Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity--Three Rules for Success in Job hunting During the Coronavirus Crisis

According to a survey conducted in October by the Recruit Career's Shushoku Mirai Kenkyusho (Employment Future Institute), in time for the official October start date for job offers (sample size: 3,322 university students; valid responses: 991), the job offer rate for graduates as of October 1 this year was 88.7%, a decrease of 5.1 percentage points from 93.8% last year.

On the other hand, according to Tokyo Shoko Research, the number of bankruptcies between January and August 2020 was 5,457, down 13 from 5,470 in the same period last year. However, the number of companies that closed or dissolved during the same period was 35,816, up 6,908 (23.9% year-on-year) from 28,908 in the same period last year. This can be interpreted as a result of companies and business owners who, due to the uncertain future, lost the will to continue their businesses in light of the rapid downturn caused by the coronavirus crisis, leading them to close their businesses without waiting to declare bankruptcy. Looking at the scale of impact by industry, the service industry accounted for the overwhelming majority with 11,144 cases (31.1% of the total), followed by the construction industry with 6,327 cases (17.7% of the total), the retail industry with 4,511 cases (12.6% of the total), and so on. Since the declaration of the state of emergency, economic activity has stagnated, domestic and inbound demand has all but disappeared, and except for a few companies that have increased their sales due to demand resulting from people staying at home, the economic situation has been difficult overall.

The figures listed above show that job hunting activities of students graduating in 2021 have not been hit as hard compared to the economic devastation companies have been experiencing. Compared to the job offer rate for students graduating in 2020, the difference was −13.4 points as of June 1, the start of the hiring season, but has narrowed to −5.1 points as of October 1. This is due to the resumption of recruitment activities, which were temporarily suspended after the declaration of the state of emergency, and delays in civil service examinations, which prolonged the job hunting activities of students and pushed back the timing of job offers as a result. However, it has so far not been as devastating as the so-called employment "ice age" after the collapse of the bubble economy, and the job offer rate is expected to continue to increase gradually.

Despite the dire state of the global economy and the deteriorating strength of Japanese companies caused by the coronavirus crisis, the reason why this damage to job hunting has been minimal is because of the unique policy among major companies which generally hire a large number of students, to not completely halt recruitment. The reduction or suspension of recruitment activities during the employment ice age in the late 1990s and later led to vacancies for middle management positions, which were filled by those in their 40s at the time, creating a bottleneck in filling positions. Looking back at these failures, many companies decided to always continue hiring, even if on a smaller scale. This was sort of a happy accident, but we should not overlook the fact that this year, ahead of the abolishment of the Japan Business Federation's job hunting rules, which were initially planned to be abolished for 2022 graduates (and were to be continued under the government's initiative), recruitment activities, which had been accelerated under the plan of year-round recruitment, had already begun before the declaration of the state of emergency and the lifting of the ban on advertising recruitment in March, leading to many students receiving job offers. This raises the concern that the real negative impact of the coronavirus crisis (a drastic reduction in hires) will come next year, not this year.

In this regard, since most of the classes in the first semester were conducted online, the students actually got accustomed to using online tools earlier than these companies. However, during these times of crisis, the stark difference between students who were able to proficiently utilize these tools and those who could not was clearly exposed. Our university distributed Webex accounts to students in late June to encourage them to enjoy online student life in various situations, such as club and seminar activities, but only about 30% of students activated their accounts immediately after distribution. Looking at the students who received job offers at a relatively early stage, it seems that they were the ones who were quick to exchange information with their friends, used various kinds of job hunting apps, websites, and other materials to obtain information about companies, and prepared their devices and network environments for online interviews.