Highly Educated People Suffer from Highest Job Competition

Evidencing the extremely narrowed job market, the competition rate records 100 to 1 for both private industries and state owned business. Furthermore, job hunters who hold a master`s degree or a doctorate from the domestic schools as well as from abroad applied for a job to compete with other college graduated applicants, increasing the competitive rate of highly educated people.

According to the data about the applicants to the new employment released by the private and public business sectors, Hyundai-Kia Motors have 52,000 applicants for only 300 available seats, recording 173 to. 1 ratio, which is three times higher than the competition of last year when the company had 30,000 applicants for 600 new jobs. 13.9 percent of the applicant hold a master`s or doctor`s degree.

Daewoo International also recruited 9 new employees through a rolling employment out of 1586 applicants. 50 applicants of them had college or graduate education in the foreign countries. The company is still on the process of work-out.

SK Group also newly employed 400 people from 24,509 applicants. 24 percent of 1500 successful candidates who passed the written test had master`s degree from domestic or foreign schools.

Walker Hill Hotel recruited 10 new employees out of 1406 applicants, which include 370 applicants of top-class colleges and 70 from foreign colleges.

LG Telecom that employed 50 people had 6003 applicants and LG-EDS also had 15,000 applicants for only 300 available jobs.

State owned KOTRA that will employ 21 people for 2002 also had 2306 applicants, recording 110 vs.1 competition rate, which is the highest record in its history. The highly educated job hunters surge into the textile industry and heavy industry as well that had been avoided by the applicants. Dorei Saehan which is a Korea-Japan joint corporation has recently completed its acceptance of applications for 10 new jobs, with 3016 applicants.

kkh@donga.com