[The Rise of Freestyle BMX and the Shift in Modern Recruitment Trends]-[Emerging sports in Paris 2024: Freestyle BMX]

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Today we are talking about another relatively new addition to the Olympic programs that is freestyle BMX and we are lucky to have someone who's quite familiar with the sport.

Joshua Codroyo, you mentioned before the show that you have practice or done freestyle BMX or BMX as your main sport as a teenager or as a boy.

Yeah, I feel like I've got serious imposter syndrome even saying that because I don't think my level was very high but I absolutely love BMX and it's been my favorite sport along with football ever since I was young.

When did you first learn of BMX and when did you begin to take an interest in that?

Well, I always liked extreme sports.

I was always really interested in skateboarding and BMX and there was a channel on the television.

They used to be a dedicated channel called the Extreme Sports Channel and I didn't have this channel in my own home but my grandmother had this channel and so whenever I went over I would be so excited to watch this channel because it would just be freestyle motocross BMX skateboarding usually and I think that probably before BMX I was more fascinated by Tony Hawk who is the most famous freestyle skateboarder in the world and he still competes actually to this day which is really incredible into his fifties and then from that you know the whole world of basically just jumping in the air and getting as close to flying probably as a human possibly can I think without any sort of flying apparatus and so yeah I was just obsessed with hip from that day forward for years and years and years and that's all I did in my free time.

Right, it's nice to have an opportunity to see extreme sports on TV.

We'll come to you shine later on as to whether the similar experiences or similar opportunities are available to Chinese kids as well but now to clarify a bit or to provide some more background info about this form of sport and Josh in layman's terms can you define the difference between BMX and regular cycling because really honestly I've seen more people riding shared bikes and road bicycles in downtown Beijing more so than many years ago I sense the rising popularity but this is by no means BMX this is by no means extreme sport is it?

No, I wouldn't say that this is an extreme sport and I guess that the definition of extreme sport it can be slightly varied but it means that there is a risk involved usually and there's certainly a lot of adrenaline but again that's also very subjective because people can get adrenaline from different things but it is risky and there's a massive danger involved any sport where usually a human flings themselves into the air at a ridiculous speed and then tries to contort their body or spin or flip or grind or stall or do something like this in the most difficult way possible before landing on the ground.

It's highly dangerous and so BMX really is part of this world of extreme sport and then there are a lot of specific differences as well.

Now we've spoken about some other sports and you know when you go deep into any sport you know that there's differences within them and I guess one big difference that I can tell you compared to a normal road bike or a share bike or something like that is that the BMX frame is smaller.

It's more sturdier, it's more compact and it's usually made of chromalo steel or aluminium so that it's very light.

The reason for that of course is so that it's maneuverable, it can be literally thrown around and if somebody crashes or it lands on the ground it can usually withstand those crashes and be perfectly rideable.

After too many times of course it's going to break but more durable than a normal bike and it usually has 20 inch wheels compared to 24 inch or 26 wheels that you'd find on a normal bike.

So in spite of the wheels or two wheels on the bike step people used to practice the sport.

BMX actually has more similarity to other extreme sports like a roller skating, skiing, half-pipe that kind of thing rather than a similarity to let's say a Tour de France kind of competition.

So let's go to Yushan and as a kid have you ever been exposed to programs about BMX or other similar extreme sports?

It's shame to admit but not at all.

Bicycle to me like you mentioned earlier, I mean it has always been a mean of transportation as long as I can remember.

So when I first started you know watching the BMX like kind of cycling videos of doing extreme cycling from very tall hills or mountains all the way down and managed not to fall and you know just doing their way and jumping up and down safely to the bottom.

I was like these people are crazy and now these riders are getting into the Olympics.

That's very impressive the way I see it.

And this is according to a 2021 article by team USA.com that in 2016 BMX freestyle gained a level of legitimacy when it fell under the umbrella of the worldwide governing body of all cycling which is the Union Cycleist International UCI.

And in 2017 BMX freestyle was officially approved for the Olympic program and also around the same time from 2017 to 2024 the BMX freestyle gradually had its own market in China too.

Like it went from nonexistent to like a smooth start in China after it was included as part of the Olympic Games.

So we see that in this year's summer Olympics the Chinese women's team has already qualified for the parents Olympics and it's actually expected to compete for medals at this point.

Also I read from online articles that there's one freestyle BMX judge and national team technical advisor called Chen Hao who actually viewed a very optimistic long term expectation for this sport in China.

So out of all good intentions as well it's just really impressive to see people you know riding bicycles in such a impressive way and in the meantime try to make that into a competition that's worth watching.

Josh is this something that you can practice in the streets or does this require some special kind of venue so that athletes or players can be safe without the threat to spectators and to themselves.

