Only 28% of Korean workers who tried to change jobs succeeded: survey

About half of workers surveyed by a job-seeking platform had looked for another job in the first half of this year, but more than 70 percent of them failed to do so.

The results released Thursday by job-seeking platform Saramin found that 50.2 percent of the respondents tried to get hired by other employers. Of those that did, 72 percent said they failed to get the new job.

The survey was conducted on 1,302 workers across the country.

The 28 percent that succeeded in switching jobs said they spent an average of 5.6 months to make the switch, but only 42.6 percent of them said their new job had better working conditions. Another 33.9 percent said the conditions were about the same, while 23.5 percent said they worsened.

When asked how they succeeded in landing new jobs, 74.3 percent said they acquired the necessary job experience in the field (multiple answers were allowed). Some 24.6 percent attributed their success to actively letting the word out that they want a new job, while 24.6 percent cited meticulously working on their credentials and resume.

Thorough preparations for the interview (16.9 percent), management of one's reputation in the field and networking (14.8 percent), and acquiring certifications for the type of work they would be doing (14.8 percent) were also picked as effective measures to get hired by new employers.

Over half of the surveyed workers at large conglomerates (61.6 percent), local branches of foreign companies (54.8 percent), and state-run corporations (51.9 percent) said they sought out new jobs, as opposed to those at the smaller middle market enterprises (47.3 percent), and small and medium firms (49.6 percent).

Surveys have consistently shown that job seekers prefer working at larger corporations and international firms based in other countries, but the recent findings indicate that workers at those firms are also more likely to want to switch jobs.