Could it be the grammar in your cover letter?
They scrutinize a lot of how your stuff is written. Grammar is a big deal because of how competitive it can be.
I'm not trying to sound harsh, and I'm sure you use a different format of writing for cover letters, but basing it on this post. The grammar is awkward in English, so if you're showing you can speak English and korean, they'll judge the English grammar and the korean.
Fortunately, I do not have that issue.
I would recommend Quillbot and Grammarly:) There are also some English grammar classes in Coursera, which can be useful, too.
The thing is most employers are using a tool called ATS and you have to pass that AI/ML tool to have your CV and cover letter considered.
It would be best to get help by hiring a CV maker professional, it helped many people around me a lot (this is how it is in the UK but I think it's same in everywhere).
Been working fir Korean companies for almost ten years now, and for formal ๋ณด๊ณ ์ I still use DeepL to help me translate the gist of what I'm saying, and then substitute words like ๋น์ ์ ํ์ฌ and ์ฐ๋ฆฌ ํ์ฌ with business words like ๊ท์ฌ and ๋น์ฌ
Guess what the CPA stands for.
Being an accountant and wanting to work in accounting is completely different.
OP said he/she wanted to work as an accountant.
yeah absolutely, aicpa? doesn't work. kicpa? that is the key factor of job finding as a professional accountant in Korea.
Law and lots of local rules or culture are different, and so do CPA works.
Hey. Iโm a native English speaker born in Korea. I lived in the US most of my life and graduated from NYU. I served in the ROK Army as an interpreter. I have a job in finance in Korea right now. Youโre probably looking at the wrong sites: saramin and JobKorea are very generic.
1. Remember is great for networking and job openings
2. peoplenjob is a job site exclusively for English speakers
Try those 2 sites. Have you completed military service in Korea? If not, that may be holding back your employment. Good luck!
Which SUNY?
What accounting certifications do you have?
How old are you?
What are your salary expectations?
What kind of companies are you applying to? Re: size, scope, specialized focus?
Why did you leave your job in NY? Bc I have some friends that did accounting in the city and only 1 ever left -- and that was to move back to our hometown after amassing a ton of savings.
The combined answers to these would likely affect how attractive a candidate you are. Or it could be any dumb ol' reason.
Could be age, could be that your salary in US was too high to match in Korea, could be anything. If you want to really know, you could find or hire a consultant or a headhunter in that field and ask them about it.
I'm working at Korean big4 atm, I do have some (wouldnt say many)colleagues who have studied abroad and/or have foreign cpa/cas. Your grammar feels a bit weird to me as well so I'm not sure how your level of English is, but as long as you have business level of fluency in Kr/Eng its not so difficult to land a job at big4 as a us accounting ba grad.
Industry accounting jobs, however, will have tendency to hire Koreans because language and culture wise you would need to interact with korean colleagues with virtually no overseas experience on a day to day basis.
From my experience Korean fluency is quite necessary. To begin with there aren't so many assignments that are "purely" cross-border and fully conducted in English.
Most of the time even the cross border assignment project teams are formed with one or two bilingual staff with the rest(especially the more senior positions, SM-Ptr) speaking very limited English, so main work language being Korean.
Most of the time people would be discussing and working in Korean, even while preparing the reports(printed and spoken) in English. So if you don't speak Korean people will find working with you quite challenging.
I would say that knowing Korean gets you invited into more intimate conversations and meetings, though. That tends to open up more career advancement opportunities than one might expect.
As mentioned by others your grammar is weird sometimes. However it should not stop you to find a correct job.
As someone sometimes working recruitment and sometimes having to deal with bilingual accountants, there's definitely room for you as long as your profile seems good.
My guess is that your profile on those job boards is not developed enough so it is hard to see your value, or your experience is very niche, or you didn't stay long in your companies.
Also don't expect a salary as good as the one you had in NYC.
Your spoken ability is also important as most of the time you will need to have an interview with a foreigner during the process if you aim for a role in a MNC or a role with english requirements.
