Samsung organizing recruitment blitz in H2

Samsung Group is set to recruit 26,100 entry-level workers in the latter half of the year, an unprecedented number in its history, including 450 college graduates from underprivileged households. Many such households survive on government subsidies.

The nation’s top conglomerate said yesterday it will start running newspaper advertisements on the new recruiting process specially designed for the underprivileged students and contact universities nationwide urging them to recommend suitable students.

When a job seeker files an application with the employment support center at their university, it passes a list of names to Samsung after conducting a screening process and seeking counsel from the university dean. The process will start today and the deadline is Aug. 31.

“There should be plenty of underprivileged students who can demonstrate their capability with just a little push [from the company],” said Rhee In-yong, the group’s chief communications officer, yesterday. “Given the chance, they will probably work harder than anybody else, and we are sure many will have a gung-ho attitude toward taking on new challenges.”

“They are expected to have a positive influence on the working atmosphere,” he said, adding that the identities of those who passed through the special recruiting process will be kept secret so they are not discriminated against.

As society steps up its calls for companies to embrace their corporate social responsibility amid intensifying social polarization, Samsung is becoming increasingly open-minded when it comes to assessing the qualifications of its new recruits. In the first six months of 2012, 15 percent of all entry-level workers culled from the ranks of high school graduates came from underprivileged families.

Samsung has employed more than 7,000 high school graduates on average each year since 2007, but this year the number is set to climb to 9,100.

The group aims to hire more entry-level employees who graduated from universities outside Seoul so they account for 35 percent of all new hires in the second half, up from 28 percent in the first.

Samsung affiliates had 110,000 workers on the payroll in 1999, when the nation emerged from the Asian financial crisis, but this number grew to 210,000 at the end of last year.

By Seo Ji-eun [spring@joongang.co.kr]