Tough Job Market Spurs Boom in Skills Certificates in Korea

March 25, 2014 Leave a comment

Mar 18, 2014
Tough Job Market Spurs Boom in Skills Certificates
JEYUP S. KWAAK
Faced with stiff competition in the job market, young South Koreans often turn to professional certificates to gain an advantage. That trend has spawned thousands of new certificates in recent years and a growing testing service industry.

Last year, there were 6,773 different professional certificates issued by private institutions, up from 1,159 in 2010, according to South Korea’s education ministry.
Just 95 are recognized by the government, according to Kim Beom-su, a ministry official.
Part of the increase in the last year can be attributed to the government’s move in October to make registration obligatory for all certificates, following complaints about many tests that candidates found unhelpful for employment.

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In February, South Korea’s youth unemployment rate reached 10.9%, the highest in over a decade, according to the national statistics agency.
A search on Naver, South Korea’s most popular search engine, yields results that include certificates supposedly proving a candidate’s proficiency in babysitting, leading tours of local plants or teaching while using an iPad, among many others.
South Korean media reports say that over half of college students use at least one private education service with the goal of gaining employment upon graduation, citing survey data from career portal websites.
“If the certificates aren’t recognized by the government, companies must assess them independently,” said Mr. Kim, adding that transparent guidelines from employers would eliminate excessive testing among candidates.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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