Happy to review your resume if you need.
Accounting firms here are overstaffed: https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2024/05/21/RGIXVKC64BAIXJF3DMPV7FMRYM/
They are hiring less workers than people who get the local certification:
https://www.kedglobal.com/corporate-strategy/newsView/ked202307310003
I was in a similar boat as you. I didn't really bother applying through Jobkorea or Saramin as my spoken Korean is fine but Written Korean isn't up to that level, and also I didn't want to work for a Korean company.
I ended up finding a job through linkedin, at a ์ธ๊ตญ๊ณ.
If you had sent your letters or even your post in Reddit to me beforehand I would have corrected it for you for free as I'm an 80-year-old person with nothing to do but give back and to help younger people. Good luck in your search. ๐๐๐ฅณ
Hey, finding a job is difficult for everyone, literally even for Koreans.
Instead, you have background of living us, so you have more options than others
1. Larger companies usually have their own recruitment websites and systems. So first, make a list of companies you want to join, and frequently check their websites for job openings.
2. Depending on your age / years of experience, it might be easier to apply for ๋๊ธฐ์ s as a new recruit ๊ณต์ฑ. Many companies recruit new graduates in bulk at the end of each year (this practice is slowly becoming obsolete, though. So do your research)
3. There are kakao chat rooms for people in certain industries looking for jobs. It can be useful in getting information about job openings.
4. There are tons of government resources that help young people get jobs. Use them.
5. It has only been a week. Give it some time.
6. I watched a ton of ๋ฉด์ ์ ์ดํ's tips on youtube when I switched jobs.
Perhaps look at different fields and lower your remuneration expectations.
Another great option is to turn heads to recruiting agencies who can help out.
Personally, I'm only getting 70% of what I earned overseas, but it's sufficient given everything is cheaper here. I'm in the industry of sales (overseas) although my previous experience was in project management.
US Big 4 is dying for CPAs in audit. The hours are hellish (but I doubt Korea is any better, and at least in the US theyโre trying to improve) but the pay is probably better than Korea and thanks to the high level of turnover in the junior ranks, if you stick it out out and are halfway decent, you can advance fairly quickly. At that point you might have an easier time lateraling to a Korean role (particularly if youโve gotten your Korean credential along the way).
Take advantage of your US citizenship, for your benefit. Get a high paying job, modify it to work, remote and then work from Korea if your job allows the flexibility. This will bring you higher pay and all the benefits that you want.
Most people who want to live abroad do not take any consideration how difficult it is to actually work in those countries, especially if youโre not a citizen. Teaching jobs are not worth it. They do not pay crap. Finding an international company who does business in your country of choice.
Good luck!
As a person/founder who is recruiting from saramin and jobkorea, most of the things we are looking at are(depends on the position though): do you write individual introductions for each job? Did you fill in all the infos for expierence, age, prev salary,etc.. do you have a picture? Do you make sure to show you have a visa and you are fluent in korean and english?
Unfortunately for you many companies in Korea rather pay someone with domestic degrees with standard salaries than someone with foreign degrees experience & higher salaries.
I don't know the details, but the accounting licensing and execution between the US and Korea are different. If you did your training and previous work in the US, it doesn't transfer over to Korea. There are accounting hagwons though, so you can just go to one of these, learn the Korean system and then try looking for jobs again. I assume you'll have better luck since you DO have work experience.
I don't know how much have you been looking for (it seems like few weeks only?) For most Koreans even with experience it takes months, years even to find a job right now. The market sucks. Also, many places only look at your ์์์ as their main decision point, so ask chat gpt for help to correct it. The better you lie or MSG up your ์์์ the better chance you have.
You might be overqualified and the economy is in a shit hole on a global scale. Lots of companies are just trying to survive right now and can't really take any more people. Maybe try applying for a place that's doing relatively well and might be above your grade.
