If the Japanese-style employment practice of companies across the board recruiting fresh university graduates en masse were to be reviewed in one fell swoop, university students and companies would be thrown into confusion. It is important to deliberate the issue.
A liaison council of the relevant ministries and agencies regarding the timetables for job-hunting and recruitment activities has decided that the current rules on the recruitment of new university graduates are to be followed by companies in the hiring of students expected to graduate in the spring of 2021, or current second-year students.
For now, companies are allowed to hold briefing sessions for university third-year students from March 1, and to start the selection process for fourth-year students from June 1.
With the number of companies not following the rules increasing, it has also been pointed out that the current rules, which presume that companies recruit fresh university graduates en masse, have turned into a formality.
Yet there still is a high percentage of students and companies who think that the recruitment rules need to be maintained to a certain degree. It is also a fact that the rules have ensured a certain degree of order regarding job-hunting and recruitment activities. Maintenance of the status quo can be considered a realistic judgment.
It is said that, for the time being, the current timetables are likely to be maintained for the hiring of those expected to graduate even in the spring of 2022 and after. It is important for the recruitment rules in each fiscal year to be fixed at an early date so that students will be able to deal with their job-hunting activities and schoolwork with peace of mind.
The government's liaison council has come to set the recruitment rules from this time on, because the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, has decided to abolish its guidelines regarding corporate recruitment activities. Also, the government's Future Investment Council has begun discussions on what corporate recruitment should be like from a medium- and long-perspective.
But the recruitment activities are primarily to be left up to the management judgment of companies. The government's involvement should be kept to a minimum.
Explore suitable hiring method
The guidelines were established based on reflection on recruiting activities having been moved up excessively, as was seen with the prevalence of firms starting their recruiting of future graduates earlier than the officially agreed date. Each company should voluntarily exercise restraint when recruiting new graduates.
A characteristic of Japanese-style employment practices is that companies recruit fresh university graduates en masse without fixing their specific duties. On the basis of the lifetime employment system, human resources have been fostered from a long-term perspective through in-house education. This can be reckoned as an efficient hiring system.
On the other hand, however, there are such weaknesses as the number of recruits rising and falling year-on-year due to economic fluctuations, distorting the age structure of companies' workforces.
In countries in Europe and North America, it is fundamental to recruit through the entire year, with necessary manpower hired depending on the type of jobs. The job-hunting period for new graduates generally comes around their graduation from universities, which is believed to have less impact on their studies.
Under that system, while graduates from an earlier school year with certain job experience or with specialized knowledge have an advantage, not many students can get the types of jobs they want soon after their graduation. It cannot be denied that such a practice has raised the jobless rate among young people in those countries.
In the midst of competition for manpower becoming globalized, the number of Japanese companies that intend to hire workers by attaching importance to the recruitment of immediately available workers, as companies in Europe and North America do, will increase further.
Each and every employment practice has its own history and comes with both strong and weak points. Now is an era when each company must try to explore what sort of recruitment methods match their own needs.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Oct. 30, 2018)
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