Conglomerates to Keep Recruitment Size in H2

Despite concerns over an economic slowdown in the second half of this year, major Korean companies seem to have no plan of cutting down the number of their new recruits.

According to sources close to the business circle on Sunday, major Korean companies, including Samsung, Hyundai-Kia, SK and LG, plan to maintain or slightly increase their number of new recruits in the second half of this year, compared to the same period last year.

Samsung Group announced that there will be no changes to their original plan of hiring a total of 20,500 new employees this year, including 7,500 college graduates and 13,000 in production line, up 4,500 (28.1 percent) from last year’s 16,000 in total. The number of new college graduate recruits went up by 700 from 6,800 the year before. Samsung plans to hire 4,000 new college graduates around October in addition to 3,500 it hired in the first half of this year.

LG Group also plans to continuously hire skilled talents and experts for its affiliates in the second half of the year.

LG Display intends to hire 150 to 200 college graduates and experienced workers for each division, and LG Innotech plans to recruit around 100 new employees with postgraduate degrees in research and development. LG Chemical, LG Telecom and LG Dacom also decided to maintain their recruitment size as planned at the beginning of the year.

Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group plans to hire 950 new employees, which is similar to the 2007 figure. It will decide how many it will hire in the second half of the year depending on the number of new recruits in the first half, which will be decided after the ongoing application screening is over.

Hyundai Heavy Industries will hire 500 new college graduates in September who will have to go through the application screening, project competition and interviews with executives. SK Group also plans to recruit 800 to 900 new employees beginning September, which is up by 5 to 10 percent year-on-year.

woogija@donga.com