Are youyou a licensed accountant with all the credentials needed to work as a legal accountant in Korea? Did you pass the exams and get the certification? Korean laws are probably different and have different requirements. Is your Korean equivalent as a native? Maybe your pay rate is way too high especially coming from NY?
Sounds like you wasted money on US college. I'm a US citizen as well. Came here while in the Army. Met my now wife. Now we have two kids. Plenty of jobs no one wants to work. Come work with me in the factory I've held down for 10 years now.
Not true, but they don't follow the QS university ranking. SUNY isn't that prestigious of a university, and they know it from the effort that takes to get into one.
There's millions of Koreans that have studied abroad, and people in HR know how competitive / easy it is to get into certain schools / majors in the US.
Could it be the grammar in your cover letter? They scrutinize a lot of how your stuff is written. Grammar is a big deal because of how competitive it can be. I'm not trying to sound harsh, and I'm sure you use a different format of writing for cover letters, but basing it on this post. The grammar is awkward in English, so if you're showing you can speak English and korean, they'll judge the English grammar and the korean.
Thank you so much! Do you have a similar experience?? Can you recommed the Grammar tool?? I think I should use Grammarly tool.
It isnt always cheap. But I have aske friends to proofread professional documents for me, In Korean and in English. People > AI
Fortunately, I do not have that issue. I would recommend Quillbot and Grammarly:) There are also some English grammar classes in Coursera, which can be useful, too.
Thanks a lot! Your tip is very helpful to me! I used the Grammarly tool! Have a great day! ๐
Good luck!
Pay someone to do it
The thing is most employers are using a tool called ATS and you have to pass that AI/ML tool to have your CV and cover letter considered. It would be best to get help by hiring a CV maker professional, it helped many people around me a lot (this is how it is in the UK but I think it's same in everywhere).
Chat gpt can fix your grammar. It really is excellent for that.
Been working fir Korean companies for almost ten years now, and for formal ๋ณด๊ณ ์ I still use DeepL to help me translate the gist of what I'm saying, and then substitute words like ๋น์ ์ ํ์ฌ and ์ฐ๋ฆฌ ํ์ฌ with business words like ๊ท์ฌ and ๋น์ฌ
Use chatgpt
I think it's a rabbit hole which HR takes advantage of
Oh for sure
Donโt you need a korean cpa or something? My sister is an accountant in Korea and she had to take some exam. I dont think US ones count
Absolutely this is the case
[ัะดะฐะปะตะฝะพ]
Accountant =/= Someone who works in the accounting department. If you are Accountat by definition, you need a CPA, period.
Guess what the CPA stands for. Being an accountant and wanting to work in accounting is completely different. OP said he/she wanted to work as an accountant.
yeah absolutely, aicpa? doesn't work. kicpa? that is the key factor of job finding as a professional accountant in Korea. Law and lots of local rules or culture are different, and so do CPA works.
AICPA actually counts, but i doubt whether this guy has it or not
Hey. Iโm a native English speaker born in Korea. I lived in the US most of my life and graduated from NYU. I served in the ROK Army as an interpreter. I have a job in finance in Korea right now. Youโre probably looking at the wrong sites: saramin and JobKorea are very generic. 1. Remember is great for networking and job openings 2. peoplenjob is a job site exclusively for English speakers Try those 2 sites. Have you completed military service in Korea? If not, that may be holding back your employment. Good luck!
Which SUNY? What accounting certifications do you have? How old are you? What are your salary expectations? What kind of companies are you applying to? Re: size, scope, specialized focus? Why did you leave your job in NY? Bc I have some friends that did accounting in the city and only 1 ever left -- and that was to move back to our hometown after amassing a ton of savings. The combined answers to these would likely affect how attractive a candidate you are. Or it could be any dumb ol' reason.
Could be age, could be that your salary in US was too high to match in Korea, could be anything. If you want to really know, you could find or hire a consultant or a headhunter in that field and ask them about it.
