Accelerating global expansion.
In search of partners to build the future together

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

Starting in fiscal year 2025, we launched an overseas expansion project with a long-term perspective. However, as each member is currently working on the project concurrently with other responsibilities, we recognized the need to assign dedicated overseas personnel and potentially establish overseas offices. This led us to begin considering the recruitment of global talent. At present, overseas sales activities are handled by a small number of staff. In addition, while we have experience with importing, we have limited experience with exporting, and no dedicated personnel. For these reasons, we identified three specific requirements for the type of talent we seek. First, the ability to acquire our products and cultivation technologies and provide sales and cultivation support in other countries; second, the ability to conduct overseas sales activities; and third, the ability to handle export operations.
However, our company has very little experience in hiring foreign talent. For this reason, we wanted to explore what kind of talent we could secure and how to create an environment in which they could integrate smoothly into our organization, which led us to decide to participate in this internship program.
When we joined the program, we viewed the internship period as an extended evaluation period accepted the intern with hiring in mind. Under these circumstances, we were fortunate to connect with Aravind, an excellent candidate with both an interest in agriculture and cultivation and prior work experience, and the activities began.

Potential for developing global talent through on-site understanding and communication skills

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

In this internship, he was involved in cultivation trials at our greenhouse facilities and cultivation activities for greenhouse crops such as tomatoes, strawberries, and melons within the Cultivation Research Division. This was because we wanted him to first engage in fields aligned with his interests, taking his background into consideration.
The activity plan was structured so that during the first half of the program, he would experience cultivation activities at the farm while learning fundamental knowledge related to cultivation, including the mechanisms and concepts behind computer-controlled farming systems. In the latter half, the plan also included deepening his understanding of our mechanical products.
Although our company primarily conducts communication in Japanese, the activities progressed as planned thanks to his Japanese language ability and strong interpersonal skills. On a daily basis, he collaborated proactively and collaboratively with the cultivation staff, demonstrating a high level of engagement.
As AI continues to advance, we are entering an era in which documents can be created even without strong Japanese language skills. In this context, what will be increasingly required in the future is not merely Japanese proficiency measured by levels such as N1 or N2, but practical communication skills and the ability to engage in real conversation—capabilities that cannot be fully captured by test scores alone. Through our experience working with him, we strongly came to feel this.

Beyond specialization,
an emerging and assured future in which foreign talent becomes a true driving force

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

Because our business operates in the highly niche field of interior equipment for greenhouse facilities, we believe that recruiting a perfectly matched candidate is not easy. For that reason, we place importance on how proactively a candidate is willing to engage and persevere. During this internship, we anticipated that specialized terminology might pose a barrier, but he made the effort to understand by creating his own glossaries and studying them daily. This attitude was highly commendable and had a positive influence on the employees around him. As a result of this initiative, we were able to confirm the potential for global talent to contribute effectively within our Product Development Division, which is our most critical department as a manufacturer. Additionally, we found that internal resistance toward accepting foreign talent was lower than expected, both of which we consider significant achievements. We feel that we have now reached a stage where we can seriously consider the recruitment of global talent going forward.
Because this internship program, including visa arrangements, required relatively little effort on the companyʼs side, it provided an excellent opportunity to experience the entire process from recruitment of global talent to day-to-day collaboration in the workplace. As many companies are likely considering hiring global talent in response to overseas expansion and other factors, we regard this program as a valuable opportunity and highly recommend considering participation.