Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Chairman Naoaki Yamanaka (Professor at Keio University's Faculty of Science and Technology) issued a statement on the current job market, saying that companies' actual hiring activities start early and are becoming protracted, and called for a change, such as a review of the current style of job hunting and a restructuring of employment agreements.
The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) is one of Japan's largest academic societies covering electronics, information and communications, founded over 1917 years ago in 100. By combining elements that transcend multiple technical fields and working to establish new technical fields from there, the institute pioneers new fields and develops human resources that will bring about a paradigm shift.
According to the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, while the statement noted that the employment situation of students in the electronics, information and communication fields is extremely good, it also pointed out that since the abolition of the employment agreement, companies' recruitment activities have become overheated, and internships that were supposed to provide long-term work experience have been replaced with one or two-day company experience and information sessions, with actual recruitment activities starting quite early.
As a result, they expressed concern that the prolonged recruitment process was exhausting students, and that if the situation continued as it was, it could interfere with actual research activities and make it difficult to supply talented people.
In other countries, recruitment is generally based on research results at universities and graduate schools. However, while there are students in Japan who present research at an extremely high level, this does not translate into employment opportunities, and companies have raised the issue of little interest in students' research achievements.
In response to this, the ministry called on companies to make efforts to proactively find talent by having regular contact with university laboratories and academic societies. It also called on economic organizations to restructure employment agreements so as not to make recruitment and job-hunting excessive, and to put a certain limit on early recruitment activities.
