So moving to a new job in most countries, you give your notice to your old job, maybe take a week off between roles, and start on the new gig.
For jobs in Japan, from job offer, to first day in the office, what kind of time periods are employers giving for new foreign hires? I’m more interested in non-ALT job experiences – I would assume there’s some extra allowance for visa application and processing, packing up for the move, etc… what’s everyone’s experience?
7 comments
I requested 2 months from signing offer letter so I could give 30 days notice to my old company and another month off just for my own time. They were able to adjust to my request. From what I have seen, Japanese companies tend to like hiring at the start of a financial quarter, so probably April, July, October or January are usually good time frames to start.
I was originally given about 1.5 months but thankfully (?) due to the pandemic I requested to push it off several more months. Which was ideal since we needed time to pack up the family house, have a garage sale, etc.
If you’re not in Japan yet, and therefore need a visa, it would take ~3 months or more to get that processed.
The first step is to apply for the CoE, which the company will do (you just fill in some forms and send in some documents that the company requests). The company will probably start this process within a week from you accepting the job offer. The application process usually takes about 2-3 months.
Once you have the CoE, the visa application takes 1-2 weeks.
If you’re already in Japan, you don’t need to do any of that visa process, unless you change career completely. So you can start the new gig immediately after quitting.
Because immigration is involved, it really depends on how quickly your paperwork goes through. As to whether a country would put off their schedule to suit your needs, it depends how vital you are.
I signed my offer letter May 31st. My first day is September 1st. We started the immigration process right away and I’m now just waiting on my Visa so the immigration process which I got very lucky with has still taken almost 2 full months alone. My CoE was processed in 2.5 weeks so it was definitely on the quicker end.
I signed offer 7 months before I start. They were okay no problems. They tried really hard to get me to start sooner but visa alone already takes 3 months, and I wasn’t gonna give notice to my current employer until visa are guaranteed, because of recession and layoffs and what not. If you have legit reasons and you have leverage, 6 months should not be an issue
Mine was about 6 weeks.
Job offer was March 16th. It took until April 28th to have my COE in hand. I took it to the embassy the next day and had my visas within a week. Then, it was just a matter of booking my flight.