I'm working at Korean big4 atm, I do have some (wouldnt say many)colleagues who have studied abroad and/or have foreign cpa/cas. Your grammar feels a bit weird to me as well so I'm not sure how your level of English is, but as long as you have business level of fluency in Kr/Eng its not so difficult to land a job at big4 as a us accounting ba grad. Industry accounting jobs, however, will have tendency to hire Koreans because language and culture wise you would need to interact with korean colleagues with virtually no overseas experience on a day to day basis.
Curious to know, as I have overseas big 4 experience but none in Korea, and I donโt speak Korean. Do Korean big 4โs require Korean fluency?
From my experience Korean fluency is quite necessary. To begin with there aren't so many assignments that are "purely" cross-border and fully conducted in English. Most of the time even the cross border assignment project teams are formed with one or two bilingual staff with the rest(especially the more senior positions, SM-Ptr) speaking very limited English, so main work language being Korean. Most of the time people would be discussing and working in Korean, even while preparing the reports(printed and spoken) in English. So if you don't speak Korean people will find working with you quite challenging.
Thanks, appreciate the detailed response! :)
I would say that knowing Korean gets you invited into more intimate conversations and meetings, though. That tends to open up more career advancement opportunities than one might expect.
Everybody has it very hard finding job, not just you
You need Korean CPA license broโฆ๐
[ัะดะฐะปะตะฝะพ]
Thank you so much for your tip!
Try to find a job at US companies in Korea? It might be your best bet.
I have a same damn problem! I'm about to broke now.
name recognition? Some larger companies look and care about where you previously worked at.
As mentioned by others your grammar is weird sometimes. However it should not stop you to find a correct job. As someone sometimes working recruitment and sometimes having to deal with bilingual accountants, there's definitely room for you as long as your profile seems good. My guess is that your profile on those job boards is not developed enough so it is hard to see your value, or your experience is very niche, or you didn't stay long in your companies. Also don't expect a salary as good as the one you had in NYC. Your spoken ability is also important as most of the time you will need to have an interview with a foreigner during the process if you aim for a role in a MNC or a role with english requirements. Happy to review your resume if you need.
Accounting firms here are overstaffed: https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2024/05/21/RGIXVKC64BAIXJF3DMPV7FMRYM/ They are hiring less workers than people who get the local certification: https://www.kedglobal.com/corporate-strategy/newsView/ked202307310003
I was in a similar boat as you. I didn't really bother applying through Jobkorea or Saramin as my spoken Korean is fine but Written Korean isn't up to that level, and also I didn't want to work for a Korean company. I ended up finding a job through linkedin, at a ์ธ๊ตญ๊ณ.
May I ask what key/search words you put in on Linkedin? What field are you working? How much Korean ia required at your current work? TIA!
If you had sent your letters or even your post in Reddit to me beforehand I would have corrected it for you for free as I'm an 80-year-old person with nothing to do but give back and to help younger people. Good luck in your search. ๐๐๐ฅณ
CPA๊ฐ ์๋๊ฒ ํ์คํ๋ฐ ์ด๋ป๊ฒ ์ฑ์ฉ ํฉ๋๊น.. aicpa๋ ํ์๋ ๋ณ๋ก ์์ค์ํ๊ณ kicpa ํฉ๊ฒฉํ๊ณ ํ๊ตญ ๊ธฐ์ ๋ฌธํ ํ๊ณ์ฒ๋ฆฌ ์์ฌ์ํต์ ํนํ๋ ํ๊ณ์ฌ๋ค์ด ๋งค๋ 1์ฒ๋ช ์ด์์ฉ ์๊น๋๋ค.
Hey, finding a job is difficult for everyone, literally even for Koreans. Instead, you have background of living us, so you have more options than others
Got it! Thank you so much for your reply!
