Ex-Kiwi lures Net whizzes

By Keith Newman

Teaching English has been one of the main openings for New Zealanders looking for work in Japan, but now there's a growing demand for technology skills as the Internet grows in leaps and bounds.

Terrie Lloyd, formerly from Tauranga, has been running businesses in Japan for about 16 years, importing a steady flow of people with computer skills from India, Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Lloyd, managing director of Linc Media, an Internet software development and systems integration company, was in the country last week looking for skilled people who can also speak Japanese. He hoped to employ between five and 10 people from New Zealand a year.

His company was keen to encourage Japanese students finishing university degrees in New Zealand back to their homeland. The big demand was for software developers working with Microsoft's structured query language (SQL) and Sun's Java.

Linc Media was also looking for Linux experts and advanced NT and network skills and keen to employ advanced systems integration people to help with secure intranet work for large organisations including banks. People who can be trained up as customer service engineers were in demand too.

He said he established Linc Media after watching trends in the United States. It has grown about 100 per cent a year for the past two years and will have sales of about $US4 million this year. Linc Media employs 52 people and publishes a range of computer-related magazines in hard copy and on the Internet as well as runningg one of the biggest recruiting Web sites in Japan (www.lincmedia.co.jp)which sends out an on-line magazine to 45,000 people per week.

Mr Lloyd said there were several hundred companies involved in Internet development in Japan but only four or five competing in the bilingual space.

"We're doing full-on marketing development for large consumer companies, banks and securities firms mainly based in the US who want to pitch to the Japanese market."

The Internet offers a major opportunity for people to do business with the Japanese, he said. There were about 4000 Internet service providers in Japan. Sony owns the fourth-largest, Sony-Net, with 475,000 subscribers currently and believe they'll double to just under a million this year.

"Sony believes the PC economy will start kicking along again this year. Most reliable estimates suggest about 11 million people on-line in Japan, largely male aged 20-40 with income to burn," he said.

Linc Media also does fee-based published for clients, the biggest of which is the Australian government.

"We represent the Australian government's only Web site outside of Canberra. We create, manage and sell for the site which handles about 5000 on-line visas a month for Japanese people wanting to go to Australia."