ISFnet Unlimited

Working Overseas: The Challenge (1) > ISFnet Blog

By Masunobu Maeda, Managing Director of ISFnet Singapore.

In late 2010, the Sanno Institute published the results of a survey which highlighted a big cultural shift occurring in Japan and putting significant pressure on businesses in the country: young Japanese people don’t want to work overseas anymore. Questioning 2010’s graduates, 49% said that they did not want to work abroad. That figure represents a 20% increase on the figure just 9 years earlier in 1991.

There is a similar decline in the number Japanese students studying at foreign universities. In 2008, just over 67,000 Japanese students were attending foreign universities, 20% less than in 2004.

So, why is this so important (and potentially disastrous) for businesses?

The demographic situation in Japan is bleak. One the one hand, our birthrate has been falling for the past ..... years which is causing a contraction in the population. At the same time, we are graying faster than any other country in the world and as the population. The result is predicted long term market shrinkage pushing companies that have traditionally relied on the domestic market to look overseas for new opportunities. This has been given new impetus, thanks to the current strength of the yen. Financially, there has never been a better time for Japanese corporations to invest in development abroad and improve competitiveness by shifting processes to lower cost areas.

The reluctance of young Japanese people to go overseas is headache for many companies, then. ISFnet has not been immune to this, we have seen similarly muted ambitions among our staff to working abroad. In this blog, over the next few weeks, I’d like to discuss this problem further and discuss how my experiences reflect on many of the issues sited by research for young Japanese people’s attitudes to working abroad.

Event: The 2nd Nippon IT Charity Relay Race - October 2nd > ISFnet Blog

ISFnet and the non-profit organization Future Dream Achievement are very pleased to announce the 2nd Annual Nippon IT Charity Relay Race. This year's will be held on October 2nd on the Tama Marathon Course at the Furuichiba Track and Field Stadium in Kawasaki.

As with last years event, particpants from all ages and backgrounds are welcome (being in the IT sector is not a requirement) and fun runners as well as more serious competitors can join in. 

Last years event saw over 500 runners take part and raised over 2 million yen to provide assistance to people with or recovering from depression and acute socially-withdrawn people in order to train, find employment and return to regular lives.

This year, in light of the tragic events that occurred in Tohoku in March, half of the proceeds will be donated via the Nippon Foundation to organizations participating in the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. The remaining proceeds will go to FDA to continue its hard work to provide employment support and opportunities to people with employment barriers.

As well as the race, there will be a musical, a fancy dress competition, a charity raffle and a range of fresh food, fruit and vegetable stalls. 

Entry costs 3,000yen per person or 15,000yen per team. If you don't have a team but want to run, let me know at graham@isfnet.com and we will match you up with a team.  

For more information see our relay race brochure:   Download Ekiden Brochure Web 2011

We are also looking for volunteers and sponsors to help at the event. Again, please contact me at the above email if you think you can help.

 

Staff Mentoring Program > ISFnet Blog

The ISFnet Group is pleased to announce the introduction of a mentoring program for its employees. Under the program staff will be assigned mentors to offer career advice, help solve work-related problems, and to provide an outlet for communicating any other issues that they may have - both inside and outside work. In order to promote freer communication, appointed mentors will be senior staff from outside the mentee’s department. The goal of the program is to optimize staff satisfaction and wellbeing, as well as helping them to achieve their career goals in the company.

We'll keep you updated on how it's going and feedback we receive.

ISFnet's International Internship Program Summer 2011 > ISFnet Blog

 

Summer Opportunities at ISFnet

ISFnet Inc. has a vacancy for an international intern at its Tokyo headquarters from June 2011.

The internship is open to anyone with a valid visa residing in Japan, but would be particularly suited to foreign university students who have recently graduated and are interested in a career in Japan. Candidates should be hard-working, diligent and ambitious, and have a strong sense of ethics and humanity. A keen interest in business and management is also very important. In-depth knowledge of the internet and social media would be beneficial. There are no requirements for Japanese language ability however candidates must have very strong English skills.

