Junior college grads facing tougher competition in job market

Nam Da-hye, who studies international tourism at Hanyang Women’s University in Seoul, said, “I should`ve gone to a commercial high school and gotten a job first.”

A few days before the Chuseok holiday, Nam visited her school`s job center and said, “Companies that recruited junior college graduates are now recruiting high school graduates at the same time this year, making it harder for us to get a job.” She said she had just returned from a job interview for a bank, which was recruiting staff among high school graduates or those with higher education.

In the recruiting season of this year`s second half, a “war without a gunshot” is raging at junior colleges. The competition has grown fiercer than before as many companies that used to hire college graduates have allowed those with just a high school diploma to apply.

“Companies recruiting both high school and college graduates accounted for about 20-30 percent of the total through last year,” said a source at the Hanyang job center. “This year, however, they hire more than half of them.”

What makes the situation more difficult for junior college graduates is that most jobs for which they have to compete with high school graduates are offered by big business or financial companies that jobseekers prefer. Feeling pressured by the government to hire more high school graduates, such companies have no choice but to allot a certain percentage of new jobs to those fresh out of high school.

Nam said, “If junior college graduates are discriminated against in recruitment and treatment compared with university graduates, don’t we deserve compensation for having two or three years of further education than high school graduates?”

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