hundred left to me after the deduction of commission fees", said Li. “And some audiences would speak ill of me, which hurts me a lot”. She once considered quitting. But she eventually goes on because this is a relatively easy way to make money.

Undergraduates should know how to protect themselves when engaging in the anchor job

Undergraduates should protect themselves by reading the contract carefully and refusing any illegal performances when doing live video streaming. Some undergraduates are so obsessed with the idea of becoming web stars that they are prone to be cheated by the agents. However, even becoming a web star does not mean that one can take it as a lifetime job. He or she should make long-term career plans and be more helpful to the society.

Avoid emails if it can be delivered over call or meeting

In 2001, Neal Pat­ter­son, the CEO of Cerner Cor­po­ra­tion, sent an email to his work­force rep­ri­mand­ing them for not work­ing the long hours he ex­pected. He threat­ened to with­hold pro­mo­tions until the em­ployee park­ing lots stayed full from early morn­ing until late at night. The email be­came pub­lic. Cerner stock fell 22%, cost­ing the com­pany around $300 mil­lion. The les­son: Never send an email while angry, stressed or upset. Never be overly in­for­mal or too ver­bose, don't hit Reply All un­nec­es­sar­ily and don't fail to re­spond to your email. Fun­da­men­tals of email eti­quette in­clude using self-control, writ­ing in a re­spect­ful tone and valu­ing your cor­re­spon­dents' time. In­clude a clear sub­ject line. Be con­cise; use proper gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and spelling; and copy only those who need a copy. Don't send an email when the con­ver­sa­tion is bet­ter de­liv­ered face-to-face or on the phone. Don't in­clude any­thing in an email that you wouldn't say in per­son. Humor and sar­casm sel­dom work in text.

Sent from my mobile 

Sleep does wonders

Your brain slows in the af­ter­noon, but a nap can work won­ders. Nap­ping for 45 min­utes will turbo-charge your brain for six hours. Con­versely, stu­dents who skip even an hour of sleep each night face a dra­matic drop in aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance. Sleep de­pri­va­tion im­pairs "at­ten­tion, ex­ec­u­tive func­tion, im­me­di­ate mem­ory, work­ing mem­ory, mood, quan­ti­ta­tive skills, log­i­cal rea­son­ing abil­ity, gen­eral math knowl­edge." Wouldn't it be great to match job sched­ules with peo­ple's in­her­ent sleep pat­terns? Plus, a later school day would ad­dress teenagers' nor­mal ten­dency to sleep late.

Sent from my mobile 

Roic as core value

ROIC is a pil­lar of the core value of cash flow gen­er­a­tion. A firm's abil­ity to im­prove its ROIC depends on its com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion within its in­dus­try. A com­bi­na­tion of strat­egy, industry characteristics and ri­vals' prac­tices pro­duces a cor­po­ra­tion's com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

"Com­pa­nies will go to great lengths to achieve a cer­tain earn­ings per share num­ber…but this is mostly wasted en­ergy."

Com­pa­nies may be first movers in their sec­tors, and scale and scope both can pro­vide an edge. Product and ser­vice might dif­fer­en­ti­ate a busi­ness as well. High-ROIC in­dus­tries tend to offer uniquely spe­cial­ized brand prod­ucts, like cos­met­ics, and in­dus­tries with low ROICs gen­er­ally mar­ket generic items, like paper. Their ef­fi­cient use of cap­i­tal is crit­i­cal. Price pre­mium and cap­i­tal cost efficiency dic­tate ROIC.

Growth is the other main­stay of core value, but not all growth is equal. Suc­cess­ful prod­uct introductions into new mar­kets can add rev­enue streams, which turn into new earn­ings and cash flows. Such mar­ket ex­pan­sion tends to con­tribute the most value to a firm. Slash­ing prices to in­crease prod­uct share in a mar­ket helps very lit­tle, be­cause com­peti­tors can read­ily cut their prices, too, thereby un­der­min­ing any gains in value.

保持幸福的秘诀

幸福感是指人类基于自身的满足感与安全感而主观产生的一系列欣喜与愉悦的情绪。是人类孜孜不倦所探索和追求的目标。本文通过科学家的研究结论列举出具体的获取幸福感的方法。

通过长期研究，科学家们最终明确了一些获取幸福感的具体方法：
“想法”—承认消极想法的存在并努力克服它们。尝试苏格拉底式的审问，记录下想法是什么，并自问：有什么证据吗？你是通过事实还是情绪来的？如果发生在别人身上，你怎么看待这种情况呢？别人会怎么看呢？或者，写一份关于这个问题的简短声明，然后以客观的局外人的身份或者以你会和朋友交谈的语气重写它。 

“家”—只有在良好氛围的自然环境和社会环境中，家才能极具包容性。所以试着搬离使自己不舒适的环境；尽可能让自己沐浴在有植物和阳光的舒适环境之下；保持住所的干净整洁。幸福专家格雷琴·鲁宾建议：当你不知道从哪里开始的时候请使用 "一分钟规则"。即从类似把衣服挂起来或者在洗碗机里放一个碗这样的一分钟工作开始。此外英国的一项研究表明，睡眠和性也是决定幸福感的主要因素，因此可以通过铺床，不安置电视机，用窗帘来调整光线以适应睡眠等来优先考虑卧室环境的布置。 

“人际关系”—耶鲁大学的科学家们分析了弗明汉的心脏研究，表明当人们的朋友和家人都很快乐时，尤其是他们住在自己附近的时候，人们会感觉更快乐。并且当人们拥有的快乐的朋友越多他们就会越快乐。研究还表明，与宠物的亲密关系也可以维持这种快乐。 

“工作与金钱”—拥有更多的金钱和财富并不一定会带来长期的幸福。然而，你可以通过将钱花在节省时间的东西和服务上来改善生活。同理你能获取财富的工作不一定是可以给你带来快乐的理想的工作。正如耶鲁大学的一项研究中所发现的那样,许多医院的管理人员认为他们自己是伟大使命的一部分，不是他们所完成的任务，而是因为他们工作的地方。

“幸福生活”—新西兰的一项研究表明，无论是捐出时间或者金钱的慈善都有益于幸福感产生。志愿者在志愿行为过程中经历了血压、死亡率和情绪等变化后产生的自我怜悯会导致更少的抑郁和焦虑, 变得更乐观。

Learn more about the world around you with Google Lens and the Assistant

Google Lens will be available in English on the Google Assistant in all Pixel phones in Singapore in the coming weeks. The feature, which builds on Google's advancements in machine learning, allows you to learn more about what’s in front of you and get things done at the same time.

For example, with Google Lens in Photos, you can get information about a landmark, but with Google Lens, it enables you to find out about things around you and even ask follow-up questions or get things done.

These are some of the things you can do with Google Lens and the Assistant:

• Look up products by barcode, or scan QR codes.
• Save information like email addresses, phone numbers etc. from a text, like on business cards.
• Learn more about a movie, book or record by checking out the cover with Google Lens.
• Learn fun facts about the painter of artwork in a museum.
• Find out more about landmarks when you go on trips.