2024 Second Half Corporate Recruitment Trend Survey
Second Results Announced on the 30th Following the First on the 16th
"Job Seekers Need to Adapt to These Changes"
There is an increasing number of cases where companies directly discover and recruit suitable talent during the hiring process. Moving away from the traditional method of posting job advertisements and waiting for candidates to apply, companies are pursuing various methods such as headhunting and direct sourcing. Experts advise that young people should adapt to these changing recruitment methods.
Job seekers participating in the '2025 Korea Job Fair' held at aT Center in Seocho-gu, Seoul, are looking at the recruitment bulletin board.
On the 30th, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Employment Information Service announced the second results of the "2024 Second Half Corporate Recruitment Trend Survey," which surveyed HR managers of the top 500 companies by sales (387 responses). Following the first results announced on the 16th, additional important findings related to recruitment were shared two weeks later.
In this survey, when asked about the frequently used methods for hiring employees with multiple responses allowed, "job postings" ranked first for both new and experienced hires, while "headhunting" ranked second. Headhunting was particularly prominent in experienced hires. For experienced hires, job postings accounted for 83.7%, and headhunting 81.9%, while for new hires, the figures were 88.1% and 61.2%, respectively.
The proactive recruitment method called "direct sourcing," where recruiters communicate directly with candidates found in talent pools secured through various methods, ranked third. It accounted for 42.4% for new hires and 51.2% for experienced hires. Following these were on-site interview recruitment, industry-academia cooperation recruitment, and university collaboration recruitment.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor pointed out the rapidly changing market characteristics as the background for the increasing cases of companies actively seeking talent through headhunting and direct sourcing. As companies expand their tendency to secure personnel mainly through small-scale, on-demand recruitment to respond to the fast-changing market, they are recruiting talent with less cost and time invested.
Professor Yoon Dong-yeol of Konkuk University explained, "Since COVID-19, the value of work and working methods have changed drastically, making it difficult to preserve corporate organizational culture. Accordingly, it seems that companies are shifting their recruitment paradigm from passive waiting to proactively discovering and recruiting talent suitable for the company."
In new hires, the trend of selecting suitable talent through pre-verification using internship programs is also prominent. In this survey, 59.9% (232 companies) of respondents had internship programs, and among them, 68.1% (158 companies) operated recruitment-linked internship programs. Many also operated experiential internship programs.
Among companies operating recruitment-linked internship programs (158 companies), 84.8% had a rate of over 50% for hiring interns as full-time employees after the internship ended. The criteria for full-time conversion were highly rated as attitude and personality (65.2%) and job competency (62.0%).
Jung Eun-woo, Head of Strategy at University Tomorrow Insight, advised, "It is important to keep your profile updated on recruitment platforms and company talent pools, including accurate keywords and key skills so that recruiters can easily search for you," adding, "actively participating in work experience and increasing contact points with companies is crucial."
She added, "It is necessary to prepare for employment by accurately understanding what companies want through exchanges with industry seniors using social networking services (SNS) and online communities."
The Ministry of Employment and Labor pointed out that young people starting their social life alone face limitations in coping with the changing recruitment methods of companies. Therefore, various support services have been strengthened to help young people prepare for employment according to the talent requirements of companies. The scale of work experience support based on actual job duties has also been expanded this year compared to the previous year.
Lee Jeong-han, Director of Employment Policy at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, said, "With the increase in on-demand and experienced hiring and the worsening job mismatch, we will increase opportunities for young people to gain quality work experience in many companies." He also stated, "We will strengthen a seamless customized support system until employment to help graduates enter the labor market."
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