For the last 2 and 3 years, I read lots of news that Japanese job market is booming. Economy is recovering from the long depression and trying to hire more staff to expand thier businesses. But the problem is that the populaton of college graduates has been declining steadily and Japanese companies are having difficulty in recruiting young staff. To overcome the problem, companies have paid attention to the foreign students and held variety of events to attract talented staff overseas. South Korea has been one of thier targets to invest thier energy and as far as I know, lots of Korean college graduates started to pay attention to the opportunities in Japan as well. In Korea, I could see more online advertisements that promoted job fairs in which Japanese companies take part.
I was one of the Korean students who paid attention to the job market in Japan. I felt like seeing what the real situation is in Japan, even a little bit. I had studied Japanese for years and was supposed to get a Japanese community college degree soon. I wanted to get a kind of objective reward for my effort. Moreover, I wanted a kind of turning point in my life if possible (but I didn't have hig expectation partly due to my age). Before leaving Korea for trip in Japan, I found a recruiting company called 'Pasona.'
I found it in a book titled 'Tokyo Business Walk' (임상균, '도쿄 비지니스 산책' , 한빛비즈(2016)). The company was mentioned in the book not only because it performed so well but because it pursued quite innovative ideas to have its staff maximize its potentials such as healty diet in cafeteria and so on ( I will write a seperate blog about it).
I checked its homepage and found there were supposed to be a recruiting fair for foreign college students and graduates in the headquarter builidng in Tokyo in the early August. I put the event in my schedule of the travel of Japan and signed up for it(it was free).
Before leaving for the fair, I ate a ramen in a small restaurant. It tasted like a real Japanese ramen. But, looking inside the kitchen, the cook was South Asian (Indian , Nepalese, or Pakistani). In convenience stores and fast foods restaurant, it was not hard to see non-Japanese cashiers.
I got off the subway at Nihonbashi Station and walked around 5 minutes. The headquarter building was located right next to Tokyo Station.
People were guided to the 12th floor. They got a short briefing over the schedule and the companies participating in the event. Each one got a few sheets of paper in which they wrote thier profiles to submit the companies the could be interested in. I checked the proportions of nationalities of participants just with my eyes and ears. Chinese including Taiwanese were dominant. They seemed to be about 50 % of the whole participants. The next dominant group was Southeast Asians. They were like 1 in 4. Interestingly, there were not many Koreans seen. The guy sitting right next to me was an American. I asked him a few questions. He confrimed the news that Japanese job market is definitely in a better situation than Korea. He said that he already got three jobs offered and came to the fair to find companies with more culturally friendly atmospheres and policies.
I moved down to the 10th floor with the venue for seminar. At the entrance, there was a bulletin board with brief profiles of companies participating.
Companies gave participitants their pamphlets and offered a briefing over what kind of businesses they were doing, what kind of talents they were looking for, how the working conditions including salaries, and etc. Most companies offered individual consultations and did kind of screening procedures.
The most bustling section was Panasonic. Most of the participants waiting for individual consultations were Chinese because Panasonic was looking for staff who are able to support its business in China.
There were some IT companies' sections with couple of foreign staffs who could give consultation in English. In those sections, more people with Western origins joined in, which is I think natural. It was quite interesting to watch them doing like Japanese college graduates wearing all-black suits.
Visiting several sections and getting a few consultations, I recognized what kind of talents Japanese companies are looking for from foreign staff.
1. Glocalization( Globalization + Localization)
I had a short interview with the personnel officer of a leasing company named 'Lalco'. The company was expanding its business in Laos in Southeast Asia. From hotel business, it diversified its business area such as automobile leasing, micro-finance and etc. It was looking for staff who could stay in Laos for a long-term basis and do marketing in the area(learning the local langauge was a must). The problem is that Japanese staff don't prefer to work abroad. In a book titled 'Reimaging Japan: The Quest for a Future That works' which is filled with the suggestions by people who can be said to know Japan quite deep such as Carlos Ghosn, the ex-CEO of Nissan Motors pointed out Japanese youngsters' introvert characteristics. Many of them argue not only that more foreign talents should be welcomed but also that Japanese college students should be encouraged to have more experiences abroad and improve thier English in this kind of globalized business world (concerning the issue,I felt Japanese are quite opposite to Koreans because Korean youngsters are crazy going abroad). It seemed that they think that if the hired foreign staff don't have any big problems communicating with Japanese staff, they are more capable to do marketing abroad. Panasonic got the biggest space in the hall and brought massive staff to procceed its event. It targeted Chinese students who can speak Japanese, Chinese, and (probably) English.
2. Tourism (English + Japanese + maybe Chinese)
Tourism has been booming for the last 5 years in Japan. Weak Yen and the rapid growth of middle class in China and South Asia are the main factors for the growth( cheaper flights with introduction of budget airlines could be another). In 2015 about 20 million people visited Japan and in 2016 about 25 million people did. This year until July about 17 million people visited Japan. Just for July, 2,681,500 people visited Japan. It was 16.8% increase year on year.
The matter is short of staff who can serve overseas customers. Due to the decrease of young populations, hotels and resorts have tried to hire foreign staffs. Even in the fair, I saw more than five hotel or resort companies recruiting foreign students. Some were recruiting temporary staff who could work seasonly like a ski resort in Hokkaido.
3. IT( IT technologies + Japanese + a little English)
General Japanese economy is recovering and IT sector has been catching up with other competitors like Korea, China, and Taiwan. Especially, it found its own strength: IoT. But it has faced the same problem called 'workforce shortage.' Actually, I could see the situation indirectly in Korea. There were quite a lot of training programs seen like computer language training plus being hired by Japanese firms in Korea. The problem will be more severe as time goes by( one of my students asked me to help him learn Japanese after deciding to major in computer engineering).
Definitely there are opportunities in Japan. Speaking Japanese is a must. Good English and Chinese are welcomed. And they are starving for IT guys. But it is better not to expect to get a high salary at first. More than anything, the work is tough whatever it is(Japanese work so hard whatever it is).
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