Hiring demand is still open, but each hiring unit is smaller
JobKorea surveyed 569 corporate HR managers from July 14 to July 31, 2026. Among respondents, 78.7% said they had hiring plans for the second half of the year, close to the prior-year survey's 78.3%.
The composition changed. Among planned hires, 78.9% expected to hire 10 people or fewer, 61.2% described hiring as partial replenishment by department or role, 74.3% set a recruiting budget below KRW 3 million, and 22.8% reported no separate recruiting budget. Always-on hiring was the largest timing category at 42.6%.
This is not a census of all Korean employers. It is a 569-respondent survey. Within that boundary, however, the signals point in the same direction: hiring remains active while batch size, cash budget and timing become more fragmented.
No separate recruiting budget is not the same as zero recruiting cost
Recruiting costs are not limited to cash paid outside the company. LinkedIn's explanation of cost per hire includes internal expenses such as a portion of recruiter salaries as well as external expenses such as staffing-firm fees and advertising.
Even when there is no dedicated cash budget, someone still defines the role, publishes the opening, reviews applicants, sources candidates, coordinates interviews and participates in assessment. Cutting external spend can move work into HR and hiring-manager time rather than eliminate it.
That distinction matters more when many small requisitions recur throughout the year. A company may replace one visible campaign budget with a less visible stream of repeated internal labor.
With a tight budget, using one sourcing method for every role can become expensive
For a role that attracts enough qualified applicants, job postings and referrals may be sufficient. A scarce role with narrow industry experience, specialized technical requirements or passive candidates can have a different discovery problem.
LinkedIn's cost-per-hire guidance recommends auditing internal and external costs before trying to reduce them. Its talent-advisor examples also show why source-of-hire matters: teams can waste recruiter time on external candidates for job categories that are overwhelmingly filled internally.
The decision unit should therefore be the role, not the cheapest channel. Job ads, referrals, direct sourcing and external search should be allocated according to where qualified candidates actually emerge.
The case for external search starts where internal discovery stops
Not every experienced hire belongs with a search firm. If a company has a strong applicant pool, internal database and broad requirements, direct hiring can be faster and less expensive.
The economics change when the candidate pool is narrow and the cost of a vacancy is high: specialized technical capability, industry relationships, leadership scope or a combination that is hard to identify from inbound applicants. Then the relevant comparison is not simply agency fee versus zero. It is fee versus the internal weeks spent mapping the market, plus the business cost of an unresolved vacancy.
A disciplined budget policy therefore internalizes easy discovery and buys external search only when market discovery itself is the bottleneck.
In small-batch hiring, the useful KPI is closer to search effort per seat than raw applicant volume
When hiring is distributed across small, always-on requisitions, large-campaign metrics become less informative. Applicant volume can rise while the number of viable candidates remains near zero for a particular role.
Companies can connect each requisition's applicant inflow, reviewed profiles, qualified candidates, interview conversion, hire, time to fill and internal hours. That exposes roles where inbound works cheaply and roles where the organization repeatedly spends time without creating a viable shortlist.
The easiest way to cut a budget is to set spend to zero. The more important operating question is which positions become more expensive when the company refuses to spend on the discovery method they actually require.
BANSEOG VIEW
Reducing recruiting budget and reducing recruiting cost are different decisions
The 2026 survey points less to a shutdown in hiring than to smaller, continuous replenishment. A zero separate budget can still leave substantial recruiting work inside HR and the business.
The efficient response is role segmentation: keep roles that can be filled through postings, referrals and internal sourcing inside the company; use direct sourcing where outbound discovery is needed; reserve external search for scarce roles where internal market mapping is the constraint.
For Banseog, the relevant cost unit is not the search fee alone. It is the scarcity of the requirement, the effort required to discover qualified candidates and the cost of leaving the role unresolved.
SOURCES
Primary sources and references
- 연합뉴스 · 기업 10곳 중 8곳 하반기 채용…채용 규모·예산은 축소
잡코리아가 2026-07-14~07-31 기업 인사담당자 569명을 대상으로 실시한 조사와 78.7% 채용계획, 78.9% 10명 이하 등 핵심 수치를 확인.
- JIBS · ‘사람 뽑겠지만, 돈은 안 쓴다’
동일 잡코리아 조사에서 채용예산 300만원 미만 74.3%, 100만원 미만 37.2%, 별도 예산 0원 22.8%, 상시채용 42.6%, AI 활용 80.8%를 교차 확인.
- HR Insight · 잡코리아, 하반기 채용 기업 늘지만 규모·예산은 축소
조사기간·표본과 전년 대비 방향을 추가 교차 확인.
- LinkedIn Talent Blog · 4 Underused Metrics That You Should Embrace
cost per hire가 recruiter salary 일부 등 내부비용과 staffing firm fee·광고비 등 외부비용을 함께 포함한다는 정의를 참고.
- LinkedIn Talent Blog · 9 Ways to Become a Strategic Talent Advisor
source of hire를 분석해 내부충원이 많은 역할에 외부탐색 시간을 과도하게 쓰지 않는 자원배분 사례를 참고.
JobKorea's H2 2026 hiring-trend survey covered 569 corporate HR managers from July 14-31, 2026 and is not a census of all Korean employers. This article interprets signals within that sample. 'No separate recruiting budget' is not treated as zero economic recruiting cost. International cost-per-hire material is used for operating concepts rather than as a Korean market statistic.