Even with a Starting Salary 4 Million Won Lower... The 'Top Workplace' Chosen Instead of Samsung Electronics

Naver Maintains Top Preference Among Job Seekers for 2 Consecutive Years

The number one "dream company" that job seekers most want to work for is the IT company Naver. Even though the starting salary for new employees is lower than other famous large companies, young professionals still chose Naver.

On the 2nd, JinHakSa's recruitment platform 'Catch' announced that Naver was ranked first in the 'Company of the Year' survey conducted among job seekers. With this, Naver topped the list of companies that job seekers most want to join in this year's survey, following last year.

Naver Headquarters Photo by Naver Homepage

Catch conducts an annual preference vote among its members for the top 50 companies preferred by job seekers. This year, 949 people participated in the vote. Among all respondents, 41.5% (multiple answers allowed) chose Naver. When divided between liberal arts and science majors, Naver was more popular among liberal arts job seekers (46.5%). In contrast, only 34.4% of science job seekers ranked Naver first. Among science majors, a higher percentage (43.2%) chose Samsung Electronics. Overall, the second most desired company to join was Samsung Electronics (36.8%), followed by Hyundai Motor Company (27.9%), SK Hynix (26.0%), and Kakao (23.5%).

The starting salary for new employees did not have a significant impact on job seekers' preferences. According to job platforms like JobKorea, Naver's starting salary last year was estimated at 52.5 million KRW, about 4 million KRW lower than Samsung Electronics (56.42 million KRW).

Meanwhile, Naver and Samsung Electronics were also the most preferred companies among university students. According to a recent survey on company preferences conducted by Binu Labs, the operator of the university life platform 'Everytime,' among 1,000 university students nationwide, Samsung Electronics (34.5%) and Naver (29.3%) ranked first and second, respectively. They were followed by Kakao (29.1%), CJ (20.6%), LG Electronics (14.4%), Hyundai and Kia Motors (13.0%), and SK (12.8%).