After finally getting myself settled this year, I had been away from the workplace for so long that, to be honest, I felt a little intimidated by job interviews. One thing I worried about was that many companies are not especially welcoming toward former entrepreneurs. Once you have spent years thinking like someone building things for yourself, your instincts change. You look at a company and immediately start breaking it down: what kind of project or product it is, how much capital it needs, what resources it depends on, whether the model can be replicated, what the operating costs are, how much payroll will run, and in the end whether the whole thing is worth doing at all.
That way of thinking doesn’t disappear easily. Maybe it is because I spent too long starting and running things on my own, but the idea of going back out for a fixed salary plus a small performance bonus is not especially tempting. I am the kind of person who likes movement, risk, and trying things. Whether on the internet or in life, I have always had that restless streak. It is not about age, and it is not really about fear of being left behind by society either. What pushed me to interview again was simpler than that: I wanted to know, in today’s market, what value the outside world would put on me. In plain terms, I wanted to know what I am still worth.
A few days ago, mostly out of boredom, I was scrolling through cross-industry job listings on Boss and came across a position for a front warehouse store manager. The internship pay was 8,000 RMB, and after becoming a full employee the average monthly pay would be around 10,000 RMB. The schedule was three rotating shifts, each 12 hours point-to-point. Night shifts had to be acceptable, though not guaranteed every time. There were four days off per month, social insurance was included, but no housing fund. I also interviewed for other roles, and most of the jobs I saw were in roughly the 8,000 to 15,000 RMB range. Many offered standard social insurance but no housing fund. Positions that did include a housing fund were usually skill-based roles combined with sales. If you wanted a relatively easygoing job with a housing fund, the pay was generally around 8,000.
My résumé from my working years still looks fairly strong, so interviewing for a store manager role was more than manageable. The work in a front warehouse is not especially complicated. It sits somewhere between physical retail, internet operations, and platform-based sales management. You bring goods in, move goods out, monitor how items are selling, watch the traffic and weighting on the platform, and then make adjustments based on the sales performance attached to that weighting. Once a customer places an order, the store packs and sorts it for the delivery rider. On top of that, there is inventory verification, stocktaking, organization of backroom accumulation and storage shelving, making sure everything is orderly, and ensuring fire safety compliance. Beyond that, it is mostly physical labor.
After an initial résumé screening, there were two rounds of interviews.
The first round took place in person at a supermarket location, where I worked with the store manager on an inventory check. They handed me a list and a scanning device for QR-coded stock records. The task was straightforward on paper: go through the listed inventory, scan the QR codes to check the system count, and mark whether the actual quantity matched. If there were extra items, note them with a “+”; if items were missing, mark them with a “−”. They gave me three A4 sheets worth of stock to count.
Because I count carefully, it took me about two and a half hours. There were two reasons for that. First, when I had just started my career, I had actually worked in high-end retail, so this kind of task is basic operational work for me. Second, I knew perfectly well that interviewers usually leave traps in practical tests. They are never only testing whether you can finish the task; they are watching how you do it. So after I finished counting, I went back over the storage shelves and reorganized all the boxes in a disciplined, almost military-neat way before turning everything in. The store manager was very satisfied, and I passed.
After a day off, the second interview was held on DingTalk. It started at 10 in the morning and lasted nearly an hour. We went from self-introduction to my last two jobs, from my personality to the specific work I had done, and then into why I was interested in the company.
That part, I actually had something real to say about. A lot of the other jobs I had looked at felt like dead ends to me, with limited room for growth. This role was different because it was part of the first batch of local seed stores, and even the position itself was considered a seed role. Since the company was still opening up the market locally, there was at least some real possibility for development and advancement. That was the point I cared most about, and I discussed it repeatedly with the project lead during the interview. I told them very directly: if there is a standard promotion path, then I would choose the company; if there is no promotion path, then we can part ways. There are plenty of places outside where a person can go be a workhorse, so I am not concerned about missing one more chance to do that at your company. That was my original wording.
Because the conversation was so candid, the whole interview felt more like a serious chat than a formal screening. Maybe that honesty worked in my favor. In any case, they moved quickly and sent me an offer.
After that, HR contacted me and asked for background check references from my previous two jobs, my academic certificate, an explanation for the employment gap after I resigned, my personal credit report, and a signed authorization for the background investigation. They also asked how soon I could start.
The truth is, I still wanted to interview with more companies in different industries. It had been too long since I had received any direct feedback from the market, and I genuinely wanted to hear more of that before making a decision. Even so, the offers already in hand were enough to give me options.
At this point, what I need to tell myself is not to get dazzled by too many choices. Nobody can see the future clearly. You might be gold, but that does not mean you have to shine everywhere. In the end, being practical matters more.