New graduates show lack of zeal for jobs and job-hunting

Pity the poor boss in these insubordinate times. “If you let that sort of thing bother you,” sighs one mid-level company manager, “it’ll undermine your health.”

What she’s talking about is the cavalier attitude new college graduates are bringing to their first jobs. Of course, young people baffling their elders is nothing new. But two forces are clashing here—leisure and zeal—and zeal isn’t winning.

You’d think the precarious state of the economy would energize anyone lucky enough to land a job into struggling to keep it. On the other hand, as Shukan Gendai (June 20) points out, last year’s crop of college-educated corporate recruits is the first to have been schooled exclusively under the system of “yutori kyoiku” (relaxed education) introduced in 1992.

They are, the magazine finds, “relaxed” to a fault, their blasé unconcern apparently resistant to any self-defense mechanism which might suggest the need to be productive or else.

It starts with the job interview. “I don’t even get surprised any more when a candidate cancels an interview at the last minute,” says one personnel manager. Says another, “We’re a restaurant chain, so at interviews I’ll ask the candidate, ‘Which of our restaurants do you like?’ To which the reply might be something like, ‘I haven’t been to any of them, I saw on the Net that you were recruiting, so I thought I’d drop by…”

“Why do you want to work for us?” a personnel manager at a clothing retailer asked a candidate—who replied, “I love theater, and your office is near the theater district.” Unfortunately, the manager doesn’t tell us whether he admired the honesty or deplored the failure to invent a more ingratiating reason.

“Yutori kyoiku” was the Education Ministry’s response to a growing perception that crushingly heavy school course loads were deforming children’s personalities. Problems ranged from bullying to social withdrawal to an inability to think beyond the regurgitation of memorized facts. The lightening of the curriculum began in 1992 with the elimination in public schools of Saturday morning classes.

Have things now gone too far in the other direction?

“‘Yutori kyoiku’ emphasized individuality,” Shukan Gendai hears from Tadashi Ikegaya, author of a book on how to deal with “yutori employees.”

“Children of the ‘yutori’ generation are motivated not by pride but by what interests them. They insist on doing what they want to do as opposed to what they’re told to do. Furthermore, having grown up for the most part in prosperous households, they’re not motivated by money. They seek self-fulfillment. So if it’s not work they really want to do, they won’t put much effort into it.”

That can be thoroughly exasperating to company superiors steeped in the virtue of self-sacrifice.

“We were short-handed, so we asked staff from another department to do some overtime for us,” says a 40-year-old IT company executive. “One of them was a freshman employee, and the first thing he does is show me his appointment book: ‘Look, I’m booked up for two months, I can’t work overtime on such short notice.’ But what was he ‘booked up’ with? Not company business but parties, drinking sessions, ‘idol’ concerts!”

That’s relaxed education for you. It teaches you there’s life outside the workplace. No wonder the idea is currently being reconsidered.

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Latest 15 of 56 Total Comments Show All

Beerplease at 10:44 AM JST - 14th June

What a load of caca. Some guys says there is a connection between yutori kyoiku and an anecdotal perceived lack of interest in job applicants, and it's accepted as legit? Pleeeeaaaaase. Figures this comes from trashy tabloids.
GW at 11:24 AM JST - 14th June

eugirl

if she was asked to just very roughly translate a few lines in an email or something fine. But if she was asked to properly translate documents & she was unqualified to do so then she was very smart for declining & her boss totally stupid for asking. I am what I call a lazy bilingual, I always joke I am illiterate in 2 languages. I am neither a translator or an interpreter, 2 different things in case you didnt know, yet I do my job in english & japanese every day. That does not in any sense qualify me for translation or interpretation.

Do I help with those things, yeah all the time for bits here & there but I wud very quickly decline serious & important translation or interpretation because thats not my thing.

Again smart girl, stupid boss!
OneForAll at 12:01 PM JST - 14th June

When there are needs everyone able should work or not eat. All these retired healthy people could put in a few hours a week if there was an opportunity. Not slave labor but the idea everyone is needed. Certainly the youth are not garbage and every effort should be made to ensure they are wanted and there is a place for them. I think johnnyboy hits it on the head with work being a means to an end which is enlightenment for many through following ones interests. Europeans have a nice lifestyle which is the envy of the world. Japan would do well to put into law many things to protect workers from overzealous stockholders. It would be wonderful if a leader emerges that will take Japan from The old meaning of WA (bent down" 亻 "people" like slaves) to the present one..."Around 757 CE, Japan officially changed its endonym from Wa 倭 to Wa 和 "harmony; peace; sum; total". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(Japan)
cleo at 12:58 PM JST - 14th June

GW has it right.

eugirl said -

If somebody applies to a company as a bilingual (Japanese and English), clearly they should expect their bilingual skills to be used for the benefit of the company at some point.

