In April 2025, we welcomed another large group of new graduates to Mercari. After basic orientation on April 1 and a welcoming ceremony on April 2, we began onboarding with Mercari’s unique new graduate training program. This year, as a new initiative, we held a session in Sapporo where participants experienced customer service (CS) operations firsthand.

What were the thoughts and intentions behind this unique training program? We spoke with Juan D. Garcia MP. (@Juan), Masanori Murakami (@maashi), and Director of Customer Service Yohei Miyasaka (@yohei), who were involved in the design and operation of the program.

The first half of the article covers the sessions that took place in Mercari’s Tokyo office, and the second half covers the CS session.

Tokyo office training sessions (@Juan + @maashi)

—Please tell us about the new graduate training program you ran this year.

@Juan: This year’s training program was carefully designed so that new graduates could thrive at Mercari as quickly as possible. The program was structured so that the first half was composed of culture-related sessions to deepen understanding of Mercari’s “DNA,” and the second half was composed of skill development sessions for new graduates to acquire practical business skills. Specifically, the program consisted of the following sessions:

1. Group Mission Workshop
2. Understanding the Company
3. I&D Onboarding
4. Unconscious Bias Workshop
5. Yasashii Communication
6. Communication Team Building (CTB)
7. Work Facilitation
8. Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (AI/LLM)
9. Customer Service (CS)—Sapporo
10. Business Manners
11. One-on-One Meetings
12. Feedback

Note: For more details on the sessions, see the following article.

After I was put in charge of this project, I began by identifying areas we should enhance based on the goals of this new graduate training, interviews with past new graduate hires and managers of new graduates, and the current business environment at Mercari. As a result, we changed it up a bit from last year to reflect the importance of AI/LLM knowledge and understanding the user’s perspective at an early stage.

—This training program really shows what makes Mercari unique. Tell us more about how you decided on the outline for the program.

@Juan: Yes, I think that the program truly encapsulated Mercari’s culture. At Mercari, we believe that our unique culture is the driving force behind our business growth, so we wanted all new graduates to have a deep understanding of our philosophy first and foremost. We also believe that in this critical period of transition from an academic environment to the professional world, practical business skills, not just culture alignment, are essential.

The most important thing in designing this program was putting into words how we wanted participants to learn. I would say that the fact that we were able to create a program that was consistent and in line with this concept was a big step forward for this year.

@maashi: We worked out the details of the training program based on where we wanted new graduates to be in terms of growth at the three-month mark after onboarding. We expect new graduates to autonomously embody the three elements of business skills, culture alignment, and relationships.

Specifically, we want participants to be able to put into practice the business skills they have learned, naturally have a Mercari-like workstyle and mindset, and create connections with fellow new graduates and other people within the company early on to work in a way unique to new graduates.   

The AI/LLM training session is where business skills and culture overlap. This is an area that Mercari wants to focus on going forward, and we want our employees to actually use and understand the technology. You could say that training that combines communicating our culture with providing hands-on experience in a practical skill is a new initiative.

@Juan: Speaking of new initiatives, it’s worth noting that this year we held our first-ever welcoming ceremony at Mercari. From the first day, we aimed to help new graduate members feel a sense of belonging to the company and build relationships with colleagues so they can help each other out when faced with challenges.

We believe that holding welcome parties and training sessions in person is also very effective in creating opportunities for face-to-face interaction with fellow new graduates and members of various teams, and in forming deep connections. I think that having so many opportunities for face-to-face communication led to this program going beyond knowledge acquisition and helping participants feel personal growth and psychological safety.

—What was the response to the training program?

@Juan: The survey results after the program were very positive. In particular, we received positive feedback from participants regarding two questions: “Did you achieve your goals in the program?” and “Do you think the content is important and useful for your work at Mercari?” This is a great achievement that clearly demonstrates that the things we as an organization have defined as important for new graduates to learn are resonating with the audience—participants also feel that these skills are meaningful to learn and apply in their work. Personally, not only did I design the program as a planner, but I also ran several sessions myself. This enabled me to get real-time feedback from participants, which was very encouraging.

@maashi: On the other hand, naturally, not everyone gave perfect scores, so there are still issues to be addressed. There’s also room to think about future improvements, especially making the program more accessible to English speakers by providing bilingual support for the CS session, for example.

—Do you have any new training sessions that you would like to implement in the future?

