All Jobs Japan, a job site, gives you an estimate for the commuting time

How are foreigners living in Japan looking for work? In addition, what do these people consider important when looking for work? A study on these issues was conducted by MTIC, a human resource venture company specializing in hiring foreign residents, and the results were announced on June 17.

According to the survey results, about 60% of job searches were done using Facebook, and more than 90% of foreign residents use Google translation software when browsing websites, as many people feel a language barrier when browsing through sites. The results also showed that the top reasons that foreigners had quit their previous jobs were the salary, length of commute to work, and human relations.

First of all, the results for the question “Which media do you often use to search for work” showed that 62.8% use Facebook, 22.3% use Google searches, 8.3% use LinkedIn, 3.3% use YouTube, with the same percentage using LINE. Although Japanese users often use job sites like Indeed, and career-change agencies, in contrast, foreign workers seem to find Facebook an important job search tool.

The answer to the next question “How much do you use Google Translate to translate websites?” came to 90.1% affirmative, when combining “always use” and “sometimes use”. While we can understand that people will use Google Translate as a helpful tool, we can also infer the level of difficulty in getting information from Japanese language sites.

Furthermore, for the answers to the question “What is the most important feature of human resource/job search sites?”, “having lots of job posts” came out top at 55.4%, followed by “the web site being easy to use” at 24%, and “the ability to browse the site in multiple languages” at 19%.

Finally, the answers to the question about the reason for leaving their previous job were “the salary” “length of commute to work”, and “human relations”. Regarding the distance to work, which came in 2nd place in the most given answers, being unfamiliar with the geography of Japan, it’s difficult to infer a sense of distance to the work place. Furthermore, there is limited information that helps foreign people understand how long it would take to get to places, and any information in Japanese may be difficult to read. Due to these factors, there is a possibility that you could be working somewhere a lot further away from where you live than you had imagined.

MTIC also operates All Jobs Japan, a job site for foreign residents seeking solutions to such problems, and has a feature that automatically gives you an estimate for the commuting time from your house to the location of the company of each job post. In addition, the site supports 10 languages and is easy to use. If you are a foreign national, it could be an important tool for you to find a job.

This survey was conducted from February 1 to May 21, 2019, in the form of an online questionnaire for users of temporary staffing and job placement service Gaijinbank, run by the same company, which specializes in helping foreigners living in Japan find work. The number of valid answers was 794.

［Reference］All Jobs Japan