Japanese Companies Looking to Rehire Former Employees to Meet HR Needs

In recent years, Japanese companies are showing more interest in “alumni recruitment,” or the rehiring of former employees who have either left or retired.

A survey on HR management conducted by Recruit Holdings, with responses from 2,761 HR managers at companies with 30 or more employees, found that the most common recruitment method (51.1% of those surveyed) is to rely on the government’s employment service Hello Work. This was followed by recruitment via the company’s website (46.3%). Recruitment through a company’s “alumni network,” meanwhile, remains a less common method, at 12.3%.

At the same time, however, 55.5% of those surveyed said that they are willing to rehire former employees who had either left the company or retired. The results of the Recruit survey suggest that even if corporate alumni networks are not recognized clearly as a recruitment tool, they are in fact being used by a majority of companies. From this one can conclude that such networks are likely to become an effective channel for employee recruitment in the future.

When asked about the state of their utilization of human resources over the past couple years, concerning the number of personnel and their level of ability (in terms of meeting job requirements), 42.9% of the companies that make use of corporate alumni recruitment were either “fully” or “somewhat” able to secure the needed number of employees, as opposed to 31.6% among companies that do not make use of former employees.

Further, 34.5% of companies that have implemented alumni recruitment said their level of human resources was either “fully” or “somewhat” adequate, as opposed to 24.6% among companies that did not make use of such recruitment. This survey result seems to indicate it is more effective to secure human resources by means of an alumni network. Some of the positive factors cited by the respondents include a better match between employees and the job due to an understanding of a company’s business style and corporate culture, a wider range of job-related abilities through obtaining new skills and perspectives from different environments, and the sense that returning employees can get up and running right away because they understand work procedures and internal relations.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)