(Hopefully) Get A Job

For young people in South Korea, finding a job -- let alone a good one -- is an uphill struggle.  That might be changing, or not, due to the new process of "blind hiring":

"As companies this season look to hire new employees, many are looking less at GPAs and internships and are instead opting for what is known as 'blind hiring.'

The trend started last June at a meeting of senior presidential secretaries, when President Moon Jae-in said he hoped to see an increase in blind hiring, so candidates can all start 'from the same starting line, with only capability as a determining factor.'

Following his request, 332 public institutions and 149 state-run companies headquartered outside of Seoul and Gyeonggi uniformly applied blind hiring in the latter half of this year. This development has now spread to private businesses as well in areas like retail, IT and finance.

Some of these beneficiaries are able to fully use this potential, which has given them a fighting chance in the job market. Cha Ji-hyeong, 27, is one of them. He applied to roughly 30 companies after facing a series of rejections in 2016 and the first half of 2017, but now he feels confident he can get a job because the companies do not emphasize educational background or other specifications, or 'specs', as much.

'I didn’t attend a prestigious university and my GPA was below average,' said Cha, 'so I have been rejected in the first round of job applications. Blind hiring gives me a newfound assurance as I have done many internships and have a lot of work experience, so if I make it to interviews I have a better chance.'”

"Specs" is a bit of Konglish meaning educational and professional certifications, but confusingly it also means where you went to college and GPA.

As for blind hiring, with nepotism being so rampant in the country,  steps like this seem like a good idea.  But leave it to the South Korean bureaucracy to manage and ignore or forsake its own rules when rubbing up against centuries-long norms.  This is still a country where you're expected to put the names of your parents and grandparents on resumes, and it's not just for show.  Your family is everything, for better or for worse.

Update: In our morning discussion class a student reminded me what's really shocking for Americans about Korean resumes -- the prominent use of headshots, along with numbers for height (!) and weight (!!).