Of the 664 companies that had planned to hire employees in the first half of 2016, 79.2 percent replied that they weren’t able to recruit the number of personnel they had initially planned on hiring. (image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, June 21 (Korea Bizwire) – For young Koreans, finding a job is becoming harder than ever. Paradoxically, however, some Korean companies are finding it hard to recruit new employees.
Saramin, one of Korea’s major recruiting platforms, conducted a survey of 779 small and medium-sized companies. Of the 664 companies that had planned to hire employees in the first half of 2016, 79.2 percent replied that they weren’t able to recruit the number of personnel they had initially planned on hiring.
Among the companies looking to expand their workforce, the number of employees hired only accounted for 31 percent of their target number, and 35.6 percent even said that they hired less than 10 percent of their target number.
As to reasons for this phenomenon, 51.1 percent (multiple responses permitted) said, ‘very few number of applicants’, which was followed by ‘no qualified applicant’ (40.3 percent), ‘recruits leaving the company shortly after’ (27.2 percent), ‘too many unmotivated candidates’ (26.2 percent), ‘applicants failing to show up for follow-up interviews’ (23.2 percent), and ‘candidates turning down job offer’ (18.4 percent).
Employer satisfaction levels with new recruits were also low, with an average of 52 points out of 100.
The study also revealed that 91.8 percent of the surveyed companies said they have experienced new recruits leaving the company after only one of two years of service.
By Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
