NH Nonghyup Bank to Hire 450 Employees in First Half of 2022, Record High
Attention on Whether Other Banks Will Follow
Financial Authorities' Pressure for 'Job Creation' Also Expected to Influence
[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Jin-ho] A shift in the hiring landscape is being detected in the banking sector, which had been tightly shut due to digital transformation and the impact of COVID-19. With NH Nonghyup Bank becoming the first major bank to confirm a large-scale open recruitment for next year, attention is focused on whether banks, which have recently increased only irregular hiring, will once again open the “public recruitment door.”
According to the financial sector on the 19th, Nonghyup Bank has announced the “Early Recruitment of Grade 6 New Employees for the First Half of 2022” and is currently proceeding with the process. The plan is to complete placement at frontline branches by mid-March after a written exam in mid-January and interviews in February.
The recruitment will be conducted on a scale of 450 people, including 420 general positions and 30 IT positions. This is the largest number since Nonghyup Bank was launched in 2012, comparable to this year’s total recruitment of 470 people.
For the general field, candidates will be selected based on metropolitan city and province units, focusing on those with marketing capabilities. To strengthen competitiveness in corporate finance (RM) and wealth management (WM), relevant skills will be intensively verified and significantly preferred. In the IT field, holders of digital certificates and graduates of the “Samsung Youth Software Academy (SSAFY)” will be given preference, and programming skills will be assessed through an online coding test. All recruitment will be conducted in a blind manner.
Even across the entire banking sector, this is considered an “unprecedented recruitment.” Nonghyup Bank alone will recruit nearly half of the total number of new employees (about 1,000) hired by the five major commercial banks this year, just in the first half of next year.
With Nonghyup Bank opening the floodgates with large-scale recruitment, it is analyzed that the banking sector’s hiring market, which has been stagnant in recent years, will gain some momentum next year. There is an expectation that a considerable scale of recruitment may proceed next year, especially among some commercial banks that did not conduct public recruitment in the second half of this year.
It is also mentioned that the financial authorities’ continuous pressure on banks to create “youth jobs” may have an influence. In fact, major policy banks such as the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund, KDB Industrial Bank, and Export-Import Bank of Korea have significantly increased their recruitment scale this year compared to previous years. A financial sector official said, “Since the banks achieved record-high performance again this year despite the COVID-19 situation, the importance of the public role of commercial banks in recruitment and other areas is expected to be emphasized.”
However, unlike Nonghyup Bank, there is also a forecast that it will not be easy for major commercial banks to return to large-scale public recruitment as in previous years. It is pointed out that the situation is different from Nonghyup Bank, which cannot easily reduce its size considering financial accessibility in rural areas.
In particular, the speed of branch consolidation and closure is very fast, and internally, the demand for personnel related to digital transformation is much greater than at Nonghyup Bank, so such large-scale recruitment is practically impossible. A commercial bank official said, “Due to the impact of digitalization, the trend is shifting from public recruitment to irregular hiring,” adding, “In the case of Nonghyup Bank, large-scale public recruitment is still conducted because of the unique nature of its extensive face-to-face channels.”
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