Traditional Korean-style job interviews — what are they like?

CAREERS

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22 May 2023

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6 minute read

As a job seeker, after you submit your application and get a chance to sit in a job interview, you might ask yourself — what now?

How do interviews in Korea work? What do you have to wear? What questions are going to be asked?

For those of you wondering, here's a guide to Korean job interviews that will hopefully help you for interviews in the future!

Many of my job interview experiences are for journalism, marketing, translation, PR and it might be different for other fields, but this is what I know about them as a past job seeker.

Interviews

Interviews can held in two different ways.

There could be one interviewee and multiple interviewers, known as 1-on-1, or 일대일 인터뷰 in Korean. But there can also be group interviews, where you will be sitting in a room with multiple candidates, known as 다대다 인터뷰 in Korean.

1-on-1 interviews aren't as intimidating, as you can do your own thing. But for group interviews, it's important to pay attention to what other interviewees are saying.

For instance, if the interviewer asked the same question to all of the interviewees in the room, you obviously would need to all come up with different answers. Because this is then going to be hard for the interviewee that has to answer last, interviewers will change up the order for every question.

Also, if the question isn't a personal one but a question related to the company's businesses or overall industry, interviewers can sometimes ask your opinion on the other interviewee's response.

Multiple candidate interviews mostly happen for big-scale recruitments such as the annual/bi-annual recruitments when companies hire for various divisions, and because interviewing everyone, one at a time will be just impossible.

But when only one team in the company is looking to hire one person, many of those interviews tend to be 1-on-1.

Common interview questions: Introduce yourself

The first question companies ask at a job interview is to introduce yourself, or 자기소개 해주세요.

When many people are asked to introduce themselves, some would think they only need to state their name, which school they come from, which country they're from, etc.

But Korean companies tend to expect interviewees to reply to that question with an introduction of why they are fit for the job. It's more fitting to understand the question as "Tell me something about yourself."

Yes, you can start off by saying: I am ____, a candidate applying for the ____ position.

But then, briefly state why the company should pick you. That can be a past experience of yours that's related to the job, your personal quality that makes you fit for the job, etc.

For example, if you are applying for a marketing role, you can start off by saying you are "someone that has developed social media marketing skills."

Then you can back up that point by stating your actual experiences.

ex. I managed my university club's instagram account and created videos and content to upload. During that experience I increased our following by analyzing who our target audience is, and posting content that would interest them.

Then link your point back to the position you are applying, by saying how you can use your experience/personal quality at that company.

ex. Based on that and my experience living abroad in ____ country, a market that ____ company is active in, I can find what social media content is appealing to locals and help build the company's brand abroad.

One thing worth noting is that these introductions are best if kept brief (maybe a bit less than a minute).

The self-introduction is also your chance to guide the interviewers into asking you a certain chain of follow-up questions, so remember to include pointers for questions you want the interviewer to ask you!