Japan’s science students are eschewing traditional high-powered employers such as Sony and Panasonic to help make ice cream and yogurt.
They are applying to dairies. That says quite a bit about the current state of Japan -- and, some say, its future.
Sony, the Walkman inventor that once topped the rankings among the most-coveted jobs for graduating science majors, may drop further in popularity after it fell to fourth place from second in a survey this year of science students who’ll enter the job market in April, said Takuya Kurita, a researcher at Tokyo-based Mynavi. Sony, trying to end four years of losses, is hiring the fewest recruits in 23 years.
“I’ve read about their huge losses in the newspaper,” Asuka Okamoto, a physics graduate student at Waseda University in Tokyo, said of the electronics makers. “I’d rather work somewhere else if workers seem worried at those companies.”
As Japan’s biggest companies kick off their annual campus recruitment drives this month, science students are increasingly favouring companies like Meiji Holdings, a Tokyo-based dairy maker. For the once-dominant electronics makers, a loss of market share to Samsung Electronics and Apple also means they’re losing future engineers and scientists needed to come up with hit products that can revive their brands.
“The gap between Japanese companies and Samsung, LG, and Chinese or Taiwanese competitors may only widen if the Japanese can’t hire excellent young talent,” said Yoshihisa Toyosaki, an analyst at Architect Grand Design, an electronics research and consulting company in Tokyo. “New products can only be born from new brains.”