"Only Hiring Experienced and IT Professionals"... Stalled New Recruitment in the Financial Sector

4 Major Banks Hire Only 898 People... 55% Decrease from Previous Year
Among 5 Major Savings Banks, 74 of 103 Hires Are Experienced
Industry Says "Impact of Rapid Increase in Non-Face-to-Face and Digital Financial Transactions"

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Seung-seop]"It seems increasingly difficult to get a job at a bank. I don’t understand how they expect someone from a liberal arts background preparing for the financial sector to get in. When I look around, there are a few job postings, but they are mostly looking for candidates with science and engineering backgrounds."

On a financial sector job preparation site used by 540,000 people, complaints about how difficult it has become for liberal arts students to find employment have been frequently posted recently. This is because financial companies, despite posting record-high profits, have tightly locked their hiring doors. Moreover, most of the job postings that do appear target experienced professionals or digital talent, further narrowing the path for liberal arts graduates preparing for employment.

According to the office of Assemblyman Yoon Chang-hyun on the 21st, the total number of hires at the four major banks?KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori, and Hana?at the end of last year was only 898. This is a decrease of 1,136 people (55.8%) compared to 2,034 the previous year. Compared to 2018, when 2,663 were hired, it dropped by 1,765 people (66.2%). In particular, the number of new employee hires shrank from 1,693 in 2019 to just 550, nearly a third.

On the other hand, experienced hires have gradually increased each year. From 321 in 2018, it rose to 341 in one year, and last year, 348 experienced employees were recruited. Financial companies, which typically hire 10-12% of their total recruits as experienced professionals, filled 38.7% of last year’s total hires with experienced workers.

The preference for experienced candidates amid tightening hiring conditions was also seen in the secondary financial sector. The five major savings banks?SBI, OK, Welcome, Pepper, and Korea Investment?hired 103 people last year, sharply down from 517 the previous year. While in 2017 they hired 389 new employees and 209 experienced workers, in 2020 only 29 new employees were hired, with 74 experienced workers, about 2.5 times more.

Rare Job Postings... Digital and IT Talent Sweeps the Market

The few new employee job postings that do appear are mostly concentrated in digital, IT, and data sectors. As non-face-to-face financial transactions increase, banks are rapidly closing offline branches, reducing the need for staff. For example, among the three open recruitment (L1) positions for new employees at KB Kookmin Bank last month, excluding special recruitment, two were in IT and data fields. The remaining position in management requires over three years of experience or a master’s degree.

The trend of focusing on digital talent is the same for rapidly growing internet-only banks. Toss Bank, which is about to officially launch operations, announced this month that it is hiring experienced developers and designers in the tech field. The target experts include those in technology product planning, design, engineering, security, and infrastructure. K Bank is also accepting applications for experienced hires until the end of this month, targeting IT fields such as development, infrastructure, and information security.

Even financial public institutions, considered top choices among job seekers, are relatively reluctant to hire new employees. Public institutions and government enterprises have traditionally hired new employees regularly. However, as more institutions struggle with personnel stagnation, voices calling for downsizing are growing. The Bank of Korea’s comprehensive planning staff (G5) recruitment, which started yesterday, announced it will hire only 50 people this year, down from 70 in 2017. Most government enterprises have only posted internship recruitment notices.

The financial industry explains that with non-face-to-face transactions and digital finance becoming the norm, they have no choice but to prefer IT positions. A financial sector official said, "In the past, dealing with customers at the counter did not require a distinction between liberal arts and science backgrounds, but times have changed. However, the current large-scale hiring of IT talent is due to a shortage during this rapid transition, and it is a temporary phenomenon that liberal arts graduates are not being hired."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.