South Korea’s largest job fair for foreign companies began on Tuesday at Coex in Seoul, with 159 firms readying to recruit young job seekers.

The two-day annual career expo with the largest number of participating companies this year is co-hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Seoul Metropolitan Government and co-organized by Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and Financial Supervisory Service.

The companies include Hewlett Packard Korea, Tokyo Electron Korea, Unilever Korea and Ikea Korea. Among them, 32 firms are in the Fortune Global 500 list and 68 in Forbes’ annual Global 2000 list.

The ministry expects around 15,000 job seekers to visit the event being held over two days. 

Among the participating companies, 59 are from Europe and 53 from Asia. Forty-seven firms came from North America. By industry, 66 companies specialize in manufacturing and chemicals while 34 are in sales and distribution areas. There are 24 service firms and 16 financial companies.

This year, financial and research and development pavilions have been set up to provide applicants with more customized recruiting information.

The participating firms plan to recruit a combined 6,800 employees by next year, according to the survey done by KOTRA. In terms of educational background of job seekers, around 80 percent of the companies said they prefer college graduates.

As for majors, mechanical engineering and business were most preferred with 14 percent of the respondents respectively. Around 13.3 percent of the companies opted for electronics engineering and 7.6 percent of them preferred chemical engineering.

The most important factor for recruitment was an applicant’s personality (24.2 percent), followed by career experience (23.8 percent), foreign language proficiency (23.8 percent) and relevant majors (22.1 percent).

Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee said at the opening ceremony that foreign-invested companies account for 2 percent of total companies here but generate 5.5 percent of total jobs with good compensation.

The number of foreign companies registered in Korea stood at around 14,000 companies as of last year.

“Given the worsening youth unemployment, the ministry will continue to make efforts to expand decent jobs through similar fairs,” Yoo said.

Alongside the job fair, Kwon Pyung-oh, president and CEO of KOTRA, held a meeting with executives of 10 foreign firms, including French water company Veolia Water and German tech firm Siemens Healthineers. During the talks, he asked them to expand investments and recruit young people here. 

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)