News Letter

News Letter – International Hopefuls+ #10

International hopefuls+
Issue 10
February 7, 2020

1. I-HoP News (by Mariko Katagaki)

I-HoP has made a video in English “Job interviews and business manners in Japan” and uploaded on the website.
This video provides you of the basic information about job hunting schedule and the job interview simulation in Japan.
The main target of this video is DC students, I believe that it will be useful for both the junior year students who just came to Japan and the senior year students who are worried about job interviews.
This video will be useful for MC students as well.

You can watch it on the following website!!
https://cofre.synfoster.hokudai.ac.jp/cgi-bin/video/video.cgi/view/?id=1219

2. I-HoP Event Information

I-HoP is preparing for useful seminars and career consultation in February and March as follows.
Looking forward to your application!!

-Business Communication and Japanese Manners (2/12)
http://bit.ly/2N4EDgu

-Talk with global companies (2/18)
http://bit.ly/38bqjLy

-Business email seminar (2/27)
http://bit.ly/2H0phWQ

-Career Consultation by Prof. Iida (2/26-27)
Please contact I-HoP.

-Preparation for an oral presentation (3/2) *TBA

3. Memo from the Visiting Professor Y. Iida

My dear International Researchers,

As I promised last month, I am discussing DX, Digital Transformation, in Japan as the first article of 2020. From the viewpoint of a career counselor, I cannot help but start from this episode. Many students of Japanese universities who were seeking job for the major corporation found it furious and disappointing when Recruit Career, the provider of RIKUNAVI, job-hunting database, candidly made deals with quite a few client companies to provide “probability of a candidate to decline the NAITEI job offer” by using AI analysis data of the candidate’s activities in the internet browsing. What Recruit Career did was to have their AI detect the target candidate’s web-search activities and co-relate it with the actual declining or accepting of the NAITEI job offer from the client company. Machine learning makes it possible to record a large number of raw data and discriminate it into several probability models. Destitute victimized job seekers may have missed receiving the job offer simply because he/she had visited web sites of the competitors of the target company so often.

This is one extreme example of how DX, Digital Transformation is affecting the life and behavior of modern human beings living in the computerized world. My definition of DX in this article is “Human interactive devices, components, sensors, and any other social infrastructure that interacts with people are organically inter-connected through high-speed data network that may be managed and controlled by a computerized system with artificial intelligence.” DX in the recruiting process may start with a screening of the application document like “Entry Sheet” or resume. Some companies may let you play a computer game on the web, which is actually the first screening test. Even though you have stated in your resume that you are “aggressive” and “challenging,” but if you played the game in a much conservative manner, the company might honor the evaluation by the computer. The following URL of the YouTube video is not a real interview. Still, a company like this Furhat Robotics is providing a new service with which a client may be interviewed by AI, which can detect the face and voice of the interviewee.
https://youtu.be/rPKrdxiEkQ0

Not only in the recruiting process, but DX is changing the operation of the company in many ways. The banking industry or public service sector, where many standardized forms and templates are used, started to introduce RPA, Robot Process Automation to let the machine enter and read the information to/from the form. While RPA reduces routine and sometimes dull clerical jobs, bankers can spend more time and resources to interact with client customers and companies to create a constructive proposal, etc.

When you call the Service Desk of a company for product support, it used to be very annoying and irritating because you had to explain who you are, the merchandise’s type number, serial number, date of purchase, etc. before you start your complaint. Service Desk of a company empowered by the Customer Experience enhancement system will connect their internal customer database with the incoming telephone number. This enables the service operator to see the purchase history of the caller or any past record of customer services on the screen when the caller reaches the operator.

Likewise, AI, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Internet of Things, mobile communication (not only between human beings but also between machine to machine) are organically interacting with people in the community. DX is rapidly introduced to many parts of the company, and the way people work is continuously affected by the new systems. The best way to understand and experience this change is to join the internship program of a company. One week will be enough to capture the outline and experience the essential operation.