From September 4 to 7, the KAIST Job Fair was held on the second floor of the Lyu Keun-Chul Sports Complex (N3) and the fifth floor of the Academic Cultural Complex (ACC). It was held in partnership with Careertalk, a company that connects its users to over 250 companies globally. Several of Korea’s biggest companies, including Samsung, Hyundai, and SK, participated in the job fair in hopes of recruiting aspiring applicants from the KAIST community. 

From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., consultation booths were set up at N3 to give KAISTians the opportunity to have direct conversations with employees from the participating companies. There, students received valuable information from KAIST alumni who were able to use their shared experience with the current students to better assuage any uncertainties they had.

This semester, companies also incorporated ZEP, a metaverse platform. It was used to hold online consultations from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Students who would otherwise have been unable to join the job fair were given the opportunity to have a similar experience as those who were on campus. 

To increase interest and participation from the KAIST community, several companies held raffles and giveaways for those who visited their booth. Careertalk also helped improve participation by giving students rewards corresponding to the number of booths they visited. A PlayStation 5, a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, and an LG Gram are some of the prizes that lucky students received for participating in the job fair.

In addition to the consultation booths, companies also held presentations in the ACC to provide a broader understanding of the work they do. Hyundai kickstarted the first day of presentations on September 4, followed by the semiconductor division of Samsung, and then WorldQuant, a quantitative asset management firm. The second and last day of presentations included Samsung Display, Samsung Biologics, Hanwha Investment & Securities, and Nexon.

This semester’s job fair brought a lot of improvements compared to previous ones. The event’s longer duration gave more students an opportunity to visit despite their busy schedules, and the online consultation booths undoubtedly made the fair more accessible. However, the same concerns from previous semesters still hold; a large majority of the participating companies are from the field of computer science and electrical engineering, leaving students majoring in other fields with limited opportunities.