54% of companies do not disclose the amount of annual salary for job posting

According to a survey conducted by a job portal site(www.career.co.kr), more than half of companies in Korea do not disclose salary information when they post a job vacancy.  The survey conducted with 497 personnel managers in January 2009, 53.7 percent of the respondents said that they do not disclose salary level of the job at the time of job posting.

The reasons for such omission were –   ‘salary will be determined depending on the individual’s ability’ (51.7%), ‘less application will be made due to low salary’ (25.5%), “it is the company policy’ (14.6%), ‘to prevent practices of applying for the job only because of high salary’ (4.1%), and ‘we don’t want competitors to know our salary level’ (3.0%) respectively.

When do companies disclose the salary? Most companies do that “when a labor contract is concluded after the applicant is finally accepted’ (38.6%).  Some do that at a final interview (30.3%) or at a first interview (29.2% ).

If so, how much is the salary of those companies?

The survey showed that companies not disclosing the salary information paid annual salary of  21,980,000 KRW (16,289 USD) to colleage graduates whereas those that disclose the information paid 22,500,000 KRW(16,675 USD), resulting in the gap of 520,000 KRW (385 USD).

Meanwhile, a survey of 988 job seekers conducted by the same job portal website showed that 79.7% of respondents said that the level of annual salary is what they want to know above anything else.  Other answers were type of employment  (66.2%), welfare (52.3%), commute hour'(28.0%), number of persons to be recruited (15.6%), sales (15.6%), and number of exectutives (9.4%) [multiple answers were allowed]

Source: Job Career

Author: Sunny Lee