Major Companies To Hire 10,000 in 2006

Job opportunities at big companies are expected to increase in the first half of this year, according to observers. Major companies plan to hire over 10,000 in the first half of this year alone.

Companies also plan to put higher grades on competence in vocational aptitude tests and the ability to communicate. Job-seekers will need to plan accordingly.

Businesses said on February 26 that the Samsung Group and LG Group will hire 2,500 and 3,400, respectively in the first half of this year.

Posco will hire 300 people who graduated from universities this year, up from 200 in the first half of last year. They will also start to receive applications from those who graduated from high school starting late September and hire 150 of them, up from 100 last year.

LS Cable will employ about 200 (including experienced people), a similar figure to last year, and LS Industrial Systems Co. will hire 150 in fields such as R&D, planning and marketing, centering on the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag business.

CJ will choose 120 new recruits who graduated from universities, along with 100 university students as interns. Shinsegae and Dongbu Group will hire half of their 2,500 and 1,000 new hire quotas, respectively in the first half of this year, and the rest in the second half of this year.

Hyundai and Kia motors will mainly select people with masters and doctoral degree from prestigious universities in America and Europe, and experienced people who worked at car-related companies overseas for more than two years. The employment number in this country will stay at the same level as the first half of last year (600).

Each company has different way of selecting people, but what is common among them is that companies consider how job-seekers match the job they apply for to be important.

LG Household and Health Care chooses marketing and sales manpower through “intern practice” and the presentation of a one-page sales proposal. LS Cable plans to evaluate the overall competence of applicants who pass a document interview at in-person interviews with three to four senior executives.

Meanwhile, Samsung, which recently announced that it will intensify its English interviews, will apply this starting the second half of this year. But it will receive applications from those who are within a year of graduation in an attempt to prevent people who failed to get before in from applying again and again.

Chang-Won Kim changkim@donga.com