How IT Supports Tough Job Hunting of Graduates in Japan？

Osaka – Sunday, March 14, 2010

Nikkei, Japanese newspaper specialized in business/economy and politics, reported on Saturday March 13 in its evening newspaper that new graduates are struggling with their job hunting in the tough economy and job market, although the company side and candidate side both are leveraging IT. Taking this opportunity, the author would like to explain the unique system of job hunting of new graduates in Japan, and how IT is supporting recruiting of employers and job hunting of graduates in Japan in the recent competitive recruiting and job hunting in the tough economy and job market.

1. How new graduates in Japan hunt for job?

Job hunting of new graduates in Japan is quite unique. The job hunting flow and its characteristics are as follows.

Job Hunting Flow of New Graduates in Japan: to Graduate in March 2011 and to Start Working in April 2011
(Source: Nikkei, edited, added explanation/steps and translated by the author)
Timing / Action by Employers / Action by Candidates
Oct – Dec 2009 / Start announcing recruiting online and contacting with candidates / Register personal information (name, contact etc.) from the website of companies they are interested in
Jan – Mar 2010 (Now) / Send seminar invitation / Apply for seminars and attend. Contact OB (Old Boys)/OG (Old Girls) to get information: in many cases, this is also part of screening process for arts students.
Apr – Jun 2010 / Perform screening and interviewing / Compose and submit entry sheet (reason for applying etc.). Go through screening process (paper test, interview)
July 2010 / Send offer letter / Decide which company to work for and accept offer.
Aug 2010 – Feb 2011 / Follow-up (internship is rare) / Make sure to graduate!
Mar 2011 / Some employers hold company orientation at the end of March 2011
Graduate
Apr 1, 2011 / Hold company orientation >> Perform education and training / Attend company orientation >> Being educated and trained then start working

1) Candidates start job hunting more than 1 year before graduating and start working.

Candidates (students to graduate in March 2011) have already started job hunting in autumn of 2009 to start working in April 2010. They would have started job hunting April 2010 or later until just after the burst of the bubble economy in 1992. Some people did used to say that even before the burst of the bubble economy, it was not good for students to engaged most of their last year at university job hunting. However, with employment ice age after 1992, students were forced to start taking actions (gathering information etc.) to win the few job openings available, which happened to meet the needs of employers, who want to recruit excellent talent. Thus, job hunting schedule has been moved up.

2) Seminars are held by employers as the starting point of recruiting process.

Employers hold seminars to candidates of new graduates in recruiting, in which they provide basic information about their company and recruiting. These seminars are good opportunity for the candidates to understand their potential employer and contact HR managers and recruiters in person.

In some cases, attending seminar is the requirement to proceed to the next step of submitting entry sheet, i.e. submitting application. For this reason, although many employers say that there is no relationship between attending their seminar and getting the offer, candidates would need to strive to attend seminars.

3) Visiting OB/OG is often a part of screening and interviewing process in recruiting　new graduates of arts.

OB/OG visiting is quite common in job hunting by new graduates of arts. This is another good opportunity for candidates to understand their potential employer. For employers, this is a part of screening process for many companies, in which OB/OG are informal interviewers and only the candidates who pass their interview will be able to have official interview with HR managers/recruiters.

OB/OG visiting is not so common for new graduates of sciences. Their job hunting process is a little different in this step. Usually the professor supervising their graduation/master thesis recommends them to their potential employer according to the job opening allocated to the university. This recommendation is really the application.

2. How is IT supporting recruiting and job hunting of new graduates?

Recruiters and job hunters are leveraging IT in their own way, although business and job hunting/recruiting social networking sites such as LinkedIn are not common in Japan; Japanese SNS for such purpose is uncommon.

1) Employers and recruiters are in the trial and error process of leveraging IT.

Although it may not as advanced as western countries, recruiters in Japan are trying to leverage IT to meet the needs of them and the candidates. They have been leveraging their website to provide information about their company/recruiting and services online. Such services include candidates making registration for them to contact and applying to attend seminar for them to send invitation, as well as candidates asking for company brochure and other questions. However, with recent tough job market, all seats were filled only after 15 minutes when they started accepting entry for seminars, thus 90% were not able to attend seminars, according to a survey implemented by a Tokyo based recruiting consulting company this week to 1,240 new graduate job hunters.

In order to overcome such a situation, some companies started to leverage IT in earnest, when some others are upsizing the seminars. For example, Taisei Corporation, a construction giant in Japan, has provided streaming web content of the seminar so that candidates who tried to reserve the seat but could not attend the live offline seminar could get the seminar information online.

2) Candidates are IT-equipped for effective job hunting.

Many candidates today buy multi-function mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) when they start job hunting. This may well use up big portion of their savings but is worthwhile because they can leverage “ubiquitous” of the Internet, taking actions in a timely manner. This implies possible financial and digital dividend in job hunting; i.e. financial status and IT literacy may become important factors in their job hunting.

At least, IT literacy of young people is in general of high standard in Japan and leveraging mobile in job hunting will soon take root. SNS specialized in business and recruiting/job hunting such as LinkedIn is not common in Japan, but Japanese people in general are used to using mobile online services and devices because of the unique IT and online history and background of Japan. This attributes to the mobile online service unique to Japan called I-Mode started in 1997 and soon became quite popular along with mobile phone services. Therefore, with advanced online contents and services for better platform and environment for them, they could leverage IT and evolve their job hunting process.


We will probably see a big evolution in recruiting and job hunting, leveraging IT. And, mobile, a promising trend of social media, is likely to become a KFS (Key Factor for Success) of recruiting and job hunting.