@maashi: We would like to provide more content tailored to specific positions. Currently, we only offer training for general business skills, and we haven’t individualized it for specific positions such as product managers, data analysts, finance specialists, or legal specialists. But for engineers, the Engineering Office provides specialized, enriched training, so we want to make it a little fairer.

@Juan: I want to provide position-specific content, and I personally want to create a culture where new graduates train new graduates. I’d like to put effort into building an environment where new graduates can receive support from experienced seniors and fellow new graduates who have faced similar challenges. This could take the form of a mentorship system, for example. As an extension of the concept we established this year, in the long term, I want to develop new graduates into future leaders and unleash their potential.

CS training session (@yohei + @maashi)

—What was behind the decision to hold this CS training session?

@maashi: Recently, Mercari faces particularly strong expectations from both sellers and buyers to be able to use our marketplace safely and securely. In the process of considering the new graduate training program, one of the ideas we struggled with was how to get participants to understand Mercari’s mindset regarding our users, because that’s a part of our company culture. I wanted to create an opportunity for participants to learn in a way that would actually have them interact with our users, so I asked @yohei for his thoughts.

@yohei: We recently introduced a new foundation to our culture: “Customer Perspective.” I think that this training session is less about studying CS itself and more about gaining a user perspective. When @maashi reached out to me, I suggested that we give participants a first-hand look into actual CS operations, because there’s only so much that you can convey in a lecture format. As a result, we decided to conduct the training session in Sapporo.

When you see CS operations first-hand, it feels so much more real. Being able to experience how CS responds to user inquiries in real time in front of your eyes is a very valuable experience, and it fills in the details that are hard to envision from just sitting and listening to a lecture.

@maashi: By getting a first-hand look into CS operations, participants not only logically understand the importance of customer perspective, but also experience it intuitively. I hope to see participants propose and share ideas for new and better things based on this experience.

@yohei: The CS Team that interacts directly with our users is not a special organization, but merely one function of the company. There are many functions, including CS, that combine to deliver Mercari’s services to our users, not just one division. I would like participants to think about how they can take responsibility and work professionally in their own positions. That’s how I concluded the session.

—What was the response to the onsite CS session?

@maashi: We received positive feedback regarding holding the session in a place other than the office, which enabled participants to focus on the training. Many people said that they were able to feel first-hand the connection between the services they will be working on going forward, our users, and society.

Also, spending time in Sapporo with fellow new graduates helped build relationships through going to lunch and getting to know each other.

@yohei: At Mercari, we have a unique environment where most new graduate employees join the company assigned to specific projects after working as interns, so it can be hard to feel like you’re all joining the company together. I think the experience in Sapporo has definitely been effective for building horizontal connections. In the session, there were also opportunities for each participant to make a presentation, so I think they were able to get an idea of each other’s personalities as well.

I was really happy to see new graduates greeting each other when they met at the office.

@maashi: I wonder if there’s a particularly strong sense of security between fellow new graduates this year.

@yohei: One thing I felt after actually holding the CS session was that it was important for me (the person in charge) to be there. I think that by having the person in charge be there and speak directly to the participants, we were able to convey our passion for CS and enthusiasm toward the training program.

When it came time for Q&A, there were a lot of questions, including many in-depth questions. People don’t ask questions if the training is boring, right? I feel like me answering questions and explaining things thoroughly on the spot contributed to building a good environment for the training session.

—It sounds like the training session was a great success. What kind of training do you plan to conduct going forward? Do you think you’ll continue this program?

@maashi: I want to keep CS training at the center of Mercari’s new graduate training program and make it a part of our culture. If we were to enrich the content even further, we could consider adding some practical elements like roleplaying. For example, we could ask participants to think about how they would respond based on past results. I think it would be interesting to incorporate actions that the participants themselves come up with.

@yohei: After participants acquire knowledge in the training session, they would be able to take on actual work. For example, they could speak with users through our live chat support system. Creating an opportunity for participants to understand their work with a degree of pressure could be one potential option.

@maashi: They would probably feel a sense of responsibility and pressure to convey information accurately and sincerely.

@yohei: I think CS is an area that is hard to understand without having actual contact like this; it’s hard for it to feel real if you aren’t involved in it yourself. I would like to continue offering the experience of going onsite and seeing the actual operations first-hand. It’s very important for working adults to be able to see that there are people working in different divisions of the company on different tasks from their own, so I hope that this experience can continue to provide that perspective going forward. 

Photographer: Tomohiro Takeshita / Original article: Yuri Kato