Chaebol Turning to Internships for Recruitment
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
College graduates who pass through POSCO's recruiting process this year won't be able to feel totally secure right away. The steel giant plans to cut their number in half through a final on-the-job evaluation before offering them full-time positions.
POSCO said Tuesday it will introduce a new method for its annual selection of recruits. The company will first pick a total of 500 interns, in two batches, through the usual screening processes, and then give a final nod to 250 of them after a six-week education program.
Selection of the first group of interns is scheduled for May. Such a recruiting system is unique to POSCO at the moment, but it is also possible the same method could be applied to other affiliates in the business group, a company spokesman said.
A growing number of firms depend on internships as part of their hiring process, but POSCO is the first to expand it to account for its entire recruitment.
Before POSCO, Samsung and LG started to increase the rate of new hires using internship programs.
Samsung Electronics decided last year to select interns and hire them based on merit after an on-the-job training period. It is reportedly fine-tuning a detailed plan.
LG hired about 80 percent of the 550 interns it selected late last year as full-time employees. This year, it plans to maintain the internship program as well as its normal recruiting system.
This could put job searchers under more pressure and intensified competition. Landing a full-time position has already become a battle as employment creation is not taking place as pledged by the government.
Recently, many job seekers prefer to work full-time for smaller companies than temporarily at conglomerates, according to a recent survey by Career, a local job portal Web site.
Of the 1,254 respondents, 77.4 percent said they would prefer a full-time role in smaller firms. About 64.4 percent of them also said this is because it is important to have a secure position.
To the dismay of most young job seekers, industry watchers forecast that internship-based recruitment is likely to spread to many local conglomerates this year, as the government is encouraging the implementation of more internships leading to job offers to tackle the nation's growing unemployment rates.
The government will hire 13,360 interns this year for offices in the central and provincial governments. Added to recruits from state-run companies, the total number will grow to some 48,000.
Some state-run firms, along with conglomerates such as SK and Lotte, are considering following the same track ― giving full-time employment to a limited portion of interns.
"It's an attempt to create jobs in a diversified way. If the system successfully settles down, college students won't have to desperately hang out in the job market after graduation," a spokesman of a local conglomerate said.
However, he declined to comment when asked if there had been requests from the government regarding the implementation of internships.