International organizations based in Korea to host job fair

International organizations based in Korea, including offices of the UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Programme, are hosting a job fair in Seoul, Incheon and North Jeolla this week...

Screen capture of the live streaming of the International Career Fair hosted by the Foreign Ministry with international organizations and local governments at the Seoul City Hall in 2019. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

International organizations based in Korea, including offices of the UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Programme, are hosting a job fair in Seoul, Incheon and North Jeolla this week.

The International Career Fair, which has been held annually by the Foreign Ministry since 2008, will be held this year at the Seoul Startup Hub in western Seoul on Wednesday, the Incheon Global Campus in Songdo, Incheon, on Thursday and the international convention center of Jeonbuk National University in Jeonju, North Jeolla, on Friday, in coordination with local government offices.

Participating international organizations are the UN Secretariat, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific: the Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia (Escap-ENEA), the Korea offices of the UN Refugee Agency Unhcr, World Food Programme, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Population Fund and the UN Volunteers.

Applications to participate in the job fair can be made on the website of the Foreign Ministry’s International Organizations Recruitment Center.

All three sessions of the fair will feature a general information session open to all participants about international organizations whose regional offices are located in Korea.

These will be followed up by more in-depth information sessions led by human resources officers and representatives of international organizations, to share more details about the skillsets and experiences they are looking for in new applicants and their tips for preparing resumes and interviews.

Participants can choose which of the in-depth sessions to attend when registering for the fair.

Mock interview sessions will follow for some organizations after that.

“Depending on the organizations, they may choose to begin recruitment process on some of the interested applicants they speak to during the mock interviews,” said an official of one of the participating organizations of the job fair.

The deadline for application to take a mock interview is midnight Sunday. Those interested are required to submit resumes in advance via the center’s website.

There will also be information booths run by the organizations from 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the venues in Seoul and Incheon, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Seoul city government, which has been jointly hosting the fair in Seoul with the Foreign Ministry since 2015, will take part in sessions to respond to questions about working for the international organizations in the city. The city’s international relations ambassador will also be present throughout the fair, according to the organizers.

This year will be the first time since the onset of the pandemic that the job fair will be held in-person. The Seoul session of the fair welcomed an average of nearly 700 participants in person every year before the pandemic.

The general information session of the fair in Seoul will also be streamed live on the Foreign Ministry's YouTube channel.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]