Samsung Group, the nation’s largest conglomerate, said Wednesday that it would revamp its recruitment process in a bid to reduce unnecessary social costs related to exams and private education.

Young job seekers in Korea have generally spent considerable time and money on developing their qualifications and on entrance exams by attending expensive private academic institutions to get hired at large companies such as Samsung.

Samsung said it plans to lower its dependence on the Samsung Aptitude Test, or SSAT, its specialized entrance exam taken by about 200,000 applicants every year, and to adopt an open recruitment system instead.

“The company will have a new hiring system through which deans of four-year colleges can recommend talented students,” Park Yong-ki, a human resource manager, told the press. “This is part of its efforts to improve cooperation with colleges in its hiring process.”

“From February, Samsung will also seek specialized personnel by visiting colleges across the nation to have meetings and interviews with senior students,” Park said.

The students selected through the open recruitment system will be exempted from the document-screening process. However, they still have to take and pass the SSAT.

Samsung will also launch an online recruitment system at the end of this month so that candidates can begin applying for jobs year-round. The company will focus more on seeing their specialties rather than irrelevant job qualifications.

“Job qualifications such as overseas experience or certificates that are not related to their position but only to show off in interviews will be unnecessary,” a Samsung Electronics official said.

To give students more opportunities to explain their specialties and experience, the new job application form will require them to write and outline their academic career, preparation process toward gaining expertise and the outcome of such efforts, as well as essays self-assessing their value.

“Applicants who prepare for job openings through stereotypical private education will no longer have good scores in the new hiring process. How much effort they put into gaining job specialty and what outcomes they had will be considered more important,” Park said.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)