Books over bots? As AI takes over basic skillsets, Korean firms now court critical thinkers, humanities majors.

In Korea’s cutthroat job market, students are doing something that looks almost counterintuitive today: reading books and contemplating philosophical questions, rather than obsessing over polishing their résumés or learning about coding.

As AI seeps through professional environments and take over basic skillsets traditionally required for fresh workers, jobseekers are ironically turning toward humanities and philosophy to find their footing in areas that AI has yet to conquer.

“If AI comes to understand me better than my colleagues do, should I trust its advice over theirs?” questioned one member of a study group that had huddled around a table at a cafe in western Seoul's Sinchon neighborhood on Sept. 1. The five university students were each taking turns to share their thoughts on a question they had come across after reading the designated book of the week. 

“AI can objectively analyze data, so there is value in listening to its advice,” a 26-year-old undergraduate going by Cho Eun-young said. “But as Yuval Noah Harari discusses in ‘Homo Deus’ (2015), an accurate judgment by AI does not necessarily translate into a more meaningful decision for an organization. People still have an essential role in understanding workplace context, making value judgments and working together.”

Such conversations and book clubs are becoming a new fixture of job preparation on Korean university campuses as major companies place more emphasis on critical thinking and humanities knowledge in their hiring processes during the AI transition.

“We read one book every week to prepare for potential interview questions about AI,” Cho said. “Last week, we read ‘Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think’ (2018) and debated what risks come with the information available to us in the AI era.”

Chipmaker seeks open thinkers, not technicians

Jobseekers' efforts may be mirroring efforts by companies to look beyond simple education and deeper into their thinking abilities and capacity to grasp complex concepts. 

This year, SK hynix scrapped education requirements for applicants starting with its rolling recruitment in June. It opened the door to candidates without a bachelor’s degree from a four-year university. It also overhauled its entry-level hiring process for technician positions to put greater weight on three “future competencies”: intellectual curiosity, adaptability and diversity of thought.

“Rather than flashy credentials or how much you know, the key hiring criterion is whether you can show what makes you distinctive in terms of the three future competencies SK hynix is looking for,” Park Se-yoon, a technical leader at SK hynix, said at a recruitment session at Korea University in Seoul on Aug. 27.

“Intellectual curiosity” refers to the ability to look beyond the surface of a problem, identify its root cause and find a solution. “Adaptability” is the ability to quickly learn what is needed and respond flexibly as society and technology evolve. “Diversity of thought” means drawing on a grounding in the humanities and an open mind to embrace different perspectives, collaborate and drive innovation.

A conventional 20-minute interview is no longer enough for what SK hynix wants to measure. Beginning in November, the company will, for the first time, bring candidates in for half-day assessments designed to gauge the three competencies. Applicants will first use AI tools such as large language models to work through assignments over several hours.

In subsequent in-depth discussions with other candidates and interviewers, they will then debate humanities-based questions with no clear-cut answers. The exercise is designed to show how they engage with different perspectives and turn disagreement into productive collaboration.

The changes are designed to identify candidates who can thrive in an AI-driven workplace, according to SK hynix. AI proficiency alone will not be enough. Candidates will also be assessed on their grounding in the humanities, logical thinking and ability to turn those skills into effective problem-solving.

“What matters in the AI era is finding people who can cross disciplinary boundaries and design new systems and a society where humans and AI can coexist,” SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said.

Humanities back in the spotlight

Major companies are also hiring more humanities majors, who are trained to think critically and approach problems from different perspectives.

Hyosung Group’s latest recruitment drive was reserved entirely for humanities majors. Applicants had to come from disciplines such as philosophy, history, aesthetics, Korean language and literature, or English language and literature. The hiring round, which closed in July, marked the first time Hyosung had limited recruitment to humanities majors since its founding in 1966.

“We generate more than 80 percent of our sales overseas, so we want to attract people with humanities knowledge and strong language skills,” Hyosung Group said. The hiring strategy also reflects the company’s view that the ability to think broadly and critically is increasingly important as AI reshapes the workplace.

