On September 6 and 7, the KAIST Undergraduate Student Council organized KAIST Career Fair 2013 at the Lyu Keun-Chul Sports Complex (N3), with the aim to provide students some helpful information about their future career paths and the recruitment processes of major companies operating in Korea.

About 45 different companies and employers joined the fair to give detailed information about their recruitment processes and were willing to recruit talented KAIST students.

The companies that participated in the fair are 3M Korea, JGC Corporation, LS Mtron, Maerskdrilling, OCI, RGF HR Agent, sfa, SK Innovation, SK Planet, SK Hynix, SK Chemical, SKC, Golfzone, Nexon, Korean Air, Doosan Corporation, Samsung SDI, Samsung SDS, Samsung Display, Samsung C&T, Samsung Electro-mechanics, Samsung Electronics DS, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Cheil Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung Card, Samyang Holdings, Celltrion, Cheil, Mando, KT, Korea Credit Bureau, Kolon Glotech, Kolon Industries, Tmaxsoft, POSCO, POSCO ICT, Korea Internet & Security Agency, Hankook Tire, Hanwha, and Hyosung.

The student council also provided the student participants a booklet with detailson each participating company. The information provided on the booklet included recruitment parts, volume of recruitment, academic qualifications, responsibilities, application requirements, salary, employee benefits programs, and more.

The student council also organized various side-line events such as résumé photo shoots, interview make-up tutorials, caricatures, fingerprint aptitude tests, and brainwave aptitude tests, to soften and ease the rather heavy, serious atmosphere.

KAIST Career Fair, now in its fourth year, was first established because there were no organized efforts to introduce KAIST students to the occupations available in the job market.

“Unlike the undergraduates in other universities, most KAIST undergraduates choose to attend graduate schools. As a result, KAIST students have difficulties getting valuable information about recruitment,” said Geoltan Kang, the leader of the Career Fair Organization Committee.

Now, KAIST Career Fair has become the biggest career fair in Daejeon and the Chungcheong region. More interestingly, it is the only student-led career fair in Korea.

Students were generally satisfied with the fair that the student council organized. A student participant to KAIST Career Fair 2013, Yunjung Noh from the Department of Electrical Engineering said, “I was surprised by the career fair because it was informative yet fun at the same time. The booklet given out by the student council summarized the companies’ recruitment details very well. I enjoyed the side-line events as well - the brainwave aptitude test was especially fun.”

Apart from the Career Fair held last month, the student council is also planning to organize KAIST Mentoring Concert in November in order to help the students to resolve their curiosity about various career paths other than employment.

Career Fair and Mentoring Concert used to be organized together until last year. However, the student council decided to hold them separately since the recruitment process of the major companies begin from September.

In the Mentoring Concert, many successful alumni from different fields in society, ranging from venture startups to big enterprises, from the field of culture and arts to science and engineering, will join the concert and give speeches to the students, giving the insiders’ perspectives and other advices related to their career.