Hiring Trends in Major IT Companies

Information technology is one of the fastest moving industries to date. New developments constantly increase production and evolve business practices. The largest IT companies in the world need to constantly innovate in order to keep up with each other. Currently, the focus of most major IT companies is cloud computing. Cloud computing allows businesses to decentralize information systems and storage by placing them in the hands of the IT company. Softbank owned IDC Frontier Cloud services dominates the Japanese infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market with over 80% market share, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud at 5.2% and 4.9% respectively. Worldwide leaders Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have set their sights on the Japanese market, and are in need of talent to climb the ranks of market share.

Google:

Google Tokyo is the hub for the tech giant’s Asia-Pacific business ventures, housing engineering and sales teams that help expand Google’s products and services across the pacific. Google Search, Ads, Maps, Chrome, Google+, and Android products are all being expanded into Asian markets, as well as other upcoming products and corporate services. Due to their expansion, there is a large talent demand to help Google in their efforts for globalization.
Google`s cloud computing platform offer various services to expand and enhance business organization and administration. As Google cloud services expand through Asia, Google is in need of various professionals to aid in international business efforts. Technical specialists are in high demand, such as tech solutions, security, mobile app specialists, and more. Due to the shortage of talent in this field, many job postings in specialist fields do not require bilingual ability. Around 35% of available positions did not require Japanese language ability.
Google is also in search of marketing professionals in order to secure market share within the Asia-Pacific region. New retail efforts for the Pixel Phone series, Google Home, DayDream VR, and Chromecast in Asia have Google reaching out for marketing specialists with retail experience. They are also looking for marketing professionals that are able to bolster their software platforms such as Google Pay and Android OS.
Due to the rapid expansion of the Asia market, Google is also in search of various types of account managers. With the expansion of their cloud services, account managers for cloud based clients are in demand. These cloud services include G Suite users, as well as corporate and government entities using Google Cloud infrastructure. Google is also targeting the education sector with their cloud services, seeking a Head of Education to manage accounts of educational institutions.

Amazon:

In addition to Amazon’s well known retail service, Amazon also holds the highest market share in Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services (AWS). These two branches of Amazon are the main focus of Amazon Japan, where talent is needed to strengthen their presence in the Japanese market, as their competition with online retailer Rakuten is neck and neck.
Inside Amazon Web Services, Amazon Japan is looking to push its contact center service, Amazon Connect, to become the Japanese market leader. They are looking for solutions architects in order to strengthen their product against their competitors. Because of some highly technical requirements, many positions do not require Japanese fluency, much like the openings offered in Google.
In the online retail sector, Amazon Japan is in search of consumer marketing specialists with experience in the Japanese market. They aim to improve the experience for both consumers and sellers by targeting pain points that occur specifically in the Japanese market. In addition, Amazon intends to expand their private label fashion brands into Japan. They are in need of professionals in design and marketing to develop Japanese private label brands, as well as software developers to support the interface of Amazon`s fashion section.

Microsoft:

Unlike Google and Amazon, Microsoft has little to no positions regarding retail products. Microsoft holds very little market share in Japan in terms of their hardware products, so marketing and sales specialists are not in demand. Instead, most openings are focused on bolstering their cloud computing platform, Azure. The majority of their career listings include supporting their cloud computing products such as Azure, Office, and Sharepoint. Microsoft provides a “World class support experience” as their differentiator between other cloud computing products. To provide this support, Microsoft is in need of escalation engineers and data center technicians for their Azure application.

Trends:

It is clear that these major IT companies are focusing their resources into cloud computing, as they are fighting for market share in an already dominated market. Cloud specialists are in high demand for all three companies, as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft fight for market share in the wake of IDC Frontier’s supremacy. Due to the high demand in technical talent, language ability is becoming secondary to technical skill. Many customer focused openings still require bilingual talent, such as account managers and sales professionals. The closer to customer interaction the position is, the more likely language skills are preferred.

Sources:
https://careers.google.com/
https://cloud.google.com/
https://www.amazon.jobs/en
https://aws.amazon.com/
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-security-blog/microsoft-azure-closes-iaas-adoption-gap-with-amazon-aws/
https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/14/japanese-e-commerce-giant-rakuten-struggles-to-retake-the-lead-from-amazon
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/7/17208804/amazon-private-label-brands-list
https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/iaas/Japan/