In order to boost Japan’s global competitiveness and revitalize the economy, the Japanese government has promulgated a package of policies to attract highly skilled international students. International students are usually called as “highly skilled international talent,” or “globally minded human resources” in many official documents, despite a lack of evidence to show whether this definition is accurate or not. So-called “highly skilled international talent” is defined as “high quality talented [people] who are complementary to the domestic labor force.” They are expected to “bring about innovation to domestic industry, [and] improve efficiency of the labor market by exchanging views and experience with Japanese.”
However, contrary to the government’s vision, most of Japanese employers are very negative towards foreign students’ recruitment. Many surveys show that only those who have a high level of Japanese language proficiency and fit well with Japan’s corporate culture can successfully land a job. Meanwhile, many foreign employees who choose to work in Japanese companies mainly do so for the purpose of acquiring life stability. Therefore, not only Japanese companies set low expectations about the innovation of foreign employees, but also the foreign employees are far from being the innovative labor force that the Japanese government had expected.
Based on a survey on the recruitment of new graduates conducted in October, 2014, this study found out that new industries, large enterprises, companies which attach great attention to globalization, and companies with overseas offices tend to recruit international students. These fields that tend to recruit international students emphasize specialization as well as innovation.
The Japanese government identified “skilled professionals,” including the “logical human capital” and “innovative human capital” as the ideal type of human capital that had expected to attract to stay at Japanese companies. The author found that while not necessarily international students, the ideal type of human capital is as follows: male, undergraduate student, or graduate students with master’s degree. Thus, it is important to re-evaluate the stereotyped images about international students and ideal human capital, and try to employ females, graduate students in humanities and post doctors etc., through a fairer evaluative process.