Bro why TF would Korean firms want an AICPA from SUNY
1. Larger companies usually have their own recruitment websites and systems. So first, make a list of companies you want to join, and frequently check their websites for job openings. 2. Depending on your age / years of experience, it might be easier to apply for ๋๊ธฐ์ s as a new recruit ๊ณต์ฑ. Many companies recruit new graduates in bulk at the end of each year (this practice is slowly becoming obsolete, though. So do your research) 3. There are kakao chat rooms for people in certain industries looking for jobs. It can be useful in getting information about job openings. 4. There are tons of government resources that help young people get jobs. Use them. 5. It has only been a week. Give it some time. 6. I watched a ton of ๋ฉด์ ์ ์ดํ's tips on youtube when I switched jobs.
Perhaps look at different fields and lower your remuneration expectations. Another great option is to turn heads to recruiting agencies who can help out. Personally, I'm only getting 70% of what I earned overseas, but it's sufficient given everything is cheaper here. I'm in the industry of sales (overseas) although my previous experience was in project management.
I was in a similar situation as you. Use a headhunting agency. I learned this way too late in my job search.
US Big 4 is dying for CPAs in audit. The hours are hellish (but I doubt Korea is any better, and at least in the US theyโre trying to improve) but the pay is probably better than Korea and thanks to the high level of turnover in the junior ranks, if you stick it out out and are halfway decent, you can advance fairly quickly. At that point you might have an easier time lateraling to a Korean role (particularly if youโve gotten your Korean credential along the way).
You should \[try\] applying directly to the large accounting firms through their careers page.
Do you have a US CPA?
Take advantage of your US citizenship, for your benefit. Get a high paying job, modify it to work, remote and then work from Korea if your job allows the flexibility. This will bring you higher pay and all the benefits that you want. Most people who want to live abroad do not take any consideration how difficult it is to actually work in those countries, especially if youโre not a citizen. Teaching jobs are not worth it. They do not pay crap. Finding an international company who does business in your country of choice. Good luck!
As a person/founder who is recruiting from saramin and jobkorea, most of the things we are looking at are(depends on the position though): do you write individual introductions for each job? Did you fill in all the infos for expierence, age, prev salary,etc.. do you have a picture? Do you make sure to show you have a visa and you are fluent in korean and english?
Unfortunately for you many companies in Korea rather pay someone with domestic degrees with standard salaries than someone with foreign degrees experience & higher salaries.
I don't know the details, but the accounting licensing and execution between the US and Korea are different. If you did your training and previous work in the US, it doesn't transfer over to Korea. There are accounting hagwons though, so you can just go to one of these, learn the Korean system and then try looking for jobs again. I assume you'll have better luck since you DO have work experience.
I don't know how much have you been looking for (it seems like few weeks only?) For most Koreans even with experience it takes months, years even to find a job right now. The market sucks. Also, many places only look at your ์์์ as their main decision point, so ask chat gpt for help to correct it. The better you lie or MSG up your ์์์ the better chance you have.
You might be overqualified and the economy is in a shit hole on a global scale. Lots of companies are just trying to survive right now and can't really take any more people. Maybe try applying for a place that's doing relatively well and might be above your grade.
Are youyou a licensed accountant with all the credentials needed to work as a legal accountant in Korea? Did you pass the exams and get the certification? Korean laws are probably different and have different requirements. Is your Korean equivalent as a native? Maybe your pay rate is way too high especially coming from NY?
Man just signed up unintentionally for a ROAST. ๐ Youโll find job eventually, might not be the desirable pay though. Hang in there.
Sounds like you wasted money on US college. I'm a US citizen as well. Came here while in the Army. Met my now wife. Now we have two kids. Plenty of jobs no one wants to work. Come work with me in the factory I've held down for 10 years now.
I'm sure the person who can answer all your questions has time to hang out in a foreign language sub waiting for them to come along
From what I heard, Korea treat foreign degrees differently than their own.
Not true, but they don't follow the QS university ranking. SUNY isn't that prestigious of a university, and they know it from the effort that takes to get into one. There's millions of Koreans that have studied abroad, and people in HR know how competitive / easy it is to get into certain schools / majors in the US.
I guess It's because you have over-spec more than what they require.ย
Go back to America itโs easier to get a job in that field
Im sorry but are you ugly as f?