Employment Guide in Korea

By Korea Professional

Let's be real, getting a fulfilling job in S. Korea is a struggle, even more so in those troubled times.

While an intricate blend of historical, economic and cultural obstacles can explain the hustle of job seeking here, we believe that there is also an obvious lack of reliable resources to guide and support the community of foreign pro

• Language: English
• Publisher: KOREA PROFESSIONAL
• Release date: Nov 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9782957509911

Book preview

INTRO

KP EBOOK INTRO

Introduction

Let’s be real, getting a fulfilling job in S. Korea is a struggle, even more so in those troubled times.

While an intricate blend of historical, economic and cultural obstacles can explain the hustle of job seeking here, we believe that there is also an obvious lack of reliable resources to guide and support the community of foreign professionals living in this beautiful land.

That is the exact reason why we created Korea Professional in March 2020. To forge a sense of community and generate a valuable source of information, for job seekers, entrepreneurs, students or anybody aspiring to professional success.

We first built a job seeking platform, called koreaprofessional.com, where we post fresh job offers in English, daily. Following the swift success of the platform, we committed to feed our audience with real life experience and expertise. We organized networking events where our community gets together and listen to HR experts and successful expats’ insights while sharing tips and drinks.

After nine months of extraordinary hard work, we decided that it was time to condensate all information, experience, expertise and resource into one single employment guide.

KP’s Employment Guide in Korea" is everything you need in order to boost your job seeking journey or your career shift. A selection of the companies most likely to recruit you in 2021, combined with insights from a rich panel of successful foreign professionals and myriads of online resources.

Through this guide you will find two main sections:

Testimonies, advises, tips and tricks… on how to nail a job in Korea from a selection of 30 experts, entrepreneurs, researchers and successful foreign employees.

The top companies most likely to recruit foreigner professionals in Korea in 2020. Including key info on each of them such as direct mail address to HR Team.

Plus dozens of other resources.

This book also attempts to cover a great variety of other topics, revolving around job seeking, with rich contents on visas, corporate culture, legal matters, events, acceleration programs, Korean class… all information likely to turn the odds in your favor.

Brief, compact, and packed with insightful info, KP’s Employment Guide in Korea will give you all the keys you need to achieve professional success in Korea!

For more info about us, check out www.koreaprofessional.com

Good Luck!

KP Team

KP COMMUNITY

Korea Professional Community

KP’s shares valuable information about local and global companies in Korea to its community of professionals, to generate business & develop careers.

Job Offers in English within easy reach! 

KP’s platform guides you to a multitude of job offers published online in English, from both foreign and local companies.

We screen the Korean job market for you and we point you to where English-friendly job offers are without detour.

Plus, we generate metrics about companies and industries most active in the recruitment area in Korea, updated every week.

Learn, Share, Connect.

Despite Korea’s growing foreign community, we feel like there is no centralized place for foreigners to communicate on a professional level.

Whether you are a job seeker, business owner, freelancer, employee or still a student you’ll be most welcome to join the platform’s forum to learn, share and connect with your peers.

Also, we’d like to involve the community in the continuous development of the platform by conducting survey about content to add or features to implement for example.

Reach Out to The People That Matter!

KP’s platform also gives you privileged access to direct mail address of Human Resources or Management department within most companies listed in the business directory.

All information is verified and in compliance with data privacy protection regulations.

Korea Professional Team Introduction

Our team is made up of entrepreneurs of various nationalities and backgrounds gathered around the same observation; the Korean job market is very opaque to foreigners and starting a business here is a path full of pitfalls.

Each of us carries an extensive experience of the Korean job market, either as employee of a local company, business owner or as Korean government official.

We have decided to put together our skill sets to help all foreign professionals find the information, tools and support they need to achieve professional success in Korea.

THANK YOU NOTE

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'! — Audrey Hepburn

We want to thank:

Our Sponsors

Mr. James Jung, cofounder at BeSUCCESS

Ms Violet Kim, PR strategist at Seoul International Finance Office

Mr. John Yoon, cofounder at SeoulZ

Our Illustrator, Ms DANG TRAN JONNIE

Our Contributors

MESSAGE FROM VIP

Interview with Mr. Bryan Luro – CEO of Adecco Korea

Be curious, set your goal and enjoy the journey

Said Mr. Bryan Luro - Country Manager of Adecco Korea, world’s leading workforce solution company specialized headhunting, staffing and outsourcing.

For many people, 2020 may be an unforgettable year. It started with the pandemic and continued with natural disasters and political instability in many countries.

However, the strongest hit would be the COVID 19, which fallouts predicted to last for ten to fifteen years. Many economic fora have stated that job loss and underemployment has increased significantly, compared to the last few years. Demand for jobs has been dropping, including permanent, temporary, and even intern jobs. In terms of the sectors that we have been impacted the most are Aviation & Transportation, Offline retail, and the Tourism industry. Hospitality is also badly affected.

On the other hand, out of market volatility, we have seen sectors booming such as E-Commerce, Logistics, Trading and specific financial subsectors. For example, one of the most popular online retailers in Korea – Coupang has recorded its best ever quarterly growth. At Adecco, one of our largest logistic customers recorded the best year result over the last five years.

Although some traditional sectors, consumers and tourism-related, are struggling, others are taking advantage of the situation.

In Korea, job trends are shifting to the technology side. And if we look up the internet about employment opportunities, the majority of the job lies in IT and software development sectors, particularly in Java. Even though the Korean job market has a pool of candidates with those skills, it is still in shortage because of the increase in demand. In response, many companies have decided to hire international candidates to fill in the gap. Moreover, to talk about other skill sets that have been required structurally, English and leadership must be mentioned. Since Korea is a domestic market and locally-driven, English-speaking jobs demand is not as vigorous today as in other Asia countries like China.

At Adecco, leadership is a skill often required by our customers. The reason is that the structure of the company’s internal hierarchy in Korea have poorly aged over the last 20 to 30 years. The longer you stay in a company, the more senior you get. Nowadays, companies are aiming to expand their market and work more on based adaptability and open-mindedness so they want to develop a different style of leadership, sometimes flatten the organization, changing their strategy in order to break out of the Korean seniority titles. From my point of view, leadership will be in high demand for the next few years in Korea and the demand has already started to increase.

A lot of those skills are already within the local job market thanks to the best Korean universities and their knowledge transfer capability but foreigner professionals can really play a role.

If you look in the past to those foreigners who are working in Korea, from country manager to sales director or manufacturing head, responsible for transferring the technology