During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of people are moving to the IT industry from other fields. At LINE Fukuoka, the number of applicants for job listings with the "remote work" tag that don't require experience have also risen by 2.5 times compared to 2020, so the growing trend seems to be people without experience changing careers to the IT field.
In this interview, we sat down with Ms. Erika Muko. She changed careers from corporate sales at a travel agency and joined LINE Fukuoka as a tester¹ with no experience.
If you're hoping to enter the IT industry but feel like you're coming up against some hurdles, we hope this article helps you out.
¹Testers are the people responsible for performing tests to find any bugs in a program that's currently in development
―What did you do before joining LINE Fukuoka?
Muko:I moved to Tokyo with the hopes of becoming a voice actress. For three years, I worked part-time at an IT firm in sales and smartphone repair while going to a training school.
After that, I came back to Fukuoka and started working at a travel agency in corporate sales. My duties included things like arranging plane tickets and accommodations for customers on business trips.
―Please tell us what made you consider changing careers to the IT industry.
Muko:We were receiving a lot of cancelations for travel and business trips due to the pandemic, and with no end in sight, I started to think, "I want a job that's not susceptible to an infectious disease."
I tried searching for a job that would let me build some specialized skills, but on top of there already being few open positions due to the pandemic, I was getting married at the time I was looking, which was another hurdle... Even if I got to the interview stage, I was asked questions like, "If you're getting married, you'll need to do housework, so you can't work overtime, right?" or, "Do you have plans to have kids soon?" and was told things like, "Actually, we were looking for a male employee."
I want to continue working even if where I am in my life changes because of marriage or having children, and I figured that maybe if I entered the IT industry, the mindset would be more progressive and it might be easier to work in as a woman, so I set my sights on that.