If you are interested in participating in this program, please send a cover letter and resume with photograph to graham@isfnet.com by May 10^th 2011. Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

Conditions can be adapted to suit the successful candidate’s situation

*ISFnet will pay a small allowance of ￥1000 per hour and cover reasonable travel expenses.

 

Cisco Systems Seminar - April 22nd > ISFnet Blog

On April 22^nd Cisco Systems Inc. is hosting a seminar at their offices in Roppongi entitled “iPhone: Enterprise Leverage and Job Creation”. The seminar, which will focus on how businesses can use smart phone and tablet technology and the issues surrounding implementation, includes a 45minute look at ISFnet as case study of enterprise-wide introduction and use of the iPhone, specifically on how we use the iPhone to share ideas and information. ISFnet was the first enterprise in Japan to give an iPhone to all staff (over 1600 people in Japan), and is also Japan’s biggest corporate iPhone user. ISFnet will be their to offer free consultations and advice about using smart phone and tablet technologies in an enterprise environment.

 

Time and Date:  April 22, 2011 (Fri), 14:00 to 16:15 (Entry from 13:40) 
Location:  Cisco Tokyo Head Office (Midtown) 21 Floor Seminar Room 
http://www.cisco.com/web/JP/news/ga/map_tokyo.html

Entry is Free - Apply for tickets here (Deadline: 12pm, April 18th)

 

The Kanto-Tohoku Earthquake > ISFnet Blog

All of us at the ISFnet Group would like to offer our condolences to the family and friends of all the victims of last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami. Our sympathies are also with all those people who lost their homes and their possessions.

ISFnet has offices in the earthquake zone and we are very relieved to report that all are staff are safe and well.

We have pledged to do all we can to assist the disaster relief efforts through various measures including the donation of food, clothing, equipment, and other necessary items.

If you would like to help as well, the Network for Good website has a list of charities and organizations that are collecting donations and working to help the victims of the earthquake, including the American Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam and Lions Club International.

Network for Good (English)

 

For Japanese users wishing to donate, we recommend:

Just Giving - ジャストギビング

一口：500円から

寄付先：多数のNPO法人

 

The Charity Platform

Has links to various NPOs.

 

The Nippon Foundation - 日本財団

一口：2,000円から

支払い方法：クレジットカード

寄付先：日本財団

 

Give One

一口：1,000円から

支払い方法：クレジットカード

NPO法人JEN

 

Future Dream Achievement Charity 1st Anniversary


Future Dream Achievement Charity 1st Anniversary

On March 4th 2011, the FDA (Future Dream Achievement) team commemorated the organization's 1st anniversary at ISFNET's training facility in Akasaka Mitsuke.

Among those present were ISFNET CEO and FDA chairman, Yukiyoshi.Watanabe and Chuck Wilson, a well-known fitness professional and TV show contributor, who is a patron of the FDA organization.

Future Dream Achievement is a Tokyo based charity that provides training and employment opportunities and support to a range of social groups that are often excluded from the general workforce in Japan. These groups include people with disabilities, socially-withdrawn people, people without employment education and training, homeless people, people suffering from mental illnesses such as depression, mid to late-career unemployed people and people stuck in irregular and unstable part-time employment.

During the event, Yukiyoshi and Chuck received certificates recognizing their work at the charity and their involvement in the organizing the Nippon Charity Relay Rce held last year to raise money to provide IT training to people with disabilities. The race was strongly supported by staff at ISFnet, with over 500 either taking part in the race or providing logistical support (Video from the event is available on YouTube.) The event raised over 2 million yen with kind donations from Trend Micro, Trend Micro employees and Yukiyoshi Watanabe himself.

Everyone at ISFnet wishes FDA all the best for the future and hopes that the organization will continue with its success.

