I’ve been an ALT for years, and I have a pretty good position right now. Pay is about 30万, paid sