2024-07-12 23:18:59
[이런 인생 2막]Shin Hyun-man, Chairman of Korea’s largest headhunting company ‘Career Care’
Middle-aged and Older People Re-employment, “Lowering the Bar is a Win-Win for Everyone”
Concerns about labor shortage due to low birth rate and aging population
‘Continued employment’ is important for those who work at the same place they were working
However, employment flexibility must be a prerequisite.
Expertise is important in the reemployment market
Lifelong career management is necessary in advance
While I was thinking about retirement and re-employment for middle-aged and older people, I came across the book ‘Level Up Strong Career (Saykorea)’ recently published by Chairman Shin Hyeon-man (62), a senior in the media industry.
Career Care, which he runs, is the largest headhunting company in Korea. It operates 500,000 people’s worth of personal data and has recommended executives and key talents to over 5,000 companies at home and abroad. What is happening in the job change, transfer, and re-employment markets? And what is needed for ‘ordinary’ middle-aged people to smoothly find re-employment? On the 2nd, I visited the Career Care office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
“Headhunting, providing insight into talent”
One day in the late 1990s, reporter Shin Hyun-man, who had been covering a headhunting company, registered his information on the company’s website as a test after work. The next day, he got a call. “They asked me to come to a certain news agency as the chief secretary. When I asked why, they said, ‘Looking at your resume, you’ve been a reporter in the economics department, worked in the secretary’s office and the planning department, and even went on a training trip overseas, so I think you’ll be a good fit.’ When they asked me how much my current salary was, I was embarrassed and told them, ‘It’s around 50 million,’ but they asked if that was all I could make. When I asked them how much they would make for that position, they said it was 100 million won at the time. I realized how little media companies paid. Haha.”
The pleasant memory of that time later became the opportunity for him to take root in the headhunting business. He was a trainee at the first Hankyoreh newspaper, which was founded in 1988. After working as a reporter for over ten years, he introduced headhunting as one of the new businesses of the newspaper company’s subsidiary, and after two years, he became independent and founded Career Care.
It has now grown into the largest domestic company recognized by all. It has the largest annual sales (20 billion won) in the industry and the largest number of regular employees (150-200 people). It is a completely different approach from other headhunting companies that operate headhunters as special employees (subcontracted between business owners and individuals).
What attracted him most about this job was that it provided an eye for talent.
“A headhunter is someone who knows about companies, businesses, and people, and who can judge people. They judge, ‘That person has this talent and this ability, so I think he or she can contribute to this company.’ So a headhunter must have an eye for people.”
The largest corporate headhunting company in Korea
-You seem to have pride in contributing to society.
“Of course. If you send good people to a company, a dying company can be revived. The case of Japan Airlines (JAL) in 2012 is a representative example. When JAL was on the verge of bankruptcy, Kazuo Inamori, the honorary chairman of Kyocera, who was called the ‘God of Management,’ came in as a relief pitcher and revived the company in eight months. Also, there are many cases where headhunters recommend talented people who have a gap in their careers, saying, ‘Trust this person and give it a try.’ Our work has a public interest.”
There are many interesting things happening at the reputation check department ‘C-Lens’, where about 10 elite people work. These days, the trend is to check reputations without exception for almost all high-ranking positions.
“Reputation checks check things that cannot be quantified. Leadership style, ethics, communication style, etc. are typical examples. This is often more accurate than an interview about the person. For example, there are cases where a company quietly covers up someone who committed accounting fraud and then fires them. You can only find out about such things through a reputation check.”
– Is there any difficulty in getting a reputation check?
“The more experienced someone is, the more likely they are to respond to a request for a reputation check. For example, if you are hiring someone from the head of the central investigation department for a key position at a law firm, you should ask the former prosecutor general or district prosecutor about the reputation check. If you say to people in this position, ‘We need a reputation check right now,’ they will all respond. Sometimes, even a no-comment is a form of expression. You can tell, ‘Aha, this person is negative.’”
Companies that know the importance of ‘people’ prefer headhunting companies
-What kind of companies mainly request your work?
“We have about 5,000 business partners, most of which are large corporations, public corporations, and other solid companies. Headhunting fees are more expensive than you might think (if a job is hired, the employer pays the entire fee). If the annual salary of the person hired is 300 million won, the fee will be close to 100 million won, so most companies can’t even think about it.
The companies that are willing to take on the burden are those that know very well that ‘people’ are important. However, these tasks are carried out after signing a confidentiality agreement. Unfortunately, this is the reason why specific cases cannot be disclosed.
“You may not know it yourself, but in the case of major companies, most people do background checks. Even people overseas do it in English. For example, if you hire someone who worked under Bill Gates to a Korean IT company, you have to check Bill Gates’ background, but they do it because they hired him.”
-Did Bill Gates really do it?
“We did a background check on someone like Bill Gates, someone at Amazon. We called them in English in the middle of the night. All the little details came out, and the background check had a huge impact on whether or not they were hired.”
Active reputation checks without your knowledge
-Why are the number of companies utilizing headhunting increasing?
“‘People’ have become so important. In the past, a single person was just like a part of a large organization. These days, key executives or key figures determine the fate of an organization. If you choose the wrong person, the future of the company can change, so you have to keep checking.”
-I heard you have a huge database.
“I think it’s over 500,000. Basically, you have to register yourself in the database. People who apply to our company register their resumes and career skills. After that, we manage the records. We have over 100 headhunters in our company, and they keep records of people they meet and interview. We manage the data with utmost security.”
As karma accumulates, a genealogy is created naturally. If you are a candidate for the chairman of 00 Bank, so-and-so, if you are a candidate for the president of 00 Company, so-and-so comes out in a row. It seems like there are a lot of candidates, but surprisingly, they are limited.
Continued employment of retirees is desirable, but employment flexibility must be a prerequisite
―There are many who point out that senior workers, even if they are not key personnel, are at risk of being left behind by society even though they have the will and ability to work before and after retirement.
“There was a recent report from the Bank of Korea. It says that 9.5 million second-generation baby boomers will retire starting this year. If we leave them alone, the economic growth rate will drop significantly over the next 10 years. I think ‘continued employment’, where retirees continue to work at their previous jobs, is the most desirable. It is stable for retirees, and companies can appropriately utilize their experience and know-how. However, for continued employment to be widely introduced, employment flexibility must be a prerequisite.”
The methods of continued employment are divided into △extension of retirement age △abolition of retirement age △reemployment. Our government also encourages continued employment of workers who have passed retirement age by supporting the ‘Continued Employment Incentive for the Elderly’. However, once the government-supported continuous employment system is introduced, it must be applied mandatorily to all workers. For example, the way to reemploy only a portion of all workers is blocked.
“It is often said that ‘if you want to get a job when you are older, you have to lower your standards,’ but in reality, that doesn’t work well. Contributions are low, but the standards for compensation are high. From the company’s perspective, even if they want to continue hiring, they can’t take losses. We need to have employment flexibility to talk about continuing to hire retirees.”
-How do we find the criteria for contribution?
“When our company hires people, we give the hiring manager two criteria. One is how much this person will contribute to the organization. If we pay them more than their contribution, the company will lose money. The second is the social compensation criteria for this person. If we pay them less than that, they won’t be here. We tell them to offer compensation based on those two criteria. The problem is that seniors want their past contributions to be included in the compensation. They say, ‘I contributed to this company for 30 years.’”
―I think it is correct to say that the past contribution has been resolved through retirement.
“If another company were to hire that person, they would only judge him based on his current usefulness. This is probably one of the reasons why retirees are not continuously employed at their previous workplace but instead find new jobs at completely different places.”
“It is more important to stay for a long time than to get a high position”
―In Japan, most cases are re-employment, but the compensation and work standards are very different.
“We, the union, and ourselves do not accept salary cuts. Even now, some large unions, including Hyundai Motors, are demanding an extension of the retirement age without salary cuts.”
-He’s telling me to lower my gaze.
“I think that even after retirement, you have to keep doing something. In fact, the thing that retirees find most difficult is not income, but the loss of their sense of self. People who have worked or found their meaning in social relationships cannot stand the thought of becoming meaningless to anyone. They worry about how to find their own sense of self, and I think that is work.”
He said that when the topic of retirement comes up in conversations with friends, he advises them to ‘make working for a long time a top priority.’
“It’s more important to stay in a position for a long time than to get a high position. Even if they complain that their salary is cut in half because they’re old, I still tell them to stay. The most important thing when you get older is to work. I tell them to choose a path where they stay for a long time. If you just lower your standards, it’s good for both the company and you.”
When you want to change jobs, the salary is high
As a second challenge, he cited the fact that seniors themselves are not prepared and able to manage their careers.
“Above all, you need to be professional. When I was working at a newspaper, my colleagues often come to me, and I often feel frustrated. Each person is very capable, smart, and has a sense, but they lack professionalism. They suddenly become a correspondent, then a police officer, and they are proud of being good at everything. In this case, they may be a competent reporter for the company, but from the company’s perspective, they are someone whose specialty is unknown. There is no reason to hire them. You need to consistently pursue your field. Career management should be done not only when you are young, but also in your 50s and 60s.”
―Retirement is a set future, but many people are suddenly shocked when it happens without any preparation.
“There are cases where we suggest that you ‘move’ even before retirement. Then, this person refuses, saying, ‘No, this place is much better than that place… The salary is high, the treatment is good, there’s no reason to move.’ They say, ‘I’ll enjoy it all.’ After they finish as executives, they come after them. ‘I’m done. Do something about me…’ But if they’re done there, they won’t hire them anywhere else. The idea that they can enjoy everything here and then get another position is an illusion.”
Preparing for Act 2 of life
In fact, he is seriously considering his retirement.
“I’m older now. People say that since I’m the owner, I can just keep working, but I think that’s impossible. If the CEO gets old, the entire organization gets old. So I’m thinking about how I should live after leaving.”
Last August, I bought a small house in Hongcheon, Gangwon-do and planted various fruit trees around the house. I spend every weekend here and am considering the possibility of moving to the countryside.
“When I was looking for a house, the real estate agent advised me to buy one with a lot of land. Even if it’s a country house, I need to secure a place to work. Whether it’s planting trees, digging the ground, or doing carpentry, if there’s no work, men can’t last long.
I keep going there, wondering if I could go there and live there, and how many days I could endure. When I go, I spend the whole day touching trees, digging the ground, and talking to neighbors. I think that when I get older, it would be better to do something closer to physical labor than something that requires thinking.”
Reporter Seo Young-ah [email protected]
2024-07-12 23:18:59