Will there be a return on sending Japanese interns abroad?
Sending Japanese students abroad as interns has become very popular in the past year or so, according to Nikkei Business. The Uniqlo brand owner Fast Retailing sends around 73 students a year to Singapore, London and Melbourne. Sompo Japan Nipponkoa despatched 10 interns to Singapore earlier this year and Softbank has sent 5 interns to work for its Sprint subsidiary in Kansas.
It is seen as one solution to the shortage of graduates who have overseas experience or the interest in working abroad. Most “global minded” graduates head for prestigious and well paid trading company jobs. Returns on the hefty investment in such internships are not guaranteed however. Whether enough interns actually then join the companies who sponsored them, or whether a short internship is any substitute for prolonged periods of study abroad is not yet clear. My view is that Japanese companies should invest similarly in internships for non-Japanese recruits or at least offer short secondments to Japan as part of their graduate induction programmes, if they are really serious about making their Japan HQs more globally minded.
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Shushoku Katsudo, the graduate hiring process in Japan, reaches a peak towards the end of the year, as the naitei (informal offers) from the big firms have mostly been issued, and the smaller firms and the unlucky graduates desperately try to find solace in each others’ arms. The process is meant to start in April, when students put on identical suits and attend countless company presentations and interviews, thereby pretty much wiping the final year out in terms of getting any studying done. Japan’s universities mostly function on the American credit system, so there is not the pressure of ‘finals’ as you get in British universities, however Japan’s academics regularly complain about the damage done to the educational experience by the system. There have been attempts to move the start date to August, so that students can do some studying in the first term, but unfortunately, with a shortage of skilled labour, it’s too tempting for most firms not to try to buck the system.