Well that's quite a difficult question because you know you don't need any facilities to go out and ride your BMX and there is a massive world of what is called street style street BMX and also street skateboarding as well and street roll of lading I guess that that also exists but and that is considered to be a different type of BMX riding to park riding which would be usually in a park that is purpose built for skateboards and BMX riding and rollerblading and this is where you get something more similar to the Olympics.

Now in the Olympics they will have events that maybe called street events but they'll actually be written in a man-made park but they've maybe made the ramps so that they're more similar they're slightly smaller they more represent a sort of city scape and the sort of things that you would find for example steps a handrail that the BMX rider might grind down or something like this and then there's other bigger things something called a bowl which actually originally would be an empty pool so this is what was written back in the 90s originally they would empty out pools in the US and they would ride them in and out same with skateboarding and then half pipes as well actually came from riding pools originally quite interesting so if you want to practice it to a very high level yeah you do need facilities and a lot of cities don't have them because they can be expensive and they need a lot of space and they also need to be well regulated.

Another thing is that there's definitely a conversation to be had about whether you know for example young children to be going out riding these ramps I mean like me would you be happy if if your child wanted to get into something like BMX riding into an extreme sport like that.

I'm not so sure although I am seeing more parents showing their kids to maybe a park or something they begin with something safer on on a flat surface and then there are coaches teaching them skills teaching them how to turn how to adjust their positions so they can maintain balance as they turn so exactly last weekend I saw something happening in a park where I usually took my kids to so I can see how that form of sport is picking up in popularity among Chinese parents but I don't know this enough to determine the exact popularity or the exact number of parents who are willing to put their kids to that level of risk that's for sure and I'm not even sure if there's like an exact number of how many kids are participating in BMX freestyle.

It's very new I mean China only started building his own professional team from the year 2017 and so far about more than a dozen provinces and municipalities have formed their their own teams and altogether there are about more than 100 professional players in the field but even with that small number of professional players China is taking the lead to some extent and it is certainly introducing some level of competition to existing players in the game.

Yeah and now we see actually a lot of the the fans of BMX freestyle here in China are actually like we discussed like young children and who are you know leading a little bit of a trend of engaging BMX freestyle lessons to enter into schools.

