Korean Job Discussion Forums

[princey]

How hard is it to find a job other than teaching?
if your fluent in both eng and kor?

[andrewchon]

Yes, it is very hard. One number bandied about is average 30 interviews for a non-SKY graduate to get a job.
It's illegal to have a job on a tourist visa.
F-series visas can't get 3D jobs.

[PRagic]

Not too tough if you have an engineering degree from a top-10 US university and the usual 3-5 years of experience. Korean companies, much like companies elsewhere, want to hire high quality, experienced employees.

You could also shoot for some of the big-name consulting companies that do business in Korea. They usually recruit from the SKY schools, but tend to target people with big name western undergrad and grad degrees. Most people don't do careers at these places, but they do get in, get some experience, and then ship over to finance or marketing somewhere else.

The best way to make inroads into Korean companies and to work in Korea, if that is really what you want to do, is to get hired in your home country and then try to get assigned to a position in Korea.

Over the years, I've met some people who have transitioned into gaming, software, finance, and engineering positions, but usually these people have had experience and MAs. Some people working as English editors/proofreaders make even better coin, but those jobs are getting more and more competitive, and the best people have either specialty backgrounds or skills (e.g. multiple, high-demand languages), or degrees in journalism or some other writing intensive dicipline.

Guess the bottom line concerns what you see yourself bringing to the table. What do you have to offer that they can't get here already? Bilingual? Great, but what else?

Cheers, and good luck to you.

[calicoe]

How about urban planners and/or real estate development? Any one heard about this area? I do have a graduate degree from a top 5.

[PRagic]

With a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from a top-ten school in the dicipline, you could land a professor or consulting/research job. Don't think the Master's degree will be enough here given the load of Koreans with Ph.D.s in U.P. If you have some serious experience, though, who knows? Won't be able to teach, but could probably work for a government institute.

As for the other option, the LAST thing Korea (meaning the Korean government) needs is another real estate development consultant!

[Beeston27]

Are there any websites that have the aforementioned jobs?

[PRagic]

You could park your resume with any number of head hunting agencies in Seoul if you're looking for U.P. positions. A big company or a government agency might be in the market for a different perspective. Who knows?

[Trinidad]

There are LOTS of non-teaching jobs to be had in Korea. You have to
research them. Like an earlier poster said, there are many engineering
jobs, but also lots of sales, marketing and technical areas also.

I have an E7 visa and would never dream of ever going back into the
ESL mess in Korea.

Best thing to do is check out available visa types and see if you can
meet any of the criteria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Korean_visas#E_visas

[PRagic]

Too true. But like the expression goes, 'Be careful what you wish for...'

Most of the business jobs (marketing, finance, sales...) usually require Korean skills. Makes sense that the people I know working for Korean companies in these areas are almost all Kyopo. They have long hours and semi-decent pay, but most of them are usually looking to jump to a western company anyway, so it doesn't bug them too much.

I do know some people doing work in 'consulting' that consists of lecturing on business presentation and communication skills. Big business, actually, even outside of Korea. Others have forged their own paths in PR writing and product production. The previous poster is spot on: there ARE jobs out there, but they're not going to find you.

Again, cheers, and best of luck in the search.

[calicoe]

Thanks very much. You guys have been incredibly helpful.

[Darkray16]

[andrewchon]

3D are Defence, Dangerous, Dirty jobs.
Defence: can't join or work in ROK army
Dangerous: police, work in mines, construction sites
Dirty: rubbish removal, recycling, sewage

[PRagic]

Well, the original expression included 'difficult' as one of the three Ds, not defense. But, hey, that works!

[gregoriomills]

As English teachers, we constantly butt heads with our Korean coworkers, even while being obvious experts in our field (at least according to Englishlanguage knowledge). I can't imagine other fields, where its the Western wasy of doing it vs the KOrean way. I would never even dream about going there, just my two cents.

TO each his own, though.

[andrewchon]

PRagic:
What would be an example of a 'difficult' job?