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Getting a job in Japan is a major concern for foreign students, who want to stay here after graduating.
While the number of foreign students intending to stay and work in Japan after graduation increases, Japanese companies are starting to pay more attention to foreign students.
According to the Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, the number of foreign students employed at Japanese companies in 2007, was 10,262, an increase of 24.1 percent over the previous year.
This column will introduce Japan's leading companies and companies that actively employ foreigners, and their thoughts about foreign student employment.
Vol 1: NEC Corp. Interview by Keiko Iwata
NEC Corp. is a leading Japanese company that develops, manufactures and markets computers, telecommunications network products and semiconductors.
Tomihiko Azuma (left), department manager of the social contribution office of NEC, talks with Keiko Iwata, president of Heart Connections, an NPO supporting Asian students in Japan.
Iwata: The government has set a target of attracting 300,000 foreign students to Japan, so obviously their numbers are expected to rise. How do you see the trend from the viewpoint of a major Japanese company?
Azuma: Please note that I speak as department manager of the social contribution office.
NEC's vision is to be a leading company, leading society by innovation. To achieve this vision, the key is to be "global" and "innovative." To be global, we do business in and with countries all over the world. And to be innovative, you need diversity. So we should get away from the narrow concept of a "single-race nation," and cooperate with people from various cultures and backgrounds.
New things, better things are created by encounters between people with diverse values, I think.
Iwata: What experience makes you think that?
Azuma: I worked with people from various countries at a venture company in Boston. There were Chinese, Korean, Indian, French, and so on. For some reason, such an international office was very lively, I felt. If there are only Japanese people, the mind-set will be very similar and perhaps ideas won't evolve. There were a lot of arguments, or at least heated discussions - there was an Irish guy who got excited very easily - but it was very stimulating.
I went to Europe in November to observe a wheelchair tennis event. The project members were from various countries, such as Britain, Germany, Holland, Brazil, etc., each from a slightly different culture. Even when we were just chatting about simple things, say Christmas, each of them would say something different and the conversation would develop. I found that kind of exchange very interesting. Europe has the foundation for these things to happen naturally and I really hope the same thing can happen in Asia.
Iwata: I think that people from diverse backgrounds and cultures mixing, and working together will be a plus for the sound development of the world economy, too. If international students in Japan want to work for NEC, does the same recruitment and exam process apply to them as for Japanese students?
Azuma: Yes, of course. Japanese nationality is not a requirement. We have new foreign graduates who are working with us now. When I went to a university for a recent lecture, I met a Chinese woman who told me that she had applied to NEC this year.
Nowadays, we don't even ask the name of the university the applicant graduated or will graduate from. I only judge the person. As long as you can communicate in Japanese, you can get information from the recruitment agency site and apply from NEC's special recruitment site, just as Japanese students do. You can apply for new graduate employment if you graduated in the last three years. After three years, you should apply for midcareer employment, which is separated by job type and offered on an as needed basis.
Our Japanese staff are perfectly comfortable working with foreigners.
Iwata: You mentioned that diversity is important for innovation. Do you actively employ foreign workers from that viewpoint?
Azuma: We do not have a specific approach toward foreigner recruitment because we employ people in light of their qualifications for the position, regardless of nationality. So we do employ foreign workers, when that person is suitable for the position.
NEC has a fundamental corporate strategy of doing what leads to overseas business. If you want to do business overseas, you cannot simply take the products you sell in Japan to a company in a foreign market and sell them. To penetrate a market, you need people who know the country and local culture very well. So not only for cultural diversity but from a business point of view, we need people from overseas inside the company if we are to advance internationally. So there is a definite need to involve foreign workers in Japan when we develop new business targeting overseas markets.
For example, we have Chinese workers in the department targeting the Chinese market. It is said that the market is especially difficult to get to know and gain access to.
Iwata: NEC has many overseas operations bases such as NEC Indonesia and NEC Thailand. How do you employ people there? Is there any specific approach international students in Japan, who are intending to work for those bases when they return to their home countries, can make?
Azuma: Local recruitment is left to each operations base and we don't have any detailed information. But in general, it is on an as needed basis and they don't usually employ a lot of new graduates at one time like we do in Japan. In the case of filling a specific vacancy, it could be done through a personal introduction, not an open offer.
Iwata: With the increase of international students in Japan and further internationalization of the nation, I hope more Japanese companies will consider offering internships to students from overseas. Does NEC have any plans to do so?
Azuma: We have a social contribution office program.
The social contribution section accepts interns from the Latin America Technology Exchange Center (LATEC). Since 2006, three to four students from Peru and Brazil have been experiencing factory work for two months at our group company, NEC Wireless Networks Ltd.
Our group company factories have many internship activities, accepting local students from universities, high schools or junior high schools. As we had developed the internship system through those activities, we accepted the request from LATEC.
It seems to be a very good experience for them. For example, Japanese factories have things like "5S's" for quality control, which they don't have in their countries. They can learn such things through actual work.
(5S stands for the Japanese words "seiri, seiton, seiketsu, seisou and shitsuke (sorting, set in order, cleanliness, standardizing and sustaining discipline)," and is a slogan that is often used at factories to raise worker awareness so that the quality of output can be maintained.)
Iwata: In the LATEC program, do you take care of things like student accommodation, everyday support, etc.?
Azuma: Actually, it is part of a JICA program and student support, regarding accommodation, food, expenses, etc., is provided by JICA. We only provide work experience/training.
Iwata: As director of an NPO that supports Asian students in Japan, I am always looking for opportunities that allow students to see what companies in Japan are like and how things are actually done in the workplace. Do you have any plans to expand this activity and accept more international students as interns if an NPO or an organization other than LATEC asks you?
Azuma: Well, for example, recently one of our group companies hosted a party of junior high school students at its factory. It was in response to a request from a school in Aichi that wanted its students to visit factories and have some hands-on work experience as part of its school trip program.
In this way, I think we can help international student programs too if we get a request from an organization. Providing long-term internships or very specialized work experience would be difficult, but if it's a factory visit, short-term work experience or maybe a little longer internship, we can accept international students as part of our social contribution activities. We simply haven't been asked.
Maybe as we accumulate more experience with the LATEC program, we will receive more requests in the future.
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