For Trainees, Any Language But Korean

At 3:00 p.m. on May 2, 39 young men and women wearing dark navy suits and neat two-piece dresses stood in the Samsung Corporation headquarters building’s 17th floor conference room, located in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province.

They are the newest employees of Samsung Corporation’s Trading Group that passed the final tests, overcoming fierce competition of 100 to one odds. This day marks the day they are officially accepted as the company’s employees after finishing a three-month long “boot camp” training session.

However, they still have to pass one last hurdle: the foreign language presentation contest.

With six to seven members in a team, they have to compete with others teams with business ideas that they have acquired while traveling abroad. In other words, they are going through a mock battle with all the office-work education that they have received, before being sent to their actual jobs. With 12 minutes given, they can use all types of weapons from Power Point to Exel, but they cannot use Korean. The only languages they are allowed to use are English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and other foreign languages.

New Business Models Dug Up by the Rookies—

The majority new business idea with a bright prospect found by the new rookies, just freshly graduated from university, was related with well-being. Four out of six teams proposed a housing environment service business, a healthy drink “smoothie” franchise business, the creation of a retirement village in the Philippines, and a sports goggles business, all related with health, environment and exercise. The level of their presentations was not merely stating a business idea.

They put forward persuasive concrete numbers from domestic and international market surveys and explained the justification for their businesses. Their customer targeting set up, marketing methods, and financial analyses were not that short of professional business proposals.

With the current trend of corporate social responsibility being emphasized, there were also two teams that suggested new businesses as social contributions, such as support for mixed race Koreans and volunteer work in Chinese rural area. Although there is no immediate profit from such items, the corporation image is improved through such work, which affects both tangible and intangible assets.

Rookie Hwang Seung-yeon, 28, who participated in the presentation commented, “The knowledge I learned in school or textbooks was quite different from what I confronted in the real world. With the team project I also keenly felt the importance of teamwork.”

Greatly Reducing Time to Insert in Real Work—

In the trading group world, the job of a “trading men” is compared to a person that breaks a rock with his bare fists.

Unlike other businesses that work with visible and invisible goods such as products and services, trading men have to create something out of nothing just with words and experience. That is why the capability to present a core message precisely and logically and persuade buyers, with whom they meet for only a brief time, is critical.

Since most of the people they encounter are foreign buyers, the ability to speak another language such as English, is one of the most basic capabilities required.

Samsung Corporation has used English presentation interviews in selecting their new employees since 2002, and the following year they are using foreign language presentation contests, for the same reasons.

The results of such tests are just amazing. It generally took a rookie employee about two years to fully work in the company, but now that period has been reduced to a mere six months. In addition, with the pride of rookies about their company increasing, new recruits’ turnover rate dropped almost to 10 percent.

Samsung Corporation Personnel Team Managing Director Choo Kyo-in explained, “With junior employees possessing outstanding skills and refined manners coming in, the senior workers feel burdened and it stimulates them. We also had the additional effect of revitalizing our organization.”

Chang-Won Kim changkim@donga.com