For example there's this Lou one second standard primary school of Huangpu district in Shanghai that have been introducing BMX freestyle into their school programs to have kids try it out and you know just have fun as all the pictures it was like you know a bunch of kids like primary school kids writing tiny cute little bicycles on the playground and like that seems pretty safe you know according to a Xinghua report the student at the Olympic qualification series first round in Budapest, Swenjachi and Dunya Wen qualified for their women's freestyle BMX so we are not only looking at those who made it to the Olympic Games others who didn't make it to the Olympic Games including Swen's Bae and Zheng Qian and Zhou Huiming so these are already very high profile and very famous athletes who are making their names and winning prizes at international competitions and it's interesting to see that even among them and even at fierce competitive events we don't have one player dominating the game I like but was the common practice before China and to the game so I say it's a healthy level of competition that China is bringing to the game you're listening to round table in a moment employers are posting job vacancies on lifestyle platforms Xiao Hongshu or Red what makes them think is a good occasion to find potential co-workers than more professional recruitment platforms looking for passion how about fiery debate want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives then tune in to round table where he is neat west and understanding is the goal a regular listener of round table would be familiar with the term Xiao Hongshu or Red or little Red Book and that is a lifestyle platform where people go to consume what content lifestyle like makeups I know my wife looks for a doctoral dissertations and guidance on how to write doctoral papers there apparently you can find anything yeah anything just I use the I use Xiao Hongshu as a way of just no stuff you know if I can find whatever I'm searching for on Xiao Hongshu and then I'll turn to the main search engines to look for answers because basically that's that's how big of a scope Xiao Hongshu is casting now among the Chinese social media platforms because yeah basically you can look for a lot of things and I'm really surprised to hear that now people are finding drops up there too yeah candy I mean yeah because according to a recent article by tech media 36 cool there have been viral posts with tags like recruitment drop seeking big companies layoff and you know just all those eye catching tags to attract people they just look into it and sometimes me as someone with a very stable job and happily fulfilling it I would just like click in as well and just to see you know what kind of jobs are out there like some are I think I saw like social media operators or you know content creators online and all that so apparently this has been a trend on the lifestyle social media Xiao Hongshu that that's making it easy for people to look for such posts and for these posts and these content creators were these job recruiters is really easy for their employment post to reach over like hundreds of thousands of likes and replies and you know people actually inquiring and asking for more details so yeah I guess this is what happening mm-hmm Josh can you understand this practice I mean posting job recruitment information on the Instagram like platform where people go to look at beautiful pictures and learn how to cook and how to write dog road dissertations yeah well I think depending on the industry and depending on the recruiter right and depending on the company it could actually be quite positive in the sense that it offers a much more direct and quicker shorter means of connection between the employer and the employee and I think traditionally we've definitely had notions of employees private lives being private and often separate from work right and employees even being allowed to sort of really distance their personal life from work and maybe have a separate phone or block some of their colleagues from say their social feed and something like this as an employer it can also be very beneficial because you can actually get a bit of an insight into that person's real personality right and it could in some instances be more better more accurately represent that potential employees personality than their resume in their CV right right but it also depends on who is posting these vacancies I think for big companies like global 500 or Fortune 500 companies I think they have all their own path of recruitment even their own head hunters you know prowling the internet and also the business world looking for potential hires whereas I think for regular or influential or big company I think they will value trustworthyness and solid information over somebody's private life which they can certainly catch a glimpse of if they go on Xiao Hong Shu who would post a job vacancy on a platform of lifestyle social media like Xiao Hong Shu well small businesses or maybe just some company HR who's looking for people that you know shares the same hobby same interests were you know just to get to know people from like a relatively equal right of speech instead of the employer being you know on the higher stand or in a dominant position so these people such as one example that I heard is a head hunter call who call herself the best John John she has seven years of work experience and she frequently posted recruitment information on the red or Xiao Hong Shu for positions like HR staff in Vietnam sales manager in the power industry in Spain and finance manager in Turkey etc and that's kind of interesting for me to read because because you're interested in Turkey I mean I have been there in 2014 and that's an amazing country to travel to but I'm not sure of how you know the work experience is in Turkey but in the meantime this headhunter the best John John also shares that you know the talent poll of traditional recruitment platforms for overseas positions is relatively saturated so if you want someone to work for say your offices in outside of China then you have to face a lot of barriers such as time differences or the potential candidates to not be able to update their information in a timely manner which will make it difficult to you know catch up with them or keep or follow up with how the job recruitment is going on but now that we see headhunter's going on to social media and posting things and reaching out to a you know a bigger talent poll that's you know of a similar age who most likely will check their social media more often so yeah I guess for these people it's like a more say helpful way to have them gain a bigger access of you know the talent out there especially for global scale right how do people behave on lifestyle social media platforms even as they are looking for potential job opportunities or potential hires on that platform I imagine you will be entirely different from let's say some when somebody is looking for job opportunities or hires on a professional recruitment platform where things can be more serious and you know more suit and tie kind of situation yeah exactly it's like in the recruiters there no longer the dominant side like I mentioned earlier they're not really like oh here's the job and here are the requirement do you fit they don't really appear to be like that anymore and in the case of recruiting people on Xiao Hongshu I read that well this is so inspiring that these recruiters start by sending out emojis you know they try to infiltrate to you as a friend instead of as a recruiter or someone who was you know of a higher social level to wait for you to apply for a job they don't really appear to be so serious anymore not as contescending as as a customer that's shopping at a butcher's house and looking at products on offer on the stand that kind of thing yeah and to be honest I'm not I'm not even sure if that's a good thing like I am here to be your friend but in the meantime I want you to work for me you don't like that as a I mean yeah I'll employ you hey I I follow the guideline of WLB work life balance like I think Josh mentioned earlier so yeah I don't I prefer not to have you know like people at work to know too much about my personal life but this is like the opposite right so you're looking to be a proper employee that rather than a friend of a coworker or in hey I didn't say that I'm friends most of my colleagues too right but in the meantime personal life is another matter that you don't really necessarily have to share with you know all that's all that you're working with that's what I'm saying Josh how would you react to somebody who approaches you on social media platforms offering your job well if they if they sort of broke the fourth wall and they came into my social space like that I think that I would feel already on a level with them quite different to a usual sort of professional interview level and so I don't think I would feel that it was particularly strange but often would have to be presented to me in a way that would make me trust them because social media is just full of so many scams it would take me a minute to really believe them and trust them so as a musician I'm actually quite active on social media because I I mean I guess I feel as though I need to constantly promote my music and my performances right and so I'm constantly contacted by people offering me things like promotional deals and all sorts of other businesses 80% of them are absolute rubbish they're not real so yeah although there's a lot of benefits I think also from the potential employees side of everything it can also be difficult to trust this all right so the average Chia Hongshu user may not be as famous as you are as a musician but I think in the spite of the same token they should take any offer they get on these platforms with a grain of salt and just to verify and make sure that what they're what they're getting are precise and reliable yeah and speaking of which here's one figure that I think it's worth adding here that is you know almost 50% of the regular users of or rather active users of Chia Hongshu were born between 1995 and 1999 so basically half of the users are people like me like they're between 25 to 29 years old who is right there in the market to you know be hired so I think that's also why this you know trend of hiring on social media is getting popular here in China