Crime & Courts

Man Arrested for Taking Tests in Place of Job-Hunting Student

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
The Metropolitan Police Department on November 1, 2020, in Chiyoda ward, Tokyo.

Jiji Press

11:51 JST, November 22, 2022

Tokyo (Jiji Press)—Tokyo police have arrested a 28-year-old man for allegedly taking online corporate tests to assess job applicants’ abilities and aptitude in place of a job-hunting student in April.

This marked the first arrest in Japan of a proxy test-taker over the so-called web tests, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Tokyo police arrested Nobuto Tanaka, a corporate employee in the western Japan city of Osaka, on suspicion of illegal production and usage of electromagnetic records.

The police will also send papers to prosecutors of a woman in her fourth year at university for allegedly asking Tanaka to take the web tests by posing as her.

Tanaka had been asked to take such tests in place of around 300 people over the course of six months, sources familiar with the police investigation said.

Web tests are used by companies to whittle down the number of applicants who will proceed to the job interview stage, and to help determine where to assign people after they have been hired.

In many web tests, job hunters sign up to companies’ recruitment websites to obtain their username and password, and then take the tests online from their home computers or other devices.

Tanaka had offered to become a proxy test-taker for job-seeking students on Twitter, claiming that he was a Kyoto University graduate-school graduate and has taken over 4,000 tests in place of job hunters over the course of four years, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

He also has said that over 95 pct of his clients have passed the web tests to move onto the next step of the job recruitment process, the sources said.

Tanaka allegedly received necessary login information from job hunters and took the tests in place of them. He is believed to received ¥2,000 to ¥3,000 per subject, earning around ¥4 million in the six-month period, the sources said.

The woman allegedly asked Tanaka to take web tests for over 20 companies in her place, the sources said. In some tests, she shared the tests on her computer screen, with Tanaka feeding answers to her through wireless earbuds, the sources said.