Future Talent Development: Systematic Education for Youth Empowerment

Companies have rolled up their sleeves to resolve the gap in the Korean recruitment market, which is caught in the paradox of an ‘employment ice age’ and a ‘talent war’. Instead of simply ‘recruiting’ talent, they changed their survival strategy to ‘incubating’ them directly. Through this, young people who have not been able to find a job despite having excellent qualifications are provided with various work opportunities, and companies are expecting a ‘win-win’ effect by securing talent to lead the era of digital transformation (DX) and artificial intelligence (AI).

According to the business world on the 12th, the barrier to employment that young people complain about is ‘career.’ According to the ‘2025 Survey on Unemployed Youth’ conducted by the Korea Employers Federation (KEF), 80.7% of job seekers cited ‘lack of job experience and career development opportunities’ as the biggest difficulty in preparing for employment. On the other hand, the company’s perspective is cold. According to the results of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s analysis of corporate hiring trends in the first half of last year, 82.0% of companies recruited ‘experienced workers’ who can be immediately put into work. In a survey of corporate human resources managers in the second half of the year, 51% of responding companies preferred experienced workers. While the demand from youth and companies is at odds, the number of ‘relaxed youth’ who have lost the will to work and become economically inactive has exceeded 700,000, while the number of ‘reclusive youth’ who mostly stay at home has exceeded 500,000. If this structural ‘mismatch’ continues, there is a sense of crisis that not only the future of young people but also the competitiveness of companies cannot be guaranteed. This is also the reason why companies are directly acting as talent incubators.

In order to create a virtuous cycle of ‘the company grows and the company uses’, each company is putting all its efforts into ‘recruiting young people’ and ‘cultivating talent’ by running educational programs that take advantage of the characteristics of their industry. Samsung is supporting the leap forward of young people facing rapid socioeconomic changes in the AI era through the social contribution program ‘Samsung Youth SW·AI Academy’ (SSAFY). A total of 10,125 people have completed SSAFY, which started in 2018, and 8,566 of them have been employed, recording an employment rate of about 85%. They have advanced into over 2,300 companies, including not only Samsung but also KT, Hyundai Mobis, and Kakao. Samsung is completely revamping the SSAFY curriculum to focus on AI to foster AI talent. Of the 1,725 hours per year, 1,025 hours were devoted to AI education, and 8 new AI training courses were also introduced.

SK Group is creating a virtuous cycle structure by establishing industry-academia cooperation in each business field with domestic universities and specialized high schools for young talent. Representatively, ‘Sunny C’ of SK’s in-house education platform My Sunny is a course in which college students, experts, and company members participate together. It consists of college students sharing their concerns and questions about actual work with experts and company members to find solutions together. By the end of last year, four candidates were produced, and the focus was on AI and semiconductors, which are employment fields preferred by young people.

Hyundai Motor Group is working hard to nurture and support talent to secure its status as a global mobility first mover and strengthen its future competitiveness. In particular, we are fulfilling our social responsibility of expanding jobs for youth by providing education and employment in parallel in new future business fields such as electrification and software-driven vehicles (SDV).

LG is discovering new innovations through AI technology, while early discovering and nurturing AI talent from teenagers to young adults to prepare for the competition for global AI technology hegemony. A representative example is the ‘LG AI Graduate School’, which was launched as the first school in Korea with official approval from the Ministry of Education. LG’s in-house graduate school, ‘LG AI Graduate School’, has become the first in-house graduate school that can award master’s and doctoral degrees in accordance with Article 4 of the ‘Special Act on Talent Innovation in High-Tech Industries’. The faculty consists of 25 people, including industrial leaders and academic professors with expertise and practical experience in various AI fields in industry and academia. They provide differentiated, field-specific training that combines theory and practice, including the latest AI theory training and problem solving based on actual industry data.

POSCO Group operates customized education and training programs at the ‘Youth AI and Big Data Academy’ in the fields of AI, big data, and information technology (IT). The Youth AI and Big Data Academy, which has been operated by POSCO Innovation Institute since 2019, has provided young job seekers with training to build capabilities and practical experience in utilizing AI and big data. POSCO Group plans to continue its policy of expanding jobs for youth by hiring 3,000 people per year starting this year and a total of 15,000 people over the next five years.

In addition, Hanwha Group’s Hanwha Aerospace has signed industry-academic cooperation agreements (MOUs) with 10 universities across the country, including Seoul National University, Pusan National University, and KAIST, and will establish a ‘Hanwha Aerospace Hub’ to foster human resources and develop technology. Hanjin Group’s Korean Air operates an in-house technical college, ‘Jeongseok University’. Munhwa Ilbo focuses on the ‘Youth Leap Project’, which provides a ladder of opportunity to young people and provides future growth engines to companies.

Reporters Lee Yong-kwon, Kim Ho-jun, Lee Geun-hong, Choi Ji-young, and Lee Jeong-min