Banks enhancing digital workforce

Recruiters from banks hold an online interview with applicants during a financial job expo that took place for three days from Aug. 26 in Seoul. Yonhap

By Lee Min-hyung

Commercial banks here are reinforcing their digital workforce by cutting recruitment of bank clerks and expanding that of IT experts, in their bid to become online-driven and digitally agile lenders at the earliest possible date.

The nation's five largest banks shared their plan to cut the number of new employees in half this year, compared to a year ago, amid unfavorable market circumstances induced by the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic.

The lenders ― including KB, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and NongHyup ― hired a combined 3,000 new bank clerks in 2019, but they plan to recruit only half as many this year, with a focus on experts in digital banking and data management.

All of the major lenders have included a category of digital and IT experts for this year's recruitment as part of their efforts to embrace the post-coronavirus banking paradigm shift represented by online-driven transactions.

CEOs from the lenders have in recent months underlined their determination to prioritize making their organizations more digitally agile in line with the rise of non-face-to-face transactions becoming increasingly prevalent after COVID-19 swept across the nation and changed consumers' shopping patterns.

“Employees and the organization need to make more efforts to be more agile and responsive to the digital era where a creative and open culture is being established,” KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo said in a message to celebrate the group's anniversary, Tuesday.

The diminishing number of new bank clerks is partially due to new trends in recruitment, with lenders favoring year-round recruitment particularly in the digital sector, rather than sticking to their decades-long practice of hiring thousands of new clerks at certain times of the year.

“Despite the widespread belief about the conservative nature of the banking industry, most banks are moving to let go of their long-lasting public recruitment culture and hire new employees from time to time, in a bid to adapt to the rapidly changing market environment,” an official from one lender said.

But it remains to be seen whether banks can hire skilled IT experts, as those well-qualified for the positions are unlikely to work for the banking industry, according to another official from the tech industry.

“In general, those with outstanding experience in the IT industry rarely want to get a job in the banking industry,” the source said. “Most of them prefer other tech-driven conglomerates or promising IT startups. Banks may have to extend exceptional offers to recruit top-level technicians.”