“What I Want to Do” As a Form of Strategy to Survive on the Job-Hunting Process: The Case of Japanese University Students

In Japan, university students are facing challenges to get a job today. For example, only 60 percent of university graduates can find a full-time job now. Many quantitative researchers conducted researches on job-hunting for university students to understand how social structure impacts the job-hunting process. These studies pointed out that the labor market requires university students not only to have a better educational background but also to have higher motivation, like “yaritaikoto (what I want to do) ”, because the labor market requires them to work for other reasons besides money. However, no one has analyzed how the word “yaritaikoto” has been used by students.

            My research aims to describe the job-hunting process for Japanese new graduates by analyzing the use of word, “yaritaikoto.” I conducted interviews with 11 students who were in the middle of job-hunting activities. Each person was interviewed two to four times during February to July in 2012. Using Goffman’s “warm-up” and “cool-down” theory (Goffman1952) as an analytical framework, I shall raise the following points. First, they used the word “yaritaikoto” to warm themselves up to get into job-hunting mode; however, many of them failed in job competitions. Second, they let themselves cool down their “yaritaikoto.” Third, they changed the meaning of “yaritaikoto”, reinterpreted it and warmed their “yaritaikoto” up again for the next competitions. Therefore, students have to continue to change their “yaritaikoto” during the process until they get a job. It is hard for them, however, to deny their “yaritaikoto” and adapt to the job market. Students need the word “yaritaikoto” only to survive in job competition but not in their real lives, which means, interestingly, that they are not able to meet the expectation that the labor market has for them as long as they use the word.