What is the best month to apply for jobs in Korea?

CAREERS

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07 Mar 2024

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5 minute read

If you are a job seeker or a university student that will soon graduate, applying for jobs is probably one of your highest priorities.

But when is the best month to apply for jobs in Korea?

The short answer is: the gongchae (공채) season.

And the good news is that now is actually the gongchae season, so if you want to learn more about the gongchae recruitment process and what job opportunities are available, keep scrolling!

What is gongchae?

Gongchae basically refers to large-scale recruitments in which companies will hire employees for all of their business divisions.

This mostly happens at conglomerates or big companies that need a lot of employees.

There's also a higher hiring quota for jobs open during the gongchae season, totalling up to maybe hundreds per company.

Gongchae mostly opens twice a year, with companies calling it 상반기 공채 (Gongchae for the first half of this year) and 하반기 공채 (Gongchae for the second half of this year).

They open few weeks before each semester starts, and goes on for the first month of each semester, so it would be:

February ~ March for the first half
August ~ September for the second half

There are companies that only open gongchae once a year, and it's highly likely that they would choose to do so in the first half of the year, so February and March.

If you are actively looking for jobs, it's best to check job posting websites everyday during those periods as you never know what new opportunities you will come across.

Also, another tip about hiring quotas during gongchaes — if you came across a company saying it's hiring 0 people or 00 people, this doesn't mean there will be zero people hired.

If the company says it will hire 00 people, it actually means they are hiring in double digits. So, anywhere between 10 to 99.

If it says it's hiring 0 people, it's hiring in single digits, so between 1 to 9 people.

But why those months?

If you are curious about why it's specificially those months, it's because companies need to start hiring then in order for university students in their last semesters to apply, do interviews, and start working shortly after they graduate.

Korean companies tend to require multiple interviews, tests, assignments, which can take months.

For example, the photo below (although in Korean) shows the recruitment process of the current Naver gongchae.

You can see that applications start in March, with applicants having to take a culture-fit test in end of March. Then there's an interview in April, another project applicants have to participate in during May, and finally, another interview around end of May and early June.

The spring semester ends in June, and the timeline allows fresh graduates to complete their last semester, maybe take a few weeks off, and then start working in July.