[Best Anti-Corruption Policy]

Fairness in the recruitment process enhanced through participation and disclosure

- The integration of public institutions’recruitment system by Gyeonggi Province and the monitoring of the blind recruitment process by the Korea Communications Agency introduced as best anti-corruption policy cases -

April 24, 2020

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

The Republic of Korea

Gyeonggi Province and the Korea Communications Agency (KCA) are taking the lead in establishing a culture of fair recruitment by enhancing transparency in the hiring process and selecting them based on their job skills.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC, Chairperson Pak Un Jong) has been discovering and spreading best practices by agency and sector so that public and private sectors can use them to establish and promote integrity policies.

The ACRC has selected policy cases of Gyeonggi Province and the KCA as excellent integrity policies to root out hiring irregularities.

Gyeonggi Province is creating a transparent recruitment culture by integrating and managing recruitment that used to be conducted by individual public organizations affiliated therewith.

The KCA has increased fairness in hiring by eliminating factors that can cause bias in the recruitment process and selection errors in advance through “full blind recruitment system” using artificial intelligence (AI) and constantly monitoring whether the full blind recruitment system works properly.

(Integrated recruitment of public institutions) Since 2015, Gyeonggi Province has been operating “the integrated recruitment system of public institutions” that consolidates different hiring procedures for each affiliated public institution to systematically manage hiring process of public institutions and prevent corruption.

The integrated recruitment, which is proceeded “separately and together,”removes corruption-causing factors in hiring process and selects talent suitable for the characteristics of the public institutions. The recruitment process, such as job posting, acceptance of applications, and written tests, is entrusted to external specialized institutions by Gyeonggi Province, and the subsequent process of screening, interviews and announcement of final successful candidates are carried out by the organization which is to hire the final candidates.

First of all, Gyeonggi Province provided equal opportunities for applicants to take the written tests first by changing the existing process in which institutions used to have no written tests or conduct screening first. It also improved job seekers’ accessibility to job information by providing recruitment plans of its affiliated public agencies on the integrated recruitment website of Gyeonggi Province.

In addition, Gyeonggi Province has also strengthened management of the hiring process carried out by its affiliated public agencies. Interviews were conducted based on the principle of selecting job candidates focusing on their duty-related skills without other information such as academic background, etc. revealed, and interviewers are also provided with prior training on the standards, methods, and precautions, etc. to adhere to before conducting interviews. In addition, Gyeonggi Province increased the proportion of external professionals among interviewers from one-half to two-thirds or bigger.

This year, Gyeonggi Province supplemented its existing recruitment system to hire talent with job-oriented skills by revamping the evaluation of job applicants, which used to be based on the results of written tests on the common subjects such as English, Korean history and General Knowledge, to bebased on the National Competency Standards (NCS).

(Monitoring blind recruitment) The Korea Communications Agency (KCA) has been eliminating corruption-causing factors in the recruitment process in advance by concealing information of job applicants other than the one necessary to evaluate his/her job-related skills and monitoring the compliance with such concealment of information.

Since the adoption of the blind recruitment system based on the National Competency Standards (NCS) in 2015in order to employ talent with high job performance skills, the KCA has continuously improved its way of hiring employees and introduced “the full blind recruitment system” using artificial intelligence in 2018.

Last year, the KCA reorganized outside members of the interview screening committee and allowed internal and external experts to inspect violations ofconcealment of personal information, further enhancing the fairness of hiring.

In order to prevent certain people from being frequently appointed as interviewers, the number of outside committee members was expanded from 79 to 347, and the proportion of female committee members was also increased. In addition, the scope of areas which external interviewersare specialized inexpanded from eight to 14 to enable more professional job performance evaluations.

Internal and external experts attend the interview to check whether interviewers ask questions about gender, academic background, age, and physical conditions to applicants, and whether the order of questions, allocation of time and number of questions are evenly distributed among applicants.

With the strengthening of the full blind recruitment conceals job applicants’ personal information throughout the recruiting process, the employment of high school graduates, career-interrupted women, the disabled and national veterans has increased, securing diversity in human resources.

ACRC Anti-Corruption Bureau General Director Lim Yoon Ju said, “The hiring scandal at public institutions is an act that destroys the trust of our society, therefore it is important to establish a more transparent and fair recruitment culture through continuous improvement of the hiring system to fundamentally prevent the occurrence of hiring irregularities from occurring.”