Koreans are quitting their jobs more — and apps are popping up to help

The Korean job market is shifting from mass recruitment of fresh graduates to hiring experienced workers, prompting new online platforms to support companies in the hiring and offboarding processes.

Job seekers scan for job openings at a center in Mapo District in western Seoul on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

The domestic job market is becoming more dynamic, driven by online platforms that not only connect job seekers with employers, but also support companies throughout the entire hiring process, from recruiting experienced candidates to managing employee exits.

The era of large-scale hiring campaigns by Korean companies, aimed at recruiting fresh graduates eager to dedicate their entire careers to one firm, is coming to an end.

Traditionally, it has been the norm for Korean conglomerates to hold annual recruitment drives, onboarding up to hundreds of new employees straight out of college. Instead, new hires are increasingly being replaced by experienced workers looking for their “nth job.”

A 2022 report from the Korea Labor Institute showed that mass recruitment had dropped to account for 35.8 percent of al employees hired in 2023 from 2019’s 39.9 percent, in a survey of 100 major companies. During the same period, the percentage of rookie hires, or hires with no experience in the field, fell to 40.3 percent from 47.

The trend is more pronounced in startups, where maximizing employee output is crucial given the limited work force typical of early-stage companies.

“It is realistically difficult [for startups] to have enough capacity to evaluate stacks of resumes or teach a new recruit how to do their job,” said a CEO of a 50-employee startup.

Recognizing the demand to connect job seekers and employers, platforms are opening new pathways to recruitment by developing and managing their own communities.

For instance, medical community platform operator Integration, which secured Series C funding in April, runs niche platforms that share relevant job posts within the industry such as Medistream, for medicine doctors; moreDEN for dentists; and Cheestalk for dental hygienists.

Medistaff, another medical community platform, connects verified users to hospital job openings. Gamejob, operated by online recruitment platform JobKorea, provides job listings for game developers and designers.

Rather than looking for fresh-eyed rookie hires, corporation are becoming more picky, seeking veteran candidates that align with company culture and display dedication to the job. As ad hoc hiring become the norm, thorough reference-checking services are emerging to meet demand, such as Specter, released in 2021.

As is common of reference checks in other countries, Specter contracts previous supervisors or colleagues for a brief conversation that mixes objective and subjective questions. Unlike in other places, however, job candidates receive a report of their references' responses — though references can choose to make some answers confidential — which they can then choose whether or not to share with their employers.

While it has been common for hiring managers to conduct reference checks discretely in the past, Specter purports to make that vetting process more open. The more experienced a worker is, collecting such reviews better helps to prove how qualified a candidate is for a job.

Specter’s reference data grew 225 percent in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period the year before. It counts more than 4,000 companies, from large enterprises to startups, as its clients. The platform emphasizes data security, noting that references — along with their personal information — are encrypted and deleted immediately when seekers terminate their memberships.

After the release of Specter, job portal sites such as Incruit and Saramin have released similar services. Incruit launched a mobile feature for reference checks at the end of 2021. Saramin also released a reference-checking service the following year.

Frequent job changes makes the process of leaving a job just as important as onboarding, as dissatisfied employees may turn into disgruntled whistle-blowers who damage the company’s reputation.

As than 950,000 employees transfer companies annually in Korea, with nearly 60 percent including involuntary moves such as layoffs, there has been rise of startups providing offboarding services.

An HR startup known as Candidate released Korea’s first offboarding service on Oct. 21. The platform helps manage exit processes for both departing employees and the firms they are leaving.

It provides a to-do checklist from the perspectives of both parties, which includes submitting a resignation letter, applying for retirement benefits, verifying unused leave and leaving behind contact information.

“A good offboarding process means sending employees off well and ensuring a positive environment for those who remain,” said Candidate CEO Lim Joon-taek. “Our goal is to address the major pain points of Korea’s small- and medium-sized enterprises by systematizing both hiring and offboarding processes.”

BY KIM MIN-JEONG, JEONG YONG-HWAN [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]