Samsung widens net for part-timers

Samsung Group is loosening its recruitment rules to encourage more people to return to the workplace after career interruptions.

The country’s largest conglomerate said yesterday it has eased the minimum career disruption period necessary for applying for high-level part-time jobs from a year to six months.

“We have changed the application criteria to enable more people to apply for the jobs,” said an official of Samsung Group.

High-level, part-time jobs refers to positions in which people work part time, but receive treatment almost equivalent to that of a regular worker. The Park Geun-hye administration has encouraged companies to create more high-level part-time jobs as a solution to the phenomenon of people who interrupt careers and then have trouble getting back into the workplace, particularly women who start families.

The government wants as many as 930,000 high-level part-time jobs to be created at companies or government agencies by the end of 2017. Aside from women, early retirees also are expected to benefit.

Samsung was one of the first conglomerates to respond to the government’s call. It announced in November that it would hire 6,000 people for flexible-hour, well-paid positions this year. About 2,700 were supposed to be at Samsung Electronics.

But in the first round of recruitment in January, it hired only 1,500. The official said many applicants in the first round did not meet the requirement of having left their jobs for at least a year.

Meanwhile, Samsung Foundation, a corporate social responsibility arm of Samsung Group, sold 2.5 percent of Samsung Life Insurance shares, according to the local financial industry yesterday.

The shares, reportedly worth about 501.6 billion won ($491.3 million), were sold to institutional investors at home and abroad through a block deal Thursday and yesterday. The sale leaves 2.1 percent of the shares of the country’s largest life insurer in the hands of Samsung Foundation.

Two months earlier, several Samsung affiliates including Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung SDS sold 1.63 percent of Samsung Life Insurance. The moves are being closely watched as the group streamlines the complicated cross-shareholding structure.

BY MOON GWANG-LIP [joe@joongang.co.kr]