Since March I am continuously trying to apply for a job as a junior full stack developer in Japan but with no success.
I tried a lot. Applied directly and also through recruiters (some are really nice and helped me a lot with coaching and so on).
I will explain my background.
I am 32 years old, living in Germany and will graduate in March 2025 with a Master‘s Degree in Computer Science.
I have worked before in sales and marketing and then decide to switch to IT.
I have N3 in Japanese and can handle daily conversations, interviews and meetings within the team.
I have studied in Japan for a year and worked part-time as a software engineer for a Japanese company.
After coming back to Germany, I am trying to find a job in Japan for March 2025.
I had like 15-20 interviews with recruiters and about 7-8 real interviews with Japanese companies. But only 2 or 3 I moved to the next round. In the end all failed.
Reasons:
– I need N2
– My personality (according to the weird Aptitude test) doesn’t fit
– my Age (like what? In Germany nobody cares of my age)
– not enough experience
And lot of standard rejections.
I had interns and always have worked when I was a student but seems internships are worth nothing in Japan as they want full time work experience 3 years plus…
Lot of recruiters said I have a good chance (we did mock interviews, pimp up my Japanese resume) but I guess they don’t wanna deal with overseas candidates (sponsor visa etc).
I tried LinkedIn, TokyoDev, Daijob, Gittap…
The coding interviews and coding assignments usually goes well as I often get follow up interviews.
I really don’t know what to do, as I am very determined to go to Japan. I also think of attending a language school with a student visa to go there and then apply for a job.
Any advices?
Gain more experience in Germany and then go to Japan? Is it very difficult to find a job as a junior software engineer in Japan? I applied about 50 times… here in Germany I don’t have any problems finding a junior job for 55k € but in Japan, I can’t even find a job for 4m ¥ lol..
I really want to go to Japan by April 2025 after my graduation…
by Haidepzai