Creating A Dystopian Future For 800 Million People with Resumes

A cautionary tale about big data with no oversight

Austin Zheng
The Startup
Published in
7 min readDec 16, 2019

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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “dystopian future?” 1984? Big Brother? Mass surveillance? What if I tell you that the closest thing we have to a dystopian future is Resume Screening? (It’s probably already true if you are looking for a job right now). A Chinese startup, QiaoData is using resumes to track over 800 Million people’s daily life with the power of Big Data.

QiaoData Group is initially aimed to be the one-stop-shop for Chinese recruiters, headhunters and job seekers. It aggregates resumes & job posting and leverages machine learning to find the best skill match for jobs and candidates. Sounds just like indeed or Glassdoor or any other harmless job hunting sites, right?

In China, you say more about yourself on your resume than you do on your first date. On your resume, you need to include detailed personal information, such as your political affiliation, blood type, marital status, current salary, and even your medical records. Not sure how some of them are relevant for staffing but okay…. *Also, I thought everyone in China was a member of the Chinese Communist Party*

*Fun fact, Chinese parents will actually ask for resumes when setting up blind dates for their children*

In the distant past of 2014, QiaoData was founded by Chenyu Wang, a serial c̶o̶n̶-̶a̶r̶t̶i̶s̶t̶ entrepreneur and before starting QiaoData, Chenyu has been jailed 6 times for fraud, extortion, and theft. Chenyu was only 18 when he was arrested for the first time… Criminals are sometimes the best innovators and Chenyu took it to the next level.

Chenyu brought in Yujie Qi, a partner at Baidu Ventures, as QiaoData’s chairman and Yi Shen, a former Baidu executive, as the co-founder. (If you don’t know, Baidu is the Chinese Google) Chenyu and friends set out to “revolutionize” how we collect and process(cough…

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Austin Zheng
The Startup

🌶🌶🌶 up the business & startup worlds with memes and bad puns :)