SEOUL, October 30 (AJP) - Graduates of Kookmin University returned to its Seoul campus on Wednesday to give students and young job seekers firsthand advice on breaking into the fields where they now work.
The university said 1,996 people, including current students, graduates and young people from the surrounding area, attended the one-day fair and held about 7,700 consultations on specific companies and jobs.
To mark Kookmin's 80th anniversary this year, the university's University Job Plus Center, which organized the fair, expanded the alumni mentoring section from 45 booths last year to 80. It also moved the event from a basketball court to the main sports field.
Kookmin was founded in 1946 as the first private university established after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule.
At the 80 consulting booths, alumni working across a range of companies explained the skills employers expect, how hiring works in their fields and how they prepared for their own job searches. Students asked about companies and roles they were targeting and got advice on everything from writing cover letters to handling interviews.
Other booths introduced employment and training programs run by the university's career offices. A separate zone presented government support for young job seekers, including services from the Seoul Northern Employment Center and the National Employment Support Program.
Visitors could also try a job recommendation service powered by artificial intelligence, get a personal color analysis and collect stamps on a mobile app as they toured the booths.
Choi Jae-hyeok, a business administration graduate mentoring at the fair for the second straight year, said a few of the students he advised last year came back to his booth this time.
"They had clearly grown, and it made me proud," he said. "If there are more opportunities like this, I want to keep taking part."
Jeon Min-gyeong, a student in Kookmin's School of Business Administration, has been preparing for a career at a state-run company with help from the university's Career Development Support Center.
"At this fair I could get concrete advice, from writing a cover letter to preparing for interviews, from alumni working at several state-run companies," Jeon said. "The event was much bigger than last year, so I could get a wider range of information."
"It was impressive to see how interested the students were in preparing for jobs and how focused they were on the center's programs," said Jo Gyeong-a, an official at the Seoul Northern Employment Center, which staffed the government policy booth.
The University Job Plus Center operates under a Ministry of Employment and Labor program that runs campus career offices open to both students and young people in the local community. Kookmin's center received the ministry's top rating of Excellent in its annual performance evaluations for 2024 and 2025.
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