I have been living and working in Japan now for around 4 years as a recruiter in Tokyo.
So far I have been doing pretty well, but the constant sales targets makes the job quite stressful, as even a few slow days can have a large impact on your overall progress and quarterly target.
I really enjoy living in Japan, and have a great quality of life here, so I dont want the quality of my entire experience to be brought down by one very stressful job.
The job was great when I first started since everything was new and I was learning so much, but now the high pressure environment has kinda worn down my spirit.
The main thing with recruiting that keeps me interested is the amount of earning potential that you can genuinely reach if you are good, as in really really good.
I know it’s a path that many fellow expats have went down, normally transitioning to recruitment from ALT/Ekeiwa work.
Right now my Japanese is around N4 level and I’m planning to take the N3 this summer.
I have tried researching other opportunities for foreigners in Japan (I’m confident I have checked almost all the posts on this topic before), but now I feels that I have reached my lowest point, and have decided to finally ask reddit for help on this.
My educational background is in business and and I also do some design as a hobby, though both of these need high Japanese because you talk with a lot of people outside of your own company when working on projects.
What I’m really wondering is, is there any other career opportunities that I’m missing here? I understand that it’s likely I will need to learn some new skills (such as code bootcamp or self teach myself something), but I’m really just not sure what to do.
For a long time, I was considering going to language school for 1.5 years to reach N2, but the price was so high that it would be hard to justify (+ I would still need to work on what job I would actually get after, since N2-N1 is still far lower than native level).
Being a university professor (not an English teacher) in business or a related field would also be something I would consider, so I have also researched PhD programs in depth. Though I’m not sure how much having a PhD from Todai or another famous university would help unless you had the Japanese skills to go along with it. I’m a very academically minded person, so it seems like an environment where I can thrive.
Based on what I have seen, the most common jobs for non-Japanese speakers in Japan are teaching, recruitment or IT, with the only exceptions being something who goes into full-time freelance writing, photography etc, or starts their own company.
The ability to work independently is something I greatly value, and going forward my goal would be to establish my own company in my field:
Recruiter -> My own agency
Photography or writing hobby ->own creative media company
Software Engineer -> freelancer
I understand my post might be a little bit of a mess, it’s just that this has ben stressing me out big time for the past few months and I’m really not sure what else I can do. My friend group isn’t huge, so it would be greatly appreciated if I could get some other peoples perspectives, especially those who may have been in a similar situation in the past.
**In Summary:**
1. What is the career path of a long term recruiter in Japan
2. What are some other career opportunities out there for non-Japanese speakers (even if new skills needed to be learned)
3. Would full time language school be worth it?
4. How hard is it to break into something like freelance photography or freelance writing?
5. What job do you do, and advice for other people who wanted to land a similar role
It’s a shame that so many non-Japanese speakers leave Japan after 1-2 years because they are unable to find a way of establishing a satisfying career here. If we all helped each other then I’m sure it would give value to a lot of people.
Thanks again in advance!
by Last-Masterpiece-598