Sanpo-yoshi Communication

President's Column] Hiring High School Students

Following up on last month’s post, I’d like to talk about hiring again.

To date, we have consistently hired high school graduates for our production floor. Two of our four factory managers are former new graduates. The majority of these graduates come from a prefectural industrial high school in southern Fukuoka Prefecture, as well as a prefectural vocational high school located right next to our company that specializes in agriculture, culinary arts, and nursing care. For over 10 years, we have hired one or two graduates from these schools almost every year. However, we have received a report indicating that next spring, we will likely end up hiring zero graduates from either of these schools. Many of our current employees are graduates of the industrial high school, and our alumni have achieved excellent results in competitions such as the Skills Olympics and labeling contests, even earning opportunities to give lectures at their alma maters. I even serve as a school board member at a nearby high school. So why zero hires? When I asked the hiring manager, I was told they had done everything they were supposed to do.

One reason for this is the large number of job openings. At a local high school, there were reportedly about 1,200 job openings from companies this year for approximately 40 students seeking employment. That’s a competition ratio of 30 to 1. It appears that every student received a job offer from their preferred company. It’s reasonable to assume that industrial high schools, which are even more popular with companies, have an even greater number of job openings.

In a rush, they reached out to other high schools in the area as well, and it seems they managed to secure the necessary number of students, but I think it’s actually become harder to recruit high school students than college students.

Due to the declining birthrate, it is not uncommon for both universities and vocational schools to fall short of their enrollment quotas. Admission routes that are virtually exam-free—such as recommendation-based admission—are also on the rise, and the absolute number of students seeking employment is declining in the first place. This has created a situation where institutions are competing for these scarce high school students.

Another reason is the transfer of teachers at public high schools. Since they are civil servants, they are required to transfer to a different public high school after a certain period of time. One of the factors behind this situation is that a teacher who had been recommending our company to students was transferred to another high school, causing our relationship to end.

While improving working conditions was a given, I was wondering if there were any other options when I was introduced to a consultant specializing in high school graduate recruitment. This consultant creates various tools designed from the high school students’ perspective and provides advice on improving working conditions. After assessing that our company already met a certain standard in these areas, the consultant recommended two remaining strategies: approaching private high schools with low teacher turnover rates and targeting high schools in remote areas (particularly on remote islands or in depopulated regions). There appear to be many successful cases of recruitment from high schools in remote areas. Of course, since this would require 18-year-olds to live on their own, support for food and housing would be necessary. Next year, our company is also considering reaching out to high schools in remote areas.

Large corporations are likely thinking along the same lines. I believe we need to pay close attention to issues such as the competition with major companies in the central region for high school students in Kyushu and the ongoing efforts to improve working conditions.

Finally, I’d like to report that regarding the recruitment of Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N1 and N2 certified instructors to train our technical interns—as I mentioned last month—we’ve had the good fortune to extend a job offer to one candidate. We will now begin the process of applying for a work visa and other necessary procedures.