With increasing numbers of youths suffering from unemployment, Ministry of Strategy and Finance held the first youth employment day (tentative title) on April 27. Considering the fact that most recruitment processes start with a document evaluation, most applicants have a hard time during this process. However, this event allowed all participants an opportunity to be interviewed by the companies that took part in the event.
Unlike other large-scale, short-term career fairs, youth employment day was planned to take place over 200 times spreading across 17 centers for Creative Economy and Innovation. In addition, it only involves companies that actually provide interview opportunities for participants without paper examination. Among the 71 applicants of youth employment day, 30 of them passed the first stage of the interview for Jusung Engineering on the spot and their final acceptance will be decided after their second interview.
Youth employment day also provided the rejected applicants with second chances as well. Those who failed to pass the first interview received feedbacks and could access further services and consulting in their local job centers.
“I believe that youth employment day is the opportunity to focus on the company I am applying to without being distracted by the preparation of unnecessary documents,” stated a participant. “Before, I was frustrated since no one told me the reason for my failure. Feedback was of great help even when applying for other companies.”
This initiative further pushes university education programs that are designed to help students gain actual work experieces.
As most companies generally offer youth internship programs before their recruitment seasons, the change also affected the youth internship policies. Unlike the prior youth internship policy that only targeted senior students, the new policy allows lower-year students to prepare for their career in advance. From this summer, the Korean government is going to fund universities to create new programs for sophomores and juniors to help them gain job experience for one to four months, which will be added to their credits.
In addition to the youth employment day, an on-line information page regarding youth employment will be introduced. Worknet (http://work.go.kr), a website operated by the government, will be reorganized. The changes involve the page including important recruiting information. Until now, big and small companies were ranked based on whether the company has been in arrears with wages and their place in the credit rating system. But from this year, the ranking of corporations will consider the wage level, the welfare incentives, and the working hours: which are factors mostly weighed by young job seekers.
Youth employment day was planned as the government decided to take part as the ‘middleman’ in solving youths’ employment issues.
“As we organized the event, we were able to collect ideas from interviewers who took care of the consulting process,” said Lee Chan-ho, from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. “The general opinion about the event was good. I believe that youth employment day will have a positive effect on companies. More companies are paying attention to taking part in this event, and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance would scout more of them. From now on, more people will keep an eye on this event, which becomes a big motivation to continue holding it.”