Korean college grads find it hard landing jobs

By Suh Hae-sung

SEOUL (Yonhap): "It is a downright war. Everyone is an enemy," says Kim Sang-kun, a senior at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, of his woes of finding a job at a time when the country is faced with its worst employment crisis in more than a decade.

Kim by now instinctively fills in his 10th job application in a library crammed with colleagues deep in studies, not for their senior exams, but for business aptitude tests.

"Professors encourage us to go out and look for a job rather than sit in classes. Some even excuse us for the finals," Kim says.

Panic predominates on college campuses, even the most elite schools like Seoul National University and Yonsei University forecast the lowest employment rate for college graduates in 17 years.

With businesses both large and small collapsing and the financial market on the verge of a breakdown, Korea Inc. has been strongly advised to begin a strict dieting regime, which translates into staff cuts and no new jobs.

According to one job hunting firm, Recruit, some 320,000 college graduates are pounding the pavement looking for jobs during this autumn-winter season. Large, small, state, and foreign companies have offered a maximum 80,000 jobs, leaving the remaining 240,000 out in the cold after graduation in February.

The job competition ration for college graduates, therefore, is expected to reach an all-time high of four to one.

The country's top 50 conglomerates, which have raised employment more than 20 percent between 1993 and 1995, sliced recruitment by 14.3 percent last year and are expected to slash it again by more than 20 percent this year.

Business groups and financial firms struggling with tight cash flow won't be recruiting new employees for sometime and more than 80 percent of the nation's top 50 chaebols are considering plans to restructure, meaning things will even get tighter in the future.

Economic think tanks predict unemployment to become one of the country's biggest and thorniest issues next year with some forecasting the jobless rate to shoot up to the 4 percent level, compared with this year's 2.5 percent.

"But the worst part is that the reality is actually worse than what the data shows," a job consultant says.

To save labor costs, corporations are offering a greater number of part-time than full-time jobs and college graduates hoping to seek lifetime employment are finding harder than ever.

During such times, females and graduates from provincial universities are often given short shrift.

Park Sun-yong, a senior at a four-year college in a satellite city outside Seoul, will be graduating in February with a 3.8 grade point average and high TOEFL and TOEIC Scores. She is also well versed in computer and English, thanks to a year of study in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Still Park cannot find a job no matter how hard she tries. She applied for over 30 jobs, but she never reached the interview stage because her materials were pushed aside during the application screening process.

"I can't take it anymore. I feel useless. The stress is so much that I think I need psychological help. But then again, I can't afford it," she sighs.

She adds that among her friends, the closest thing to employment was a part-time job as a secretary.

Under such tight job conditions, college students are beginning to research job possibilities beginning their sophomore year, spending more time in cram schools learning English and computer skills than on campus.

"We study our brains out to get to college and as soon as we get there, we have to start all over again to find a fob," says Kim Jae-hee, a junior majoring in English.

He says he's learning Japanese because even good English skills these days cannot guarantee a job.

Many students take a year-off while in college to study abroad, hoping to get an upper hand when it comes time to attend job interviews.

Those in less accredited universities or provincial colleges study for exams to become certified public accountant or obtain licenses in other fields because they have slimmer chances of being hired by large business groups.

With many businesses placing great importance on job interviews to judge creativity and personality, many applicants are even getting facelifts they feel will give interviewers a good impression.

"When the job season comes, we have many students coming in to have their scars removed or change their facial features," says Yang Won-yong, head plastic surgeon at Kyonghee Hospital.

Most universities have organized special job hunting task forces to offer consultations, tips on proper clothing to wear and mock interviews to have their students better prepared.

With job hunting reaching a desperate level, many graduates have become more down-to-earth and have lowered their expectations by applying for low-level civil service jobs that were usually sought after by two-year college graduates or those with just a high school diploma.

A total of 34,817 people applied for 953 low-level local civil service jobs in August, a competition ratio of 36.5 to one, which is three times last year's figure of 12.8 to one.

Many elite school graduates, who shunned employment with small and medium -- sized companies, are now eying those firms for possible job opportunities.

The 360 small industries offering 7,000 jobs at a job exhibition in May received 155,000 applicants that included a substantial number of seniors from elite universities.

Experts point out that the business sector, along with the recession, is largely blamed for producing the employment crisis.

Businesses in Korea have focused too much on physical expansion to the extent that they lost their competitive edge, rendering them incapable of even enduring cyclical slowdowns, an industrial analyst says.

They need to scale down considerably, but they are taking the path of least resistance by cutting down on labor costs, he adds.

The imbalance in the labor structure is also a major reason behind the current job turmoil, says another expert.

There are too many humanities majors and too few graduating with Bachelor's degrees in science and engineering, and the latter are in greater demand in this high-tech and information- oriented era, he says.

Though there is an overflow of job applicants, there are actually few to choose from, a Hyundai Group official says.

Of 3,200 new employees the top conglomerate plans to pick this winter, Hyundai is looking for 2,600, or 80 percent, that studied science or engineering. Of that number, 1,800 are to be sent to work with Hyndai Electronics and half of them, 900, will be assigned to the semiconductor division.