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Permalink Reply by Sue Lin on January 3, 2012 at 12:22am

Hi Don,

I will be moving to Korea to work for a Chaebol in Feb. From what I understand, my hire is unprecedented in the company for various reasons. Firstly, I'm the first senior foreign hire and secondly, I am a female in that seniority. My role requires me to take care of marketing strategies for the group outside the domestic market and to assist them in developing an international team for this purpose. 

This would be the first time I am working for a Korean conglomerate and I'm feeling frankly nervous about how I would be able to succeed in this working environment. I would greatly appreciate any advice on how I can succeed in the workplace culturally and if there are any norms I should be aware of.

Warmest regards,

L Chin

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Permalink Reply by Don Southerton on January 7, 2012 at 9:31pm

Dear L Chin, 

Sorry for late reply, I've been traveling for the past weeks.

No simple answer. First some of the K Groups are very global and have a number of women in key positions, others are less global, more old school, with few expats or women in management positions. Not sure where you are working to give you additional insights :)

Overall expect long hours, high expectations, and little structured training or coaching on the Group's corporate culture and procedures.  Daily networking is the key tool in finding out what's happening in the Group and your division, and I'd find a mentor to help steer your way through getting things approved, etc.

Overall, you'll find it an amazing learning opportunity. 

DS

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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on January 12, 2012 at 5:12am

Sue - Don's advice here is spot-on. I would also encourage you to be ready for things not to be quite like you expect. I'm not saying that in a negative way, but you should be prepared to be flexible if your Korean team members have expectations that you weren't counting on. Our interview with Dr. Linda Myers in 2010 would be an example of what can go wrong in the Korean workplace over the short- and long-terms for expats; you'll be facing many similar issues and if you make it through successfully, you'll really have something to be proud of and many things to teach others.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew S on February 24, 2012 at 5:56am

Hi Don,

I have an opportunity to do some contracting for a Korean startup here in the US, and I was wondering what was the easiest way to have a Korean company pay a US citizen living in the US. They want to bring their product stateside and I'd be their point man for marketing.

Best regards,

Andrew 

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Permalink Reply by Dave Woods on February 24, 2012 at 6:13am

If you are serious Andrew, then you should start by losing the obscene photo.  

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Permalink Reply by Andrew S on February 24, 2012 at 6:38am

Dear Mr. Dave Woods,

Thanks for your input, I just wanted to standout in a sea of faces. TapThat is my business logo, it should be more funny than obscene, but YMMV. That being said, if admin has issues with the photo I'll take it down, but I don't take life too seriously and I wanted to reflect that on my profile picture.

Best regards,

Andrew

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Permalink Reply by Dave Woods on February 25, 2012 at 1:38am

Being defiant is probably not your best strategy in approaching this market.  Most professionals recognize the difference between being unique and having a defined value proposition, versus a lame effort to stand out by using crude sexual innuendos.  It just shows your lazy, not creative.  IMHO YMMV

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Permalink Reply by Don Southerton on February 24, 2012 at 6:20am

Quick answer is wire transfer.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew S on February 24, 2012 at 6:33am

Thanks Don for the phone chat, safe travels.

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Permalink Reply by Don Southerton on February 24, 2012 at 6:34am

Good luck :)

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Permalink Reply by Valentin JANIAUT on February 28, 2012 at 10:35am

Hello Don,

I just found this Experts Corner page today (KBC is full of hidden treasure...). It happens that I started to work for a big chaebol here in Seoul since last November and I'd like to share my first 3 months experience here. First of all I think that could beneficial for some people looking to work here in Korea, secondly I would be glad to get your feedback and opinion about it.

So basically I just graduated a master of engineering in Computer Science in France (from what we call there a "Grande Ecole"), I spent one year at KAIST as an exchange student and did a 6-month internship in Seoul. So I had a little experience of the working habits here and I thought I was ready to jump in Chaebol.

Well, it has been a bit more difficult that I expected. First of all, I have been surprised to see that my company did not have any specific process to integrate foreign employee since I could not join the usual Korean employee process. So I have been quite left alone to deal with everything getting only seldom help from my co-worker. 

At the beginning I went through some trouble since my team leader (who actually hired me) left the company. Which make me realized that he was probably the only one who wanted to hire a foreigner. For different reason I finally transferred from a sales team to an engineering team (I have been recruited as a Sales Engineer). I am now a project manager, assisting the project leader working on a "big" project for a French company (which is great because I am French !).

Despite the communication problem which is an important issue, I think the general (lack) of organisation is hard to handle. There is not really job title, so I cannot understand well what people are working for, curiously the hierarchy is not correctly defined so it has hard to know to who I should report exactly (I just understood well that I was under everybody !). I spent most of my time gathering information, trying to ask and ask people again about so many things !

People are friendly and supportive, but I have hard time to build trust between them and me, so I do not get responsibilities so far which make my work a bit boring. Especially since in Europe fresh graduates from similar universities are trained to tackle challenge and responsibility. I feel quite bad to see how Korean in my company lack a bit of ambition although they are extremely talented. Making me feel like I am an alien to them since I do not plan to stay all my life in the same company and want to manage a good quality of life and challenging work ! (ie: If you want to be ambitious here, you have to work until 3AM everyday).

I would be glad to catch some "survival advise" from you to help me to get the best from this experience.

Other people working for a cheabol, feel free to share your experience too. 

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Permalink Reply by Don Southerton on March 4, 2012 at 10:12pm

Thanks. Your experiences reflect that many waeguks have  shared. Lack of a structure to integrate them into the organization seems to be a common theme.   Rare than someone who hires a new team member leaves the company, although I see them transferred away from the team common, so this disconnect often.

I do see better integration at some of the larger and more global Groups, especially in their overseas divisions, so my advise to others is to seek out those opportunities vs. the domestic side of the business.  For example in one firm I work with... all the overseas teams have either been educated outside Korea, or grew up overseas and moved back to Korea....  

Regardless, Valentin please continue to share your progress. 

DS

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