The Importance Of Internship In Japan

Japan and foreign western countries diverge when it comes to employment. Various factors and multiple angles can be brought up to explain this. For this research project, I have decided to incorporate “internships” as the main factor of inquiry on this topic of employment. In Japan, an internship have been introduced into companies as an opportunity for students to acknowledge a company’s style and characteristics before applying. Thus this “trend” has been increasing over recent years. However, university students are expecting a slightly different internship, to the ones provided. This mismatch in demand and supply is a problem to be reconsidered. Sophomores and juniors are investing more of their time into these “internships” for differing

Yet recent statistics show that this ideal situation is not the reality.

The reality of internships in Japan, despite the government’s strong recommendations, seems to make slow progress with the act of publicizing it. As reported in a survey conducted by the DISCO Inc.(a career searching company), it shows that in 2014, out of the 1,097 companies only 40% of these actually conducted internships. Furthermore, 11.4% of the companies claimed to start an internship from this year; this indicates that the system was not even interpreted within the company till 2014.

Furthermore, the content of the actual internships are contradicting with some of the interests of students; at times, even with the company itself. Internships can be categorized in 4 styles in Japan at the moment: the tour/seminar; the short term project; the long-term; and the pre-employment(internships directly connected to future employment). In an interview article, the management department of a company thinks that actual training affects: skills that can actually be used in the work field, can only be gain after a month or longer period of training. Nevertheless, companies conducting such internships are rarely seen. The tour/seminar type, commonly proceeded in a 1~2day period dominates 38%; the short term project type, often in the range of 5days~2weeks are 63.3%; and finally,

The questionnaire is built on 5 basic questions, some varying from the choice made in the process of answering it. To assure that there is variation in perspective and values, the respondents are spread across the different faculties of Keio University, as shown in the following chart: the results from Question 1 “What faculty are you in?”.

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In Question 2 “which grade are you in (in university)?”, as already described in the introduction, results verify that all the respondents of the questionnaire are freshman. Following these respondent profile questions, is Question 3: it requests the respondents of their opinion on whether they would want to experience the internship, in the first place. Reflecting the recent trends, 85.3% of freshmen in Keio, currently wishes to have an experience in some kind of internship if they had the chance to do so.

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Question 4 “When would you start, or wished you have started?”, takes a further insight into the former question results. Most of the answers, shown in the graph below, are concentrated around the sophomore or junior