Build your job-hunting principles and entry sheets using "shortcake thinking"!

This column series accompanies the new book Job Hunting Design in the Year-Round Recruitment Era (Hakutou Shobo). Last time, we discussed how the "year-round recruitment era" is arriving, where individual efforts are valued more than ever and more students receive job offers from companies regardless of the season. We also explained that to effectively showcase your appeal in such an era, it's crucial to "turn yourself into a shortcake." This time, we'll briefly introduce what that entails.

Build your logic using a creative brief

Establishing your job-hunting principles and creating your entry sheet (ES) form the core of the job-hunting process. With "shortcake thinking," you must first design the "logic" – akin to the whipped cream – and then build the "evidence" (your personal experiences), which is like the springy sponge cake.

Let's start with the "whipped cream." In a shortcake, the whipped cream has the largest surface area exposed to the outside air. In job hunting terms, it represents your overall "logic." Logically structuring your reasons for applying – "Why this industry?" "Why your company?" – is an indispensable step when creating your core principles and ES.

However, building this "logic" is deceptively difficult. Without careful thought, interviewers can catch you off guard, throwing off the interview's flow. Students unfamiliar with interviews often get flustered here and become discouraged.

The main cause lies in flawed overall logic design. Merely gathering various information through online searches or alumni visits doesn't logically structure your reasons for applying. Consequently, you can't organize which information to apply to which question.

The format known as the "Creative Brief," used in advertising planning, is highly effective for building this logical framework. It functions like a blueprint for an advertisement and is extremely useful for consolidating the overall logic.

Using a creative brief in this way clarifies your reasons for applying, your future direction, and who you should appeal to and how.

Your own experiences, free from wavering, form the foundation of your job search.

A solid logic alone is insufficient to fully persuade company interviewers. When students propose new hypotheses in their graduation theses, they use references and various data to substantiate them. So, what is the substantiating material in job hunting? It is the student's own experiences. While the creative brief includes a section titled "Credible Basis," this is merely an outline of the basis and requires deeper exploration.

What you dedicated yourself to during your student years (your personal experiences) is precisely the foundation for why you aspire to that industry or company. To use the shortcake analogy, it's the "springy sponge" that forms the cake's base.

When advising students on job hunting, I often notice a significant disconnect: insufficient evidence. No matter how well you craft your creative brief, if you haven't actually executed it and "proven it as evidence," you won't convince the interviewer.

This foundation is heavily influenced by your challenges and experiences during your student years. Reusing the same internship or part-time job experience for every company's job hunt is completely meaningless. Interviewers are carefully checking "how closely your experience aligns with your target industry or company" and "how much effort you put into that experience and what you can be expected to deliver as a working professional."

In this year-round hiring era, where talented individuals can receive offers anytime due to the abolition of job-hunting rules, if the sponge part of your evidence is wobbly, you won't even make it onto the store shelves as a product (cake). It's crucial to strategize your job-hunting approach while consciously linking your evidence (past studies and experiences) to the "logic" of a creative brief.

Next time, I'll explain the bright red strawberry (your symbolic buzzword).

Trim size: B6, 148 pages, Price: ¥1,400 + tax, ISBN 978-4-561-51107-6 C0034