◆“Manpower shortages” are growing more severe
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the Job-Offers-to-Applicants Ratio for April was 1.48 times (announced 5/30). It exceeded the peak of the bubble era of July 1990 (1.46 times), marking the highest level in 43 years and 2 months since February 1974 (1.53 times).
While companies are seeking more manpower, there are fewer job-seekers, so that corporate “manpower shortage” is becoming an increasingly severe problem.

◆Job-seeking students are looking at “people”!
In order to attract quality manpower even in conditions like these, what sort of approach should corporations take? It may be a useful reference point to know what factors job-seekers focused on in selecting the companies they actually joined.
According to the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s “Small and Medium Enterprises’ New Employees Survey” (released 6/6), in response to the survey question, “What was the reason for choosing the company you joined,” the top responses included, “the job content seems interesting” (44.2%), “the atmosphere at work was good” (39.3%), “I can utilize my abilities/individuality” (37%).
What we would like to focus on is that nearly 40% chose “the atmosphere at work was good” as the reason for selecting their company.
While it might be difficult to change the content of the jobs, it is possible to change the atmosphere at work into something that is brighter and easier to work at. In the same survey, a characteristic of the 2017 hires in their job-seeking activities included the tendency to place importance on lack of power harassment as a condition for their place of employment.

◆The response by employees coming in contact with job-seekers is important.
Taking into account the above, one approach for eliminating manpower shortage should be to reconsider the employees that come in contact with job-seekers (in addition to the interviewers, even employees at the reception desk, etc. are included).
In fact, in the previous survey by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 29.6% gave “favorable impression of recruiting personnel/employees” as a reason for choosing their company. The first thing to bear in mind is to address job-seekers with a smile and provide them with kind support.