Samsung to hire record number of experienced workers for chip biz

SEOUL, March 20 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Co. is expected to hire a record number of experienced workers for its chip business in the first half of this year, industry insiders said Friday, despite the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The South Korean tech giant said its device solutions (DS) division will hire experienced workers in 51 career fields, although it did not specify how many posts would be filled.

Samsung's DS division previously hired experienced workers on an occasional basis when a certain business unit needed more staff. However, this time, it decided to hire experienced workers across all business units, indicating the number of jobs offered could be the largest in its history.

The DS division includes Samsung's memory chip, system LSI and foundry businesses.

Samsung's aggressive hiring comes amid concerns that local companies may scale down their employment plans due to the novel coronavirus.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) on South Korea's top 500 firms by sales with a workforce of 300 or more, one-fourth of big firms in the country said they will cut back on their hiring or have no plans to recruit new employees in the first half.

Industry insiders said Samsung's hiring scheme shows its ambition to solidify its top status in the semiconductor market.

Samsung's DS business division chief Kim Ki-nam said at the company's shareholder meeting Wednesday that the company will focus on developing technologies this year for next-generation chip production, such as fourth-generation 1z-nanometer (nm) DRAM and seventh-generation V-NAND.

kdon@yna.co.kr
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