Recently, the story of a university student who helped a homeless person on a street by giving her muffler away was widely talked about on and off the Internet. After the press report, Hana Financial Group announced that they would like to employ the student for her warm hearted attitude, which they say suits the company’s spirit of customer service well.

After hearing the news, one might envy her for her good luck, in getting employed at a time where, some even say, it is much easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a recent college graduate to get employed. However, we should also take her story as a good lesson in what companies value and how much they pursue such values when selecting employees.

Most students seem to be making a big deal out of their personal records, striving to garnish their resumes at every turn by adding in one more outstanding experience to make them look like plausible candidates for employment. Nowadays, students even seek new experiences regardless of their true interest, if they think they can be important items on their resume. This applies to freshmen as well as seniors.

However, according to research conducted this February by Incruit, an Internet recruiting portal service, there was no striking difference between the resumes of the employed and the unemployed. For instance, the average TOEIC scores of the employed were only higher than those of the unemployed by 39 points.

This fairly proves that employment is not all about one’s resume; rather looking at a resume is simply one of the processes in evaluating an applicant. Like Hana Financial Group, most companies seem to be looking for more essential factors of personality or character as well as experience.

I realized there is more than a grain of good sense to this recruitment approach after interviewing candidates to become new cub reporters for the Ewha Voice.

The resumes of the applicants were fairly impressive, especially considering all the diverse experiences they had during high school. Their resumes could even stand comparison with that of a senior preparing for employment. However, despite their magnificent experiences and skills, all of which were beneficial to work in this position, we did not choose reporters in the order of the applicants with the best resumes, but rather based on their attitude and character—whether they were easy to talk with and suitable to work with the rest of the members of our group.

The book 99 Stories You Must Read During Your Life throws a question to its readers. What are the necessities of success? How can you succeed? It presents its answer by telling a story of a lecture where students were asked to present the factors of success in one word. Then the instructor had them calculate a point value for each word by giving one point for every letter A, two points for every B, three points for each C and so on. People came up with a lot of different answers such as zeal, courage and knowledge, but they scored only 45, 70 and 96 points, respectively. The one word that scored 100 was “attitude.”

In order to penetrate the competitive job market, fostering one’s capabilities is vital. However, students should first put themselves in the shoes of an employer or a company and think about what kind of employee they would be searching for and what kind of attitudes they regard as significant. After all, there is little difference in ability among applicants. It is their attitude that decides the matter.

 

저작권자 © Ewha Voice 무단전재 및 재배포 금지