“In our generation, success is difficult without a combination of technology and the humanities,” Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon said. “The ability to read change, and to know when to jump on and ride it, comes from the humanities.”

Job postings that listed humanities majors as preferred candidates jumped 13.4 percent to 5,046 in the first half of this year, up from 4,450 in the second half of last year. Their share of all postings also rose 0.3 percentage points, even after accounting for growth in the overall number of listings.

“We counted job postings that named a humanities discipline under their preferred majors,” a Worxphere representative said. Worksphere operates JobKorea. “Majors were grouped into seven standard categories: engineering, education, social sciences, arts and sports, medicine and health, humanities and natural sciences.”

The trend marks a reversal from just a few years ago, when humanities majors struggled to compete with engineering graduates armed with the technical skills needed to work with computer systems.

At Seoul National University, philosophy majors have even overtaken computer engineering graduates in employment. The philosophy department’s employment rate surged from 55.6 percent in 2021 to 77.3 percent last year, while the rate for computer engineering dropped from 86.8 percent to 72.6 percent, according to Education Ministry data.

“The more capable AI becomes and the more information it generates, the more valuable people become for making sense of that information and checking whether it is sound,” said Kwon Sang-jib, a social science professor at Hansung University. “AI is taking over information production — once largely the domain of humans in manufacturing-focused era — while people are increasingly responsible for making decisions. Companies are now reflecting that shift in how they hire.”

At the same time, corporate Korea is racing to hire AI talent itself. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has opened research positions for AI and digital transformation specialists.

Even the traditionally conservative banking sector is shifting toward AI. Korea’s four major commercial banks, KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori, have cut staffing at physical branches while raising the share of new hires for digital and AI roles to between 30 and 40 percent. In the past, such roles accounted for only about 10 percent of hiring.

A clean slate for everyone

The changing hiring landscape could also offer a rare opening for young job seekers, even as AI displaces more human work and shrinks the overall job pool, analysts say. Because, ironically, up against AI, everyone is a novice.

“Companies are increasingly favoring experienced hires as AI adoption accelerates, but that does not necessarily mean the environment has become entirely unfavorable for entry-level applicants,” said Seo Mi-young, CEO of recruitment information company Incruit.

“AI can actually be a competitive tool that helps newcomers narrow the experience gap. Because AI is still a relatively new technology, the gap in understanding between entry-level and experienced workers is not that wide. Well-prepared entry-level candidates can gain an edge in what companies increasingly care about: how deeply they can use AI.”

But the new hiring priorities come with a measurement problem. Unlike grades or test scores, a candidate’s ability to think critically can be difficult to quantify. JobKorea found that 65 percent of 1,286 companies surveyed this year are considering AI agents to help make hiring decisions.

But speed is not necessarily what employers are after. Some 45 percent said their biggest challenge was identifying candidates who were the right fit. This suggests that interest in AI agents is driven more by hiring accuracy than efficiency.

“AI agents can narrow the candidate pool to match what a company is looking for, but the organization itself still has to decide what makes a good hire,” an AI expert said. “Automating an unclear standard only replicates the uncertainty on a much larger scale. Companies need well-defined criteria to prevent biases in historical hiring data from being carried over and magnified by AI.”

Some job seekers are questioning whether a college major is a fair measure of the thinking skills employers say they want.

“Companies say they favor humanities majors because they want people with the thinking and judgment needed to use AI well, but couldn’t an engineering or natural sciences major be a more avid reader and deeper thinker?” said a 29-year-old job seeker going by Seo Ki-young. “Unless companies disclose clear evaluation criteria that the public can reasonably accept, the risk of reverse discrimination will only grow.”

Hiring for the AI era is only half the equation. Whether companies continue investing in employees’ AI skills after they join is another issue.

“Policy needs to strike a balance between investment in technology and human capital to prevent companies from focusing excessively on automation simply to reduce their workforces,” said Oh Sam-il, head of the labor market research team at the Bank of Korea. “Instead of the usual hiring subsidies, the government should do more to help companies cover the cost of developing talent and build policies better suited to the AI era.”

BY LEE CHANG-KYUN [[email protected]]