Hi there,
I will be graduating in June 2023 with BSc in Computer Science from a top 20 Russel Group University in the UK. I plan to travel after graduation but would like to also/or spend some time in Japan. My long-term plan doesn’t involve living in Japan permanently but for about a year or so. So, I am thinking of 2 options and one seems more likely than the other.
First, doing a 3-6 months language school from which I will get to live in Japan and also come with knowing the language at a certain level. The bad side of this would be the gap in work/study in my area of expertise(Software Development).
My second option would be to find a graduate job as a Software Developer in Japan and work there for 1-2 years, then transfer/move to the UK/US. Based on what I have read, this is hard to do with little to no Japanese and/or being already in Japan.
The third option is to do neither of these.
I would like to make it clear, that I used to have an obsession to live in Japan and etc, but as most people like me have come to the realisation that living in Japan would be horrible in the long term.
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TLDR;
Should I try to get a graduate job as a Software Developer or do a language school for 3-6 months?
3 comments
Taking a gap year immediately after graduating isn’t a huge problem. You could do language school or try out for JET or just get a working holiday visa and do whatever. Then after a year head home and get your career off the ground.
I wouldn’t bother trying to compete with the domestic fresh grads for entry level positions. They’ve been pipelining for those jobs since their third year of university. The jobs themselves would be mostly office gophers anyway. Not particularly valuable experience for you.
I honestly wouldn’t worry about a less than 1 year gap in work experience in the CS field. Keep yourself fresh with projects you can show and it will barely be a gap.
Try to get a job. Start applying jobs for fresh graduates in dev role or try to contact recruiters through LinkedIn.