When Korean Job Applications Needed a Story as Well as Specs

“Spec” is short for “specification.” It originally described the measurable properties of a product. You might look up the specs before buying a computer.

In South Korea the loanword also came to mean the qualifications a person could put on a job application. It was a surprisingly literal way to talk about people.

The numbers behind a job application

I was looking for work between late 2012 and early 2014. I made it through the application and two tests for CJ E&M in 2012, then missed out at the final interview.

I joined the Human Resources Development Service of Korea in 2013 and moved to Paju English Village the next year. I still remember the paperwork and the tests from that period.

People spoke about a package of five or seven specs. It was shorthand for a list of achievements applicants felt they ought to collect before applying.

Even the mid-2010s television drama Misaeng mentioned seven specs. Some accounts of the job market went as far as nine. These were social shorthand, not a single employer’s official requirements.

• Three — university attended, grades and a TOEIC score.
• Five — add overseas language study and a professional certificate.
• Seven — add a competition award and an internship.
• Nine — add volunteering and, in some accounts of the pressure on applicants, cosmetic surgery.

Having the specs did not make the search easy

I assembled many of those credentials myself. People around me were doing the same, and each new application gave me a reason to wonder what else I ought to have.

I had the grades, test score, certificates, a competition award, internship experience and some volunteering. Overseas study and cosmetic surgery were beyond what I could afford.

Then came the personal story

Then came the expectation that you would also tell a good story about yourself in the application essay. I remember sitting down to write a different version for every company.

There was a great deal of effort in those years. I think more often now about what the effort was for.

The book that named the change

Kim Jeong-tae’s Your Story Beats Your Credentials gave that change a memorable name. A person might be able to show what a résumé’s numbers left out.

I had heard of the book before university and was ready to revisit it as I approached graduation. Around then, Sungkyunkwan University announced that Kim would be giving a talk.

What makes a global citizen?

I got the notice on my phone. The talk asked what it meant to have the abilities of a global citizen. I had yet to read the book and was curious how he would answer.

He began with changes in hiring at Google and went on to ask what an employer might learn about a person from a story.

I remember two questions he put to the room.

• Had anyone ever written the number of books they had read on a résumé?
• What did employers mean when they said they valued a grounding in the humanities?

He waited to see how the students would answer before offering a few ideas of his own.

• Can you think for yourself, examine what you are told and understand what another person is feeling?
• How can you show those abilities to someone who has never met you?
• You can tell a story about a time when you used them.

Kim said a story could give someone a direction to think in. I remember how much of the talk came back to listening.

• Empathy matters when you are trying to do something alongside people whose experience is different from your own.
• There is a difference between agreeing with someone and trying to understand how an experience felt to them.
• You may have to leave familiar places to meet the people whose experiences will teach you something.
• Try writing about one particular person and something that happened between you.

After hearing the talk, I went back to the book. I had a clearer idea of what Kim was asking an applicant to do with the space available on a page.

Occupation and vocation

Kim separates the two parts of the Korean word for work, jigeop. His English counterparts are occupation and vocation.

• Jik, or occupation, is the post you hold and the work someone else can take over when you leave.
• Eop, or vocation, is the subject or kind of work you keep pursuing across different posts.

Kim links the second idea to craft. You acquire something by returning to the work over many years.

A job search makes it easy to worry about which post you can get. Kim asks readers to think about what they would want to learn or keep doing once they had it.

A larger purpose can give the smaller choices some order. You can ask whether a job would teach you something you want to carry forward.

That shifts the emphasis from a count of qualifications to what you are able to do. Kim wants the reader to be able to say what they do well and how they learned to do it.

The book spends much of its time asking what it takes to sustain that kind of work.

A story can become another requirement

I read Kim’s argument as a reason to develop something of my own alongside the credentials everyone else was being asked for.

When the book first appeared, that sounded like an opening. Applicants could say something about themselves that their test scores could not convey.

Over time the personal story became another thing to prepare. A candidate could feel obliged to bring both the full list of specs and a polished account of what made them different.

I still find the question about vocation worth keeping. It helps me think about what I would choose to do even if I had no application to write.

Book details

Your Story Beats Your Credentials

Author

Kim Jeong-tae

Published

March 31, 2010

ISBN-13

9788901106434

View on YES24

We may earn a commission if you buy through the affiliate link in this article.