Digitally-skilled workers preferred by banks when recruiting

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By Lee Min-hyung

Banks are conducting their recruitment for this year, giving more weight to those who have received a digital education or relevant certificates offered by third-party organizations. Banks have been desperate to hire digital professionals for the past few years due to the rise of digital banking after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.

With more people preferring to make non-face-to-face transactions, demand for mobile banking platforms has been on a steep rise. Catching up with the new paradigm, banks have had to reduce recruitments of conventional bank clerks and hire more digitally-agile staff.

However, they have had a tough time hiring tech savvy applicants, as most IT specialists do not favor jobs at banks or financial institutions. As a result, banks are now moving to shift their eyes onto hiring those who have taken digital education courses from recognized organizations, even if they do not have an academic degree in computer engineering or computer science.

Woori Bank finished accepting applications for its 2022 recruitment on March 7, and one noticeable difference from last year was that the lender plans to offer more incentives to applicants who completed the Samsung Software Academy for Youth program. The course is aimed at providing basic software education ― such as coding ― to job seekers.

The decision by Woori displays its willingness to hire more working-level staff who are competent in handling IT and other digital work. Those with IT-related certificates ― such as data processing ― will also be preferred by the lender.

State-run lenders are also on track to increase employment of their IT manpower while reducing those handling traditional banking tasks.

The Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) said it plans to hire 150 new employees during the recruitment, and will employ almost a third of them in digital-related positions.

This is a twofold increase from last year. IBK will also offer incentives to those with IT certificates, which was not the case in 2021.

NongHyup Bank will finish its recruitment process by the end of March. The lender will hire a total of 450 people for conventional banking and IT positions.

Detailed recruitment schedules of other major commercial lenders such as KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank and Hana Bank have not been finalized yet, but they will likely take a similar course of action by preferring candidates with IT-related backgrounds or skills.

Industry officials said such a hiring practice will persist for the time being as competition for digital banking is widely expected to increase moving forward.

“Banks are closing down their sales offices and replacing work traditionally done by people with IT devices or software programs,” a bank industry analyst said.

“Banks will have to offer more incentives to recruit more IT manpower, as digital transformation is a keyword not just for the financial industry, but most other areas as well.”