A氏「お宅の会社では、就職希望者が出す履歴書に、学校名を記入させないことにしたそうですね」
B氏「そうです。学校名が書いてあると、先入観で人を判断してしまいますからね」
Sennyuukan
A shi: Otaku no kaisha de wa, shuushoku kiboosha ga dasu rirekisho ni, gakkoomei wo kinyuu sasenai koto ni shita soo desu ne.
B shi: Soo desu. Gakkoomei ga kaite aru to, sennyuukan de hito wo handan shite shimaimasu kara ne.
Mr. A: I hear your company decided not to require job applicants to include their school's name in their resume.
Mr. B: Right. With the name you get a preconceived notion and end up judging people according to that.
Sennyuukan refers to preconceived ideas, opinions, and notions which become fixed in the mind and obstruct free thinking.
When you first meet someone, on what do you base your initial judgments of them? On the title found on their calling card? On the atmosphere and feeling they have about them?
I was pleased to read in the newspaper recently that record industry leader CBS-Sony made the decision mentioned above. Japan is said to be a society where academic credentials are everything (nihon no shakai wa gakureki shakai). Companies, it seems, place almost total emphasis on where prospective employees have gone to school. To get into a top com- pany has meant getting into a top university which in turn has meant getting into a top high school. With life-long employment in a respected company their life goal, children (especially boys) have thus become robots in their approach to study. But what if companies drop the listing of schools graduated from requirement? They will then choose people based on what those people have studied rather than on where they've studied it.
Q: "Dooshite daigakumei ga kaite aru to sennyuukan ni sayu sareru'n desu ka" ("Why are you in- fluenced by preconceptions when the college's name is written down?").
A: "Dooshitemo, Ichiryuu daigaku no gakusei da to yuushuu ni chigainai to iu sennyuukan ga arimasu kara ne" ("It's just inevitable. People have a preconcep- tion that students from the most prestigious univer- sities must be good students").
Q: "But aren't there some students who use where they've gone to school to help them get a job?"
A: "And it's always students like that who are of little use after they get into the company."
Q: "Hoka nimo sennyuukan ga atte wa komaru to iu koto ga arimasu ka?" ("Are there any other times when having preconceived ideas about people causes trouble? " ).
A: "When a graduate of the college I went to applies for a job, it's hard not to want to see them get into the company too."
If a person is talented, however, they needn't depend on other alumni (senpai) to help them out or brandish their college name about like it was some famous name designer bag. In any case, I still have my doubts about how accurately a person can be judged based on a paper test and short interview.