We interviewed Mr. Takuya Nakade, Director and Executive Officer, CTO, and Ms. Rei Inoue, Human Resources.
When did you start working on hiring foreign personnel?
Mr. Nakade: It started in 2017. The director of a company based in Vietnam and the head of our Fukuoka office were acquainted with each other, and the director introduced us to an opportunity to hire a student studying Japanese and IT at the Hanoi University of Technology in Vietnam. At the time, we were already hiring new graduates in Japan, so I went to Vietnam to see if there were any good candidates and found that there were many excellent ones. So, rather than starting the recruitment of foreign personnel with everything ready to go, we just happened to have a chance to meet someone and started recruiting. We continue to recruit at the Hanoi University of Technology, and we have hired people in South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Ho Chi Minh City so far, using a human resources agent with a local presence. In the future, we would like to expand our services to Asia, so we expect that having people from Asian countries will be a positive effects on us.
Also, in the case of Asia, the difference in cost of living gives us an advantage, so one of our advantages in recruiting is that they can earn higher salaries in Japan than those who work in their own countries. For many people in Vietnam and other Asian countries, working in Japan seems to be very attractive. At least when we hired students from the Hanoi University of Technology for the first time, all of the people we made offers to have accepted. I have only been working with foreign personnel for about a year, but they are generally excellent. We also hire engineers in Japan, but even if we make offers to students from top universities in Japan, they sometimes reject our offers, so I thought it would be advantageous to have an overseas option if we were to hire the same top university students. Also, I think it would be tough to recruit only from Japanese if you wanted to hire excellent people who would receive offers from global companies such as GAFA.
Do you only hire IT engineers?
Mr. Nakade: Yes, we do. Currently, we have about 10 non-Japanese employees out of about 600 employees, and all of the people we hire from overseas are engineers. I have interviewed people from the business side as well, but I had the impression that it would be tough if their Japanese language skills were not at least N1 on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). On the other hand, for engineers, information is gathered in English, and Japanese is not a factor in programming code, so the language handicap is small. In addition, engineers can be broadly divided into positions where communication is important and positions where technical aspects are more important. For example, work that is carried out while communicating with members who have business knowledge of accounting requires Japanese language skills and knowledge of the Japanese situation. But there is not much difference in language for positions that are close to infrastructure. As the number of users increases and the amount of data handled grows, it is also important to maintain response speed. Thus I believe that such areas can be easily handled by non-Japanese personnel. However, since we expect them to work in Japanese, we basically require them to have at least N3 level of Japanese language proficiency.
Do you have a different hiring process for Japanese and non-Japanese employees?
Mr. Nakade：We assign the interviewer to be the senior manager of the department to which the candidate is likely to be assigned after joining the company. Compared to Japanese, foreign personnel have difficulty communicating in Japanese, so it is important that whether the superior of the host department are willing to “nurture” the foreign personnel or not. By actually having them participate in the interview process, we feel that they are prepared to grow their juniors. I think it also has the effect of accumulating knowledge about recruitment and acceptance on mentor side.
How do you decide where to assign them?
Mr. Nakade：We first place them in teams led by people with outstanding acceptability. When they become accustomed to working there, grow and improve their Japanese language skills, they are transferred to another team. The superiors in those departments are the type of people who do not get upset over a few things and make you feel that they would be able to survive even if they were thrown out to a foreign country. I think it is important to have experience working with foreigners or to be fluent in English, but I think that the quality of being able to accept different cultures is more important. Some people are stressed if the environment is not clean to some extent, while others are fine with chaos. I believe that there are people who are not suited for this job. Now that we have about 30 foreign employees, including those who have received unofficial job offers, I expect that it will be easier to follow up with each other by putting foreign workers on the same team with senior foreign employees in the future.
Are there any other differences between hiring Japanese and foreign personnel?
Mr. Nakade: We do ask about the reason for applying for a position. But I don’t think it makes much sense to pursue that aspect in the case of non-Japanese employees. This is because our services cannot be used overseas at this time, and there are cases where similar services are not available in the home country. It is inevitable that foreign job applicants may not be able to imagine what our service would be like, and our philosophy and products at the time of the interview. We make hiring decisions based on the assumption that they have the desire to work in Japan and have the skills we are looking for.
Ms. Inoue：Other than that, we also look at personality. Of course, technical and Japanese language skills are important. But it is equally important that the applicant is the type of person who can fit in with the organization. In addition to the technical environment, I think that foreign personnel themselves judge whether a company is good or bad based on their impression of us during the interview. Interviews are an opportunity for mutual understanding, regardless of whether you are a new graduate or a mid-career worker, in Japan or overseas. We do not just listen to one side of the conversation; we ask each other questions, and if we feel any gaps in the process, it is better to choose a different path. Because of this stance, our interviews are rough, and the interviewers are dressed casually, so I think we create a relaxed atmosphere. I believed this have contributed positively to our mutual judgment of each other’s personalities and corporate culture. Even after making an offer, we make a conscious effort to invite them to our office and provide opportunities to have lunch with senior employees.
Do you provide support for Japanese language education?
Ms. Inoue: During the period before the new employee joins the company, our personnel regularly hold Japanese conversation sessions via video chat. We give them a theme and ask them to explain it orally for about 15 minutes. However, I think these efforts will become less effective as the number of employees increases, so I think they need to be improved in the future.
Mr. Nakade: For about six months after they joined the company, we also set aside 15 minutes every day to have a one-on-one conversation with a Japanese employee. Engineers often communicate through chat rooms, and even among Japanese, there is not much conversation. So, although there is a small handicap, conversation skills of foreign workers will not improve just by working in a normal way. Thus, we started this policy. As a side effect, it also had a positive impact on internal communication. We received many applications from Japanese employees for conversation partners with foreign workers, and a variety of people are practicing with them on a daily basis. As a result, foreign employees have more acquaintances within the company, and Japanese employees have come to care about foreign employees. Even non-engineers take them out to dinner on weekends, and our foreign employees are very much loved by every employees. Compared to Japanese employees, they are not so arrogant, but rather pure and adorable.
Please tell us about the changes that have occurred in your company as a result of hiring non-Japanese employees.
Mr. Nakade: I think many people are motivated by seeing foreign employees taking on the challenge of working in Japan. Some Japanese employees may have started to consider working overseas as an option, and I think it sends a message that one day our company will go global. Hiring non-Japanese employees is one of the company’s attractions.
Foreign employees also introduce their friends who are working in their home countries to us, and they seem to like working with us. It seems that their expectations before joining the company are not so high, and after joining the company, they are impressed by how well they are taken care of. Many foreign employees from Asia come for an interview with the intention of accepting an offer from a Japanese company to some extent. So in this sense, our company’s appeal during the selection process may not be sufficient.
We intend to continue recruiting workers from many countries in the future. Once we start looking for job candidates worldwide, the number increases tremendously. Moreover, if we can remove the Japanese language requirement, we will have a wider range of options, and I would like to promote the use of English within the company in the future. We are still considering future plan, but we would like to take on this challenge. If we proceed with this, we will need to make all internal regulations and documents bilingual, which will place a heavy burden on our back office. However, we would love to have a system to hire talented people from around the world.