Royal Holdings, a large restaurant company that operates 673 restaurants across Japan, planned to recruit 50 college graduates next year, but was only able to hire 29. This is because competition among companies to attract talent is fierce, so there are only a small number of applicants, and even those who select them often end up moving to other companies. Royal Holdings, which feels limited by hiring only new college graduates, plans to hire more experienced employees or foreigners.
It was found that the number of employed people in Japan who will join companies next year has increased by the largest amount in 15 years since the 2008 global financial crisis. As Japanese companies are actively recruiting employees who had been postponed during the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) pandemic, prospective college graduates are enjoying the special privilege of choosing a company to work for.
According to a survey of 938 major Japanese companies conducted by the Nippon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) on the 23rd, the number of college graduates scheduled to join the company in April next year was 122,000, a 7.4% increase from this year. This is the largest increase since 2009, immediately after the global financial crisis broke out due to the Lehman Brothers incident. This is because a large number of talented people who could not be hired during the COVID-19 pandemic were recruited, and a large number of jobs were hired in areas that were particularly affected by the increase in foreign tourists, including transportation and tourism.
Hiring in the hotel and travel industries, which are recovering the fastest from the pandemic, increased by 220% compared to a year ago, and airlines (89%) and railway and bus industries (35.5%) were also hired in large numbers. Recruitment has also increased in the banking industry, which requires a lot of information technology (IT) talent due to digital transformation. Mizuho Financial, one of Japan’s top three financial groups, selected 500 people, a 31% increase from the previous year, by increasing starting salaries and expanding recruitment areas. Employment in manufacturing industries such as automobiles and semiconductors also increased by about 10%.
Japan has been experiencing a hiring boom for over 10 years since the implementation of the so-called Abenomics, which involves releasing a large amount of money into the market. For this reason, the ‘job seeker advantage market’ continues, with job seekers going to the one with the best conditions after being accepted to several companies. 28.5% of companies surveyed by Nikkei responded that ‘more than half of the selected employees refused to join the company to go elsewhere.’ This newspaper pointed out, “The Japanese job market is expected to be active for the time being due to the expansion of U-turn companies (returning from overseas).”
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Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.