Busy year-end days, or even regular workdays, will sometimes make you tired, leading to loss of concentration at work. Here are some tips to help you be more alert at work.

Please be started my story by a photo which I took when I had a chance to visit Tokyo last September.
It is a manhole cover photo. Why? The reason is the art in public construction can tell you some stories about the culture of the country you visit.
It is same with this photo. In the center of the manhole cover is the symbol of a sakura flower and the leaves of Ginkgo tree. When talking about Japan, surely no one don't know about the sakura flower. So, what is about Ginkgo tree





Ginkgo tree appeared more than 290 million years ago (1*). This tree family is the oldest tree family in the world. It existed before the appearing of dinosaurs. This plant doesn't have any natural diseases or pests. Therefore, the Ginkgo tree has eternal vitality.

In the summer of 1945, the historic bomb explosion in Hiroshima can kill every thing lives on the ground but the Ginkgo tree. You can visit Myojoin Temple ( Higashi Ward, Hiroshima) and see the only living witness of the atomic bomb. So from that day, Ginkgo tree is considered as the hope bearer tree.

On June 1st, 1989, Tokyo city adopted the symbol which is made of tree arcs resembling of a Ginkgo leaf to form up the T letter in "Tokyo" word(2*). Since then Ginkgo tree has become the Tokyo tree. You can commonly find out the Ginkgo tree with fan-shaped leaves along Tokyo's streets or avenues. The tree symbolizes for strong vitality, steadfastness and everlasting beauty.

Every year, at the end of Autumn, the entire Ginkgo tree forest will turn its leaves from green to yellow, flying with a small wind like the swan feet touch on the sky. Icho Namiki is the best place to see that romantic scenes.



Moreover, Ginkgo tree also brings the benefits to people in term of health. Dried Ginkgo leaves help promote brain health, support treatments of asthma and bronchitis.
Japanese use Ginkgo seeds to prepare many delicious of dishes such as takikomi rice, rice soup, grilled skewered meet, chawanmushi, ...


Reference Links:

1. Ginkgo biloba
2. Tokyo's symbol

The post uses the free photo from Freepik site

As a married couple, my wife and I are constantly trying each other’s field to be able to better understand each other. Lately, as I am trying to do more housework, my wife is beginning her journey to programming.

To help my wife, I set up her MacBook with Swift Playground. It has a cartoony interface and simple objectives like collecting gems and toggle switches, it makes learning more like playing a game. And it introduces you to the basic concepts of programming, great for starters.

Then came last week, she was introduced to the concept of function.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with programming, a function is “a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task, packaged as a unit. This unit can then be used in programs wherever that particular task should be performed.” (the definition taken from Wikipedia).

You can turn right by turning left 30015 times (or 3 times)

When she completed the task, I helped review her code as always.

The problem has 4 lines, each has 2 gems and 2 switches, and expects the learner to make use of function and loop.

She has a function named goToCollectGems, which is looped to run 4 times. So far so good.

But that function do: tell the character go to the nearest gem’s position, collect the gem, go the the next gem’s position, collect it (so far so good); then turn around, go back to starting position, then go to the nearest switch, then toggle the switch, then go toggle the next switch, then back to starting position, then go to the beginning of the next line.

I told her that it is not good to make a function do more than what is written in its name. She was confused to hear that, she said: “But I expect you guys to know better than what you are told to do”. That is when something suddenly clicked for both of us.

• Ah, no wonder you always lack the ability to understand my expectations. - said my wife.
• Now I know why you always group a lot of tasks to your function. - I told her my realization.

We are both not wrong, we just have different ways of thinking. She, being my wife, expects me to understand and do everything with only a hint from her. I, as a programmer, expect everything to be clearly and exactly defined, so they can be applied and followed correctly.

I explained to her that functions are to be reused, and should do exactly what it is expected to do, no more, no less. “Maybe next week you will call that function again, and because you have forgotten what it does, you will then make the character move unnecessarily”, I said, she agreed.

