The survey conducted by recruiting website Saramin released on Wednesday revealed that few employers were keen to adopt the new recruitment practice, despite the government’s push to tackle corruption and achieve more equitable job opportunities, as only 26 human resources managers from 427 companies said they had adopted the new recruitment system. (Image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jul. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Fewer than one in ten South Korean companies are on board with the government’s call to adopt so-called ‘blind recruitment’ practices, in which employers are encouraged to judge job candidates as individuals and divert their attention from their education levels and relative work experience, according to a new survey.
The survey conducted by recruiting website Saramin released on Wednesday revealed that few employers were keen to adopt the new recruitment practice, despite the government’s push to tackle corruption and achieve more equitable job opportunities, as only 26 human resources managers from 427 companies said they had adopted the new recruitment system.
Even among those that said they had adopted a blind recruitment process, only 15.4 percent of the companies were found to be applying the idea of anonymous hiring throughout all stages of recruitment, while 38.5 percent practiced blind recruitment only for the first or second interviews, when candidates were interviewed by staff members.
The number of companies that adopted blind recruitment during the process of resume scanning accounted for 34.6 percent, while 19.2 percent adopted the anonymous hiring process only during the final interview with board members or senior executives.
When broken down by business size, large corporations held the most favorable view of anonymous hiring, with over half showing interest in adopting the newly introduced method of assessing job applicants in the future.
Small and medium-sized companies were less enthusiastic about the idea of judging candidates without taking into consideration their education level and work experience, with less than half of both types of businesses holding a favorable view.
Fewer than one in ten South Korean companies are on board with the government’s call to adopt so-called ‘blind recruitment’ practices, in which employers are encouraged to judge job candidates as individuals and divert their attention from their education levels and relative work experience, according to a new survey. (Image: Yonhap)
When asked about the perks of the anonymous hiring process, over 57 percent said ‘equal opportunities’, while ‘elimination of bias’ during the recruitment process was the second most popular reason to support the new candidate vetting process, according to Saramin’s multiple choice survey.
Despite the Moon administration’s effort to encourage employers to embrace anonymous recruitment in both the public and private sectors in a bid to tackle growing issues of job inequality, the findings from the survey indicate that the government still has a long way to go in convincing more companies to get on board.
Hyunsu Yim (hyunsu@koreabizwire.com)
