How can we hire IT engineers!? I think that there are a lot of recruiters who have such troubles. So I will think about the shortage of IT engineers in this article.

Why is it so difficult to hire IT engineers?

According to the “Survey Results on the Current Trends and Future Estimates of IT Human Resources” announced by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in June 2016, it is said that about 170,000 IT engineers are lacking as of 2015.

This is simply because the market of the IT industry continues to expand, but I think that there is also a negative perception on the IT industry for a while and population balance.There was Japanese word which is 3K that appeared to describe the negative perception about IT industry, which means “Kitsui(Too hard), Kaerenai(Can not back home), Kyuryogayasui(Low salary). It is certain that there was a negative perception as it was.

When discussing about causes that the situation occurred, “a multiple subcontract structure” is risen up as significant topic. There is a useless margin and labor cost due to a lot of intermediaries intervening and the appropriate salary is not paid to IT engineers who actually provide actual works after all.

How is it recently?

Many companies that related IT business such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.. are named as most valuable brands in the world, and many current startups are also expanding their services using IT. As a result, positive perception of IT companies is supposed to have become established overall.

Also, as smartphones are seeming to be anywhere, many people are using IT service on a daily basis, and IT literacy of people has also certainly risen up. Recently, IT engineers are one of jobs on a top position in the kids dream job.When I was a child, I chatted with a friend on a big cube computer and impressed saying “Wow!“, So the current environment is quite different from my generation. When I played Bomberman’s match online, I felt it was a kind of miracle.

The number of people who think “IT company is cool!“, “seems interesting!” is increasing these days and also, in the 2020 year, programming learning at the elementary school will be starting as a government policy.

However, it is still predicted that in the year 2030, there will be a shortage of IT engineers with 420,000 to 790,000. IoT, Big Data, Cryptocurrency, Sharing Economy, Fintech, AI etc ... I often see that kind of various IT-related keywords in the media recently. It can be said that is because many new technologies in enormous industries are related to IT.

What is the recruitment situation like in IT industry?

Companies with name value, providing cool services, researching latest technology, providing sufficient welfare benefits etc.. are able to hire skillful IT engineers. 

However, it is only few companies and most of companies hire inexperienced people and train them to be practical IT engineers.You can actually see many companies recruiting inexperienced people on recruitment media. Many of their business model are SES(System engineering service), which dispatches engineers to the client office. As a result of lacking of budget to train them, there are many situations such as throwing personnel who have not trained reliably. 

Of course, there are some engineers who are steadily improving their skills and growing up, but many people lose motivation without being able to catch up at all, feel uneasy about improving skills with works that are monotonous and repetitive, and it is said that turnover rate is also high. 

About overseas IT human resources

Recently, the number of company which recruit overseas IT engineers is increasing. In competitive situation they strive to hire talented foreign IT engineers in various ways, such as Linkedin, interview sessions which held in foreign country, partnership with overseas universities, recruiting international students. But most of companies prioritise Japanese speaking skill in condition of recruitment. An excellent IT engineer who can speak Japanese obtains many offers from multiple companies, and it’s already been Red Ocean surprisingly.

I am currently working with IT engineers in Vietnam. From my point of view, Japanese companies should encourage the way to hire IT engineers from overseas. Moreover, first of all it is essential for Japanese companies to build a management system using English and to exclude Japanese skills from mandatory condition for recruitment in order to increase the number of foreign engineers in the future.

There are some reasons why I think that Japanese companies should recruit foreign engineers.

1. ① Number of parent population is increasing to recruit more engineers.
2. ② Higher possibility of hiring skilled engineers without spending too much costs.
3. ③ An opportunity for expanding a business or connecting to overseas.
4. ④ Motivating other employees.
5. ⑤ Acquisition of experiences to work with foreigners before becoming more competitive (Because I think that foreign recruitment will be essential in the future)

There are many people who still want to work in Japan, so depending on the way, I think Japanese companies can make a win-win relationship with them.

Summary

Regarding recruiting foreign IT engineers, I guess many companies are interested in it but still considering risks and haven’t been able to start it. 

So, I suggest you that it might be good to work with foreign IT engineers once in offshore development. Please feel free to contact us!
We also have some interview articles with our clients, you can listen to real voice of them there.

Thank you for reading!