Her code after fixing my review (it reminds me of my high school time)

I also told her next time when she tells me to “go out for dinner”, I will also budget the time and money for moving, having dinner, strolling around, shopping and watching a movie.

• Yeah, that’s the way - she said.

A snippet of “my code” after fixing her review

Image source: https://www.freepik.com/

Differences in awareness regarding job hunting and recruitment between Japan and overseas

There are many things I felt when I came to Vietnam from Japan, but there are many opportunities to feel differences in the way of working. One of them is the concept of changing jobs.

In Japan, there is a concept of lifetime employment, and it is not unusual for a job seeker to continue working for one company until retirement. In contrast, in American culture, changing jobs is common, and the average number of job changes is more than double that of Japan, which is a surprisingly different attitude.

In Vietnam, as in the U.S., changing jobs is a common practice, with the culture of changing jobs taking root as a matter of course.

Recruitment marketing is widespread in Japan due to difficulties in attracting job seekers

In modern Japan, the declining birthrate and aging population have become very serious social issues, so many Japanese companies that have focused on recruiting university graduates in bulk are having a hard time securing workers, and in recent years Recruitment marketing, which involves creating recruitment websites exclusively for job seekers and disseminating various content in order to appeal to a large number of human resources, is becoming more active.

In Vietnam, on the other hand, the average age of the workforce is young and competition among job seekers is fierce, making it a buyer's market.

Recruitment marketing is a similar concept to B2B marketing

I believe that recruitment marketing here can be thought of in the same way as "B2B marketing."

This is because finding a job is an opportunity for job seekers to make important choices in their lives, and even though changing jobs is common, people don't change jobs every day, so they need to think carefully and rationally. This means that when conducting recruitment marketing, you need to provide more information to job seekers. When you think about it that way, it is understandable that there is a need to proactively disseminate information through an independent recruitment site like Japan does.

About SNS Recruitment

Independent recruitment websites are already common as a recruitment strategy for Japanese companies today, and it can be said that each company is at the stage of searching for new strategies.

I have recently been paying attention to "SNS recruiting.

"Linkedin" is popular as a business SNS in the United States and Vietnam, and is also used for job hunting and recruitment, but it is not so common in Japan, where X (twitter), Instagram, and Tiktok are widely used. In SNS recruitment, recruitment activities will be carried out through these services.

What is the difference between using SNS and recruiting sites?
I think this is due to the casual nature of information dissemination.

To digress, the objective of conventional marketing has been to deliver "completed services and products" to the target , but in current marketing, many methods are used to create added value by "providing the process and concept of how the product is made.

For example, “NIKE” is a manufacturer that sells shoes, but its advertisements often emphasize the wonders of sports, but do not talk much about the performance of the shoes themselves. In other words, it can be said that the goal is to encourage purchasers to identify with the brand's values, rather than the shoes themselves.

How about applying the above ideas to recruitment?

If a company's salary level is among the highest in the industry, simply posting job advertisements will likely attract many applicants. However, the reality is that it is difficult for all companies to offer top-level salaries. Therefore, companies can differentiate themselves from other companies by disclosing their unique opinions and values, such as “why we exist” and “why we conduct recruitment activities”.

This kind of method is compatible with SNS. The website is published as a completed product, and from the job seeker's point of view, the truth is, “There is no way it says anything bad about it, and I don't think it's true.” However, with SNS, you can see the thoughts and company culture of the human resources department in a more casual way.

It is often expressed as a marketing strategy for websites that "only posting good things will not move the target's heart." What is meant here is to convey "thoughts and values" other than "good things.

I also believe that verbalizing such thoughts and values will lead to the development of a corporate culture.

In the America and Vietnam, SNS recruiting using “Linkedin" is already in place, but it is only used as a contact tool, and I feel that there are still few companies that are using it strategically. At the same time, I believe that in the future, job seekers will be looking not only for "conditions" such as salary and number of holidays, but also for "values" communicated through SNS and other means.

※Source image
https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-blur-business-close-up-267447/
https://www.irasutoya.com/2013/12/blog-post_6895.html
https://www.irasutoya.com/2019/03/blog-post_6.html