Job-hunting students face new challenges

As the job-hunting season for university students due to graduate in spring 2013 kicked off Thursday--two months later than previous years--students and companies are struggling to find their way in this shortened recruitment season.

With more companies hiring new employees from overseas, the job market for university students--which has been described as being stuck in an "ice age" due to the protracted recession--looks set to get even tougher.

At the Ikebukuro campus of Rikkyo University, third-year students dressed in the suits they wear for job interviews packed a seminar on successful job hunting last week.

One participant, Takayuki Ida, 21, said confidently, "I've already visited five graduates from my university [to get their advice on job hunting], and today I finished sending preliminary job applications to nearly 30 companies."

Many others, however, looked anxious about their prospects.

"I've been busy working on a report for my seminar, so I'm not sure if I can make up for lost time on my job hunting in such a short period," a third-year Komazawa University student said.

Many companies are set to increase the number of recruitment briefing sessions to deal with the shortened job-hunting season.

Lawson Inc., a convenience store chain, will hold about 40 briefing sessions between now and the end of February, an increase of about 10 from last year.

Nippon Steel Corp. says it will send officials from its personnel department to university-hosted industry briefing sessions about 60 times next year, a 1.5-fold increase on the previous year.

===

Foreign rivals formidable

Meanwhile, the number of firms using online recruiting is on the rise. One of them is electronics giant Sony Corp., which will broadcast its corporate profile briefing session over the Internet. Using an online chat function, applicants will be able to ask questions and get answers directly from members of Sony's personnel department.

Many companies have set up recruitment pages on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Making the challenging job market even tougher are the growing numbers of new graduates from overseas. Japanese companies are hiring such employees to help with their plans to expand overseas.

Fast Retailing Co., the parent company that runs the Uniqlo clothing chain, plans to increase the percentage of total sales from its overseas outlets from the current 15 percent to more than 50 percent by 2015. Of about 1,200 new recruits the company will take on in 2012, 900 to 1,000 will be non-Japanese, according to Fast Retailing.

Rakuten, a major IT company, will employ about 120 non-Japanese new graduates next year, out of about 410 new recruits.

Hitachi Ltd. says it will boost the percentage of new non-Japanese recruits from 4 percent in spring 2011 to up to 6 percent of all recruits next spring.

===

More schedule changes?

Not everyone has supported the move to delay the start of the job-hunting season so students can focus more on their studies.

"The later the recruitment season starts, the more anxious students become [about job hunting]," said Hiromasa Yonekura, president of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren).

However, Mitsui & Co. Chairman Shoei Utsuda, head of the Japan Foreign Trade Council, which took the initiative in putting back the start of the job hunting season, said reform of the starting date is "still insufficient."

To enable students to concentrate on their studies longer, the starting date for job hunting should be delayed further, according to Utsuda.

He proposes that corporate briefing sessions not start until at least February or March for third-year students, and that job interviews start in August or later for seniors.

This uncertainty is causing anxiety among students preparing to enter the job market.

"It's going to be tough for us if they keep changing the date when the job-hunting season starts," a female second-year student at Meiji University said.

Yasuchika Hasegawa, chairman of the Association of Corporate Executives, has acknowledged that differences in views among business organizations and industrial groups about when to start recruitment have caused confusion among students.
(Dec. 7, 2011)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111206004548.htm