Approximately 80% of Career Changers Experience Anxiety Before Joining a Company, Yet 40% of Corporate Follow-ups Are Ineffective." — Free Release of a Survey Report Visualizing the "Blind Spots" of Mid-Career Recruitment.

Background of the Survey Release: The structural issue of "hiring but failing to retain employees" The success or failure of mid-career recruitment begins after the job offer is accepted. However, many companies view the recruitment process as complete once the offer is made. Even if onboarding after the start date is designed, the psychological state of career changers during the "waiting period" between offer acceptance and joining the company is rarely understood.

This survey revealed that approximately 80% of career changers experience anxiety during this period. What career changers fear most is not issues with salary or systems, but psychological concerns such as "whether they can fit into the new workplace" or "whether their skills will be effective." Despite this, the most common follow-up from companies is administrative communication (29.0%), while individual interviews that delve into careers and goals remain at only 7.3%.

Furthermore, among career changers who received some form of follow-up from the company, 40.4% stated that their "anxiety was not reduced." The survey highlights the reality that retention is influenced more by whether the content aligns with the career changer's psychological state than by the mere presence of follow-up.

We have released this report with the aim of visualizing this structural mismatch and providing tips to link recruitment success to retention and performance.

Survey Overview * Survey Entity: Willnext Co., Ltd. * Survey Period: February 10 – February 13, 2026 * Survey Method: Internet survey * Valid Responses: 300 * Target Criteria: Office workers aged 25–29 living in Tokyo and the three surrounding prefectures (Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa) who experienced their first career change within the past year.

Key Findings of the Survey Approximately 60% of respondents decided to change jobs without sufficiently organizing their career goals, revealing that the root of post-entry mismatch is already formed before joining the company. Additionally, 46.7% of career changers who could not discuss their anxieties with anyone responded that they "have no one to talk to," confirming a state of isolation that cannot be resolved through existing relationships.

The support career changers want most before joining is "contact from their future supervisor or colleagues (27.3%)"; a human connection with the actual workplace leads more directly to a sense of security than administrative responses from HR. After joining, 74.3% experience a gap between their career expectations and reality, suggesting that traditional onboarding designs starting from the first day of work may be too late.