Chip giants to expand hiring as AI -driven ‘supercycle’ spurs demand
Korea’s champion chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, are expanding entry-level recruitment amid a semiconductor “supercycle” that brings the two companies record earnings.
With new facilities under construction and ever-growing demand for semiconductors in the global AI race, a surge in demand for labor opens the door for job seekers in the chips sector.
Samsung leads the way
Samsung Electronics and major affiliates, including Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung SDI, will begin open recruitment for entry-level positions for the first half of this year as early as this month, according to industry sources.
Samsung Electronics is building new fabrication plants in Pyeongtaek and the Yongin cluster, both in Gyeonggi, to expand semiconductor production capacity. As securing related talent has become urgent, the hiring scale in the Device Solutions (DS) division — the company’s department in charge of semiconductors — is expected to increase.
Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, said at a corporate roundtable on youth jobs and regional investment expansion held at the presidential office on Feb. 4,
Samsung Electronics’ operating performance has improved significantly, giving us more room to increase hiring this year,
Samsung, which became the first company in Korea to introduce open recruitment in 1957, has maintained the system for nearly 70 years even as many major companies have shifted to rolling recruitment.
SK hynix launches rolling recruitment
SK hynix, which has conducted rolling recruitment every March, plans to begin hiring new technical office workers within this month. Recruitment fields include high bandwidth memory, dynamic random-access memory, NAND research and development and packaging development. The company is expected to hire a “triple-digit” number of employees.
Last month, SK hynix announced a new recruitment strategy called “Talent Highway,” which aims to expand its previous experienced worker-centered hiring structure into a rolling recruitment system that encompasses entry-level and full-time production positions, allowing applicants to apply without restrictions on timing or pathways.
The company is also pushing forward with the construction of P&T7, an advanced packaging-dedicated plant in the Cheongju Technopolis in Oebuk-dong, North Chungcheong, and is expanding new production bases including the Yongin semiconductor cluster.
Top 10 conglomerates to hire 51,600 this year
On Feb. 4, the heads of the 10 largest conglomerates met with President Lee Jae Myung and announced plans to hire about 51,600 new employees this year, up 2,500 from last year.
Lee Kyu-youn, senior presidential secretary for public relations, said in a briefing after the meeting, said:
Sixty-six percent of the hires will be entry-level positions rather than experienced workers,
“Companies also hired an additional 4,000 employees in the second half of last year. As a result, despite difficult economic conditions, they hired about 6,500 more employees than initially planned at the beginning of last year.”
Companies are successively announcing their hiring plans for this year. CJ Group said on Wednesday that it will recruit 13,000 new employees over the next three years. The scale of open recruitment for entry-level positions this year will be expanded by more than 20 percent from last year. The share of young people in new hires at CJ Group has exceeded 70 percent for three consecutive years. Among new recruits last year, those aged 34 or younger accounted for 71 percent.
LG CNS said on Monday that it will hire a triple-digit number of experienced workers in the first half of this year in future core business areas such as AI and robotics. Applicants with practical experience and expertise in relevant fields may apply regardless of major or years of experience.
An LG CNS representative said,
We are focusing on recruiting and fostering talent to secure global-level leadership in AI transformation and robot transformation and to continuously strengthen core technological competitiveness,
“We aim to apply new technologies such as AI and robotics to industrial sites to create differentiated competitiveness.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
READ the latest news shaping the AI Chips market at AI Chips News
Chip giants to expand hiring as AI -driven ‘supercycle’ spurs demand, source
Add comment