SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (left) gives a thumbs-up alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during Huang’s visit to the SK hynix booth at “Computex 2026,” held at the Nangang Exhibition Center in Taipei, Taiwan, on the 2nd. SK hynix
SK hynix (000660.KS) has eliminated educational barriers entirely from its new-hire recruitment. As the company leads the global high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market and posts record-breaking earnings, the move aims to focus on creative, practical skills rather than standardized credentials in the rapidly changing era of artificial intelligence (AI).
SK hynix said Wednesday that, starting with its rolling new-hire recruitment beginning on the same day, it would remove all educational requirements such as “applicants must hold at least a four-year bachelor’s degree” from its job postings. The company has dramatically overhauled its hiring structure.
Applicants can be hired regardless of which school they attended, as long as their experience, job competency, and fit with the corporate culture meet the criteria. The company is undertaking the unusual step of recruiting talent on a triple-digit scale across major roles, including the “design” division that is central to next-generation semiconductor technology.
The overhaul is seen as a decisive move to cement dominance in AI semiconductors. SK hynix currently maintains the top HBM share within Nvidia, but competitors are pursuing aggressively. While the company is earning enormous profits by riding the memory chip super-cycle, this will not last forever. As global technology competition intensifies, securing game-changers to lead the era of artificial general intelligence (AGI) has become urgent. The company judged that uniform standards make it difficult to guarantee future competitiveness.
The move also aligns with the talent philosophy of SK Group Chairman Tae-won Choi. Chey had previously stressed the so-called “three muscles” as core future capabilities: the “thinking muscle” of asking oneself questions and digging into the essence, the “adaptation muscle” of agilely responding to technological change, and the “empathy muscle” of understanding diversity and collaborating. The intent is to closely evaluate the genuine potential of talent that cannot be revealed by a degree certificate.
The company expressed confidence in strengthening its unmatched technological capabilities. “This is an era in which it is difficult to explain a person’s competitiveness through a specific degree alone,” an SK hynix official said. “We will recruit large numbers of capable young people to further solidify our position in the global AI market.” Document submissions for this rolling recruitment will run from Wednesday through July 23.