ISFnet's history: From crisis to expansion > ISFnet Blog

A History of ISFnet         by Yukiyoshi Watanabe

Part 5: From Our First Big Crisis to Big Expansion

Just as the HR business was taking off we had our first major crisis. A company approached us and placed fairly big order for used toners. Naturally, we were pleased to get the business did our best to cultivate a business relationship and when they placed a second order, we were glad to have their return business. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that they were building our trust in order to rip us off. The third order they placed was very big, we delivered the toners and invoiced them, but the invoice remained unpaid. When I called the number on the business card I’d been given, I found that the line was dead. The company didn’t exist, it was just a front.

At the time, these types of scam were quite common but there was nothing we could do. Even if we found the person responsible taking legal action against them, to recoup our funds would have taken a lot of valuable time and money. Plus, if you believe the newspapers, these fake companies were usually fronts for Japanese gangster organizations and we were a small company and really didn’t want to get involved in that kind of trouble. We lost the equivalent of one year’s profit on the deal and could have gone bankrupt but luckily the HR side of the business had really taken off. We decided that we should just move on and continue building the business.

Not long afterwards, the growth of our staff supply business meant that we were actually able to stop selling used toners – and after our experience as fraud victims we were not so sorry to see this business go – and reduce the consulting side of the business. ISFnet company grew and grew. In 2000, when we started we had just 4 staff. By the end of 2001 this had increased to 10. In 2002, our staff numbers rose to 150, around a 120 of were engineers. After that the number of ISFnet employees doubled each year for the next three or four years, so that by 2007 we had over 1500 staff.

No. of Japanese firms in Shanghai tops 8,000 in 2010 › Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

No. of Japanese firms in Shanghai tops 8,000 in 2010 › Japan Today > Japan News and Discussion.

Developing the human resources business > ISFnet Blog

A History of ISFnet         by Yukiyoshi Watanabe

Part 4: Human Resources

While I was out drumming up consulting work, the other ISFnet staff were selling used toners. We bought them from a used toner vendor and then visited companies to try and sell them. We got have some customers through contacts we had made while at DEC, but most digital customers just weren’t interested.

Our first really big customer was Murata, a large machinery company based in Kyoto. The president’s son was educated at a US university and is incredibly smart. The presentation that I gave when I first went to Murata was very carefully put together. I did a lot of research about the company and gathered information from friends and other companies. I managed to make a big impression on Mr. Murata and shortly afterwards we received an order for consulting work and, importantly, network and internet research. \15 million for 3 months work. This was a great boost to ISFnet and really motivated us to push the business further. Mr. Murata is still a friend, we keep in touch regularly and Murata Corp. is a stakeholder in ISFnet.

After 18 month of business we started setting up the temporary engineer supply side of the business. Initially, we hired part-timers and trained them up. Once qualified, we then started looking for customers. In all it took about 6 months to set up, training and finding customer took further six months, so we dispatched our first engineer in mid-2002.

We began by approaching system integrators through my network of contacts. The market for temporary engineers was ripe because then, in 2001 and 2002, there was a serious lack of IT staff. Customers generally wanted people with broad skill qualifications and three or four years work experience. Our staff had no experience at all and only held CCNA and MCP certificates. The general shortage of IT staff gave us leverage and by cutting our prices and allowing customers to solicit our engineers at the end of projects for no extra charge, we managed to get customers to take our less experienced, less qualified staff.

Allowing customers to recruit our staff was very important in attracting customers. If I hadn’t proposed such a system, then we wouldn’t have been able to get the contracts. From a customer’s point of view, it was very beneficial. They couldn’t get experienced engineers so the alternative was hiring people with no skills and experience, then training them up themselves. We are talking a lot of time and money: advertising the position, interviewing candidates, hiring, training and so on. Plus there is always the risk that the people you and spend a lot of time and money training may not then decide that they want to stay with the company. We were able to offer the companies an alternative to this. We paid for our staff’s training and we were also very careful that we hire the right people, people that have good morals and ethics. Customers paid us for temporary staff, but at the end of the contract the customers were able to keep the now qualified engineers that had two or three years and experience in there company.