Jiwon Park sees the current job market for what it is — an ever-changing and competitive industry.
As the career training and development specialist for the Terry College of Business, he puts his knowledge to use, helping students prepare for whatever obstacles they may face when applying for jobs.
“I work with the students to help them be better prepared for their career after the Master of Business Administration or the Master of Science in Business Analytics programs,” Park said. “I help the students to enhance their soft skills and also improve their hard skills.”
Before coming to the University of Georgia, Park obtained his bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University in 2008. He then worked as a consultant and project manager, working with postproduction firms that wanted to collaborate with Hollywood companies. With a group of friends, he worked with a nonprofit project dedicated to collecting and sending used T-shirts to kids in developing nations before joining a startup company in e-commerce.
With about four and a half years of work experience, Park came to UGA to pursue a Master of Business Administration at Terry College. In 2016, he began working with the college’s MBA Career Management Center.
Bringing his personal knowledge of the job market to Terry, Park ensures that students have the tools and skills necessary to be competitive in their industries. His past work experience has informed him on the different attributes that make job candidates stand out in competitive markets.
“I learned a lot about how companies recruit talent,” Park said. “I try to reverse engineer what they’re looking for and how they would seek that talent. Even now, I ask companies what they think and what they need, which helps us prepare our students.”
Through research and corporate outreach, he helps to create curriculum to make students look more attractive to potential employers.
“I participate in the career class that we have here to help students improve their team management, communications and presentation skills,” he said. “To help with their hard skills, I host many workshops to teach them about important software like the Microsoft Office suites and data cleaning tools.”
Each day, Park meets with students to prepare them for consulting and technical interviews. He also provides assistance with presentations when students find themselves struggling.
Jiwon Park meets with graduate students to work on their professional elevator pitches. (Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski/UGA)
The integration of artificial intelligence in the hiring process has created new obstacles for people entering the job market. Park is working to assist students in overcoming that hurdle.
“Now, many companies are using AI to screen out resumes,” he said. “We’re trying to develop and find a resume template that would ensure that our students’ resumes get in front of human eyes.”
In fall 2024, Park also began to teach content on how students can use generative AI to their benefit, taking steps to be more productive in the corporate world.
“We talk about prompt engineering as well as using generative AI to create summaries of meeting notes and action items,” he said. “Our workshops also explore some AI resources used for calendaring, emailing, presenting and designing.”
Since joining the Career Management Center, Park has helped the college rise in MBA program rankings, placing students among talent competing for many of the Fortune 500 companies. With this shift, he has had to adapt and enhance the curriculum offered by the program.
“Much of the demand for our MBA level talent now comes with the need to handle ambiguous situations,” Park said. “So, we’ve had to come up with a slightly different approach than what we used to do before. We’re helping our students to maneuver those situations without guidance and enhance their executive presence and client management experience.”
Park enjoys the constant evolution of the corporate world. To him, the opportunities to learn through research and communication are invaluable, making UGA the perfect place to be. One of his favorite parts of his job is bringing information from the industry to students, delivering knowledge in ways that can help them be successful.
“We’re here to help,” Park said. “Not only the Career Management Center, but everyone here at Terry. We exist for the students, and we truly care about their success, so just feel free to knock on our door anytime.”
