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| / Courtesy of Ko Min-jung |
By Jung Min-ho
Korea, which is home to many international companies, has long been criticized for hiring practices that fall far below international standards.
However, the government is finally taking a major step to change the country's highly intrusive and discriminative recruitment practices. Early this month, it announced that it will implement "blind hiring" for all public jobs by September.
Ko Min-jung, vice presidential spokeswoman and former news anchor, thinks the new policy can be a "seed of hope" for young jobseekers, just like it was for her 13 years ago.
Ko got her dream job in 2004, when broadcasting company KBS hired people through a blind screening. For the first time, KBS removed questions about job applicants' hometowns and alma mater from its job application form and interviewers evaluated them solely based on their performance in written and oral tests. The company used the hiring method until 2009.
Many of the best performers were people who did not graduate from so-called top universities, including Ko, an alumnus of Kyung Hee University in Suwon.
"Many, including my parents, were skeptical that I would be able to make it because, as far as I know, no one from the school got a job at major broadcasting companies such as KBS," she said.
Thus, the news of the blind recruitment gave her a ray of hope, which she badly needed at that time.
The results of KBS' blind screening surprised many. According to Cheong Wa Dae, graduates of prestigious universities accounted for only 30 percent of those hired by the company that year, a major drop from 70 percent in previous years.
"The result and their performance over the years showed that job performance and school names were less related than perceived," Ko said.
One of the objectives of the Moon Jae-in government's blind hiring policy is to change the widespread belief that doing well on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), a set of multiple-choice tests for college entrance, largely determines students' future regardless of how much effort they put in afterward.
In the country's "one-shot" system of education, those who score well on the CSAT can enter one of the "best" universities, which has lasting consequences for their careers over the long term. Meanwhile, those who score poorly are doomed to attend a lesser university, if any at all, and join lesser-known firms, where they either become stuck or move to other companies that are not much different.
Ko believes it is unfair that students' performance on the test profoundly affects their career prospects no matter how much they improve later.
In response to claims that the policy discriminates against graduates of prestigious schools, Ko noted that the government is simply trying to make the competition "free from prejudice." "The policy is about helping firms evaluate job applicants as objectively as possible based on their performance, and nothing else. No one receives favors," she said.
"We are all affected by preconceived notions, even though we try not to be," she said. "This is why we cannot leave it in the hands of employers. We need a system that can protect both employers and jobseekers from prejudice."
But the policy won't immediately affect the private sector, where companies often require job applicants to disclose not only their academic backgrounds but also sensitive personal information, such as hobbies, weight, height, blood type and their parents' occupations and income levels.
Perhaps Koreans have become used to such job application questions, which are considered illegal in most developed countries.
"I don't think we should continue to allow such questions just because they have been there for a long time," Ko said. "The times have changed."
The Ministry of Employment and Labor said it will push ahead with making a law to prevent private firms from asking irrelevant and intrusive job application questions.
According to survey results published last week by local pollster Realmeter, 68 percent of respondents said they support the policy, while 23.1 percent said they are against it.
"When I was pursuing my dream, I felt hopeless sometimes, which was the hardest part," Ko said. "I think nowadays many young jobseekers feel exactly the same way. It is true that only a few will be beneficiaries, given that there aren't many dream jobs. But I believe the policy can give them hope that they can still try and shape their future. That, I think, means a lot."
