1 day Ago By Korea Bizwire
While job postings remain the most common hiring method for both entry-level and experienced positions, headhunting has emerged as a nearly equal alternative—especially for experienced hires. (Image created by AI/ChatGPT) SEOUL, April 1 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s largest companies are increasingly moving beyond traditional job postings, adopting more proactive hiring strategies such as headhunting and direct sourcing to secure talent, according to new government data. The findings, released Sunday by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Employment Information Service, come from the second round of the 2024 Second-Half Corporate Hiring Trends Survey , which polled 387 of the country’s top 500 companies by revenue.
While job postings remain the most common hiring method for both entry-level and experienced positions, headhunting has emerged as a nearly equal alternative—especially for experienced hires . For career roles, 83.7 percent of companies still rely on job postings, but 81.
9 percent now also use headhunting . Among entry-level hires, job postings were used by 88.1 percent of companies, while 61.
2 percent employed headhunting. Direct sourcing , in which recruiters actively identify and contact candidates from curated talent pools, ranked third—used by 51.2 percent of companies for experienced hires and 42.
4 percent for entry-level positions. Other methods included on-site interviews, university partnerships, and industry-academia recruitment initiatives. The ministry attributed this shift to the growing need for flexible, cost-effective hiring models in a fast-changing market environment.
Direct sourcing, in particular, was valued for its role in verifying candidate performance and reputation (35.1 percent) and ensuring job fit (33.2 percent) .
A scene from the “2025 Dream On Job Fair with Universities in the Busan Region (Yonhap) The survey also highlighted the widespread use of internship programs as a recruitment pipeline for new graduates. About 60 percent of companies (232) operate internship programs, and over two-thirds (68.1 percent) of those are structured to lead to full-time employment.
Notably, 84.8 percent of companies offering conversion-type internships reported hiring more than half of their interns as full-time staff, with attitude/personality (65.2 percent) and job competency (62.
0 percent) being the most common evaluation criteria. Recognizing the challenges that young jobseekers face in adapting to these evolving recruitment practices, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced plans to significantly expand support for its “Future Tomorrow Work Experience” program in 2025. “We will broaden access to quality work experience opportunities and strengthen personalized employment support so young people can seamlessly transition into the labor market after graduation,” said Lee Jeong-han, Director of Employment Policy at the ministry.
Ashley Song ([email protected]).