That doesn't necessarily mean they have to have translating skills. Many years ago when I worked for a gaishikei electronics firm in Tokyo as a bilingual secretary, all the female office staff were bilingual, and they were quite happy answering the phone in English and Japanese, taking dictation in English and Japanese, typing letters and invoices in English and Japanese etc; but I was the only one expected to do any formal translating of documents. And I got paid a lot more than the women whose job descriptions were limited to bashing the (bilingual) typewriters.

Helping out as best you can is one thing; being asked to do a job for which you are not qualified and are not being paid is quite another. Especially if the clueless boss who asked you to do the job in the first place expects you to take the blame if/when you botch it.

Nurses in hospitals have a degree of medical knowledge which they're naturally expected to use in their jobs, but that doesn't mean they're qualified to perform surgery.
blue_monday at 05:36 PM JST - 14th June

So Japan is turning into a nation of jobsworths, scroungers, and feeloaders. Companies don't expect you to work long hours anymore, the Labour Ministry has been pushing for work life balance for years now, it's the workers that would rather sit in the office than go home and look after the kids that cling on to the corporate warrior ethos.

In my experience in the Japanese corporate world (15 years) the first thing any Japanese person does when faced with real work is try to find someone else to do it.
boboh at 07:46 PM JST - 14th June

The employers only have themselves to blame. Decades of exploiting their workers with enforced, unpaid overtime "for the good of the company", and sacrificing family life to conform to some bogus work ethic ideology, is to blame for this situation. Well done to those who resist the trap their fathers fell into. Why would you want to work for some of those companies anyway?
EUgirl at 11:15 PM JST - 14th June

Beerplease: I agree. The reason is not the yutori education at elementary, mmiddle or high schools, but the university education. A lot of students just sleep their way through the uni.
Beerplease at 07:01 AM JST - 15th June

A lot of students just sleep their way through the uni.

Very true. I seriously doubt the interviewees are much different than before. The only verifiable change that we have today is that companies are hiring fewer graduates.
flammenwerfer at 06:31 AM JST - 16th June

Limp efforts to find a job is inexcusable...but lack of zeal for jobs? if you work hard and productively during normal working hours why shouldnt you be allowed to leave at a normal time and enjoy your life? unless it's really urgent of course. The Japanese need to work smarter - not longer.
Sebaschan at 04:41 PM JST - 16th June

seems finally some japanese realize that work is not everything in live and that live is to short to waste it by working 20h a day... AND that you can finish your work during the normal working hours if you don't have to work 20h every day.

I know it was the Japanese mentallity to work as hard as possible to keep the job you have. But since it "was" it's time that "the old ones" realize that a 20h working day isn't more effective than a regular day and that their thinking might be wrong.

I hope the junger ones will keep up their own way of thinking with a good amount of company needs awareness. I respect those who have to work overtime in order to provide something to their families, but this assumes that they get paid for their overtime.
jonnyboy at 09:58 PM JST - 16th June

I know it was the Japanese mentallity to work as long as possible

corrected.

anyway, a slave is a worker, minus the social life
michelelisa at 03:03 PM JST - 17th June

And this is a result of a change in school curriculum that was to address "Problems ranged from bullying to social withdrawal to an inability to think beyond the regurgitation of memorized facts".

Hmmm, seems the change only affected people's work attitudes....
jonnyboy at 04:29 PM JST - 17th June

And this is a result of a change in school curriculum that was to address "Problems ranged from bullying to social withdrawal to an inability to think beyond the regurgitation of memorized facts". Hmmm, seems the change only affected people's work attitudes....

you can't isolate individual elements and expect to be able to dictate the way things will change. humans are complex animals. teach a person to be more creative and don't be surprised if it makes them less obedient and more questioning as well. this is par for the course and seems to be just what it happening. i applaud it. japan is a society which tries to make a virtue of having a rigid system which steadfastly refuses to adapt to changes in its external environment. supposedly the only place in the natural world where "adapt to survive" is not thought to apply. perhaps for once the established hierarchy will have to adapt to changes coming from below. hurrah!
ratpack at 09:40 AM JST - 25th June

Gotta love the headline: "New graduates show lack of zeal for jobs and job-hunting".......how about changing it to read: "New graduates showed lack of zeal for their entire educational life prior to job hunting"
notimpressed at 09:38 AM JST - 30th June

Or..."New graduates show lack of zeal for a system that sucks"