By KANAKO TANAKA/ Staff Writer
March 11, 2025 at 16:20 JST
A sign of Fujitsu Ltd. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Fujitsu Ltd. will hire new employees throughout the year, breaking from the tradition of accepting university and other graduates every spring.
Large corporations usually take in all new employees in April, when a new fiscal year begins, immediately after they graduate from universities and other schools.
They set the number of new hires for each fiscal year in advance and recruit students during the course of the previous year.
Fujitsu announced last week that it will end this practice starting with new employees for fiscal 2026, a move that is believed to be rare among large companies.
The technology company will instead recruit the required number of people for each type of job year-round, regardless of whether they are fresh graduates or mid-career personnel.
Fujitsu will also stop providing the same starting pay to new employees.
The company hopes to attract industry-ready and aspiring workers by offering high salaries to young, talented people who can perform high-level work.
The annual salary for many new university graduates who immediately join Fujitsu is expected to rise from about 5.5 million yen ($37,000) to about 7 million yen.
The company added that some new employees can even expect 10 million yen, depending on the levels of work.
In the information technology industry, competition has been intensifying in Japan and abroad to acquire qualified personnel.
Fujitsu’s domestic rivals, such as Hitachi Ltd. and NEC Corp., have also switched to jobs-based remuneration and promotion policies.
Fujitsu revised its seniority-based pay system and other traditional Japanese employment practices and introduced a remuneration system based on jobs and positions for all employees in fiscal 2022.
The company has adopted a flexible recruitment policy, including the timing of employment, because the new pay system will apply to new graduates from fiscal 2026.
For prospective new graduates, an internship of up to six months will be provided to prevent a post-assignment mismatch between their career aspirations and actual jobs available.
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