(Yomiuri: November 8, 2015 – p. 1)
Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) has decided on a policy of urging major companies, which hire in autumn undergraduate and postgraduate students, who have returned home after studying abroad, by setting separate quotas for them, to indicate so in their guidelines for applicants next year. This is because university students, who do not know about the separate quotas, would hesitate to study abroad or shorten the period of their study abroad with concerns over their job hunting. The timeline for lifting the ban on college students’ job hunting will be moved up from August to June next year.
Keidanren Chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara will announce this policy at a press conference on Nov. 9.
At the requests by the government and universities, Keidanren delayed this year the timeline for lifting the ban on students’ job hunting from April to August. However, it has decided to frontload it to June next year because the moving up of the timeline due to such confusions as the prolongation of recruiting process. However, many of students who studied abroad return to Japan in July. As such, there is concern in the government and universities that “they will fall behind in their job hunting if the ban is lifted in June.” Keidanren will give consideration to such concern by urging major companies to stipulate their “quotas for hiring those who have returned home after studying abroad.”
Many trading houses and banks conduct their screening process during the period of September to October by setting their separate quotas for hiring those who studied abroad. Corporations want to hire those who have linguistic ability and broad international experience.
However, the separate employment of those who studied abroad is implemented on the pretext of “autumn hiring” or “additional recruitment.” For this reason, many college students planning to study abroad gave up studying abroad or shortened the period of their study abroad and returned home because they were not aware of the quotas for those who studied abroad or they were concerned about a possible delay in their job hunting
