This will likely be the most personal article I have ever posted, but having worked with K-campus since the very beginning, I think there is no better space for me to talk about my job finding journey in Seoul.

Spoiler alert, the number of my rejections exceeded 40 last week.

But my goal is neither to blame the market, nor to complain about my struggles.

And as much as I want to, I will also not share any new tips about job landing - simply because I am still navigating the situation and learning as I go.

Rather, I hope that my personal experiences as a bachelor graduate in an English program will be of some help to prepare you mentally, if you are in the same situation, or if you will begin your future job search in Korea any time soon.

For context, I was a humanitarian student majoring in International Studies, and most of the major classes I took were in International Relations and Economics/Business.

I have TOPIK score, but my Korean speaking is not at a professional level yet - meaning that I find it challenging to conduct interviews and job tasks in full Korean.

I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to try out the corporate culture in Korea. With that said, my overall strategy (which was quite blindly, in retrospect) was to apply for internships and entry-level positions with the scope of work I found interesting and believed I could handle, and to figure out where I would fit in later on. 

Do popular job listing platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor work?

The biggest channels that I used to find job opportunities include (1) personal connections; (2) my university’s Career Development Center (CDC) recruitment board and (3) major job listing platforms for English speakers like LinkedIn and Glassdoor - ranked based on the level of effectiveness.

Personal connections help forward my resume and cover letter to the most direct decision makers and therefore maximize the chances of being recruited; but as a fresh graduate from class of COVID, I only had one or two.

My school’s CDC generally posted English translations of jobs for Korean speakers, so the chances of discovering a job that suited my qualifications were rare.

I reached out to the professors in charge of CDC, who were extremely helpful and forwarded me any recruitment posts that I might be able to fit in (which is how I landed my current job). However, the problem with that is I had to compromise my personal interests. The job pool using (1) and (2) channels, from my perspective, was extremely limited.

The listings on LinkedIn and Glassdoor were obviously more diverse; but competition is also more fierce. If applied through “Easy apply”, recruiters would only see a small snapshot of my profile before moving onto the next. If forwarded to another application platform or a general HR email, there is a higher chance I would receive a reply later.

But overall, it felt like gambling: I haven’t figured out a remedy for how and why one can get hired on these platforms - no matter if I fit in with every single criteria listed, I could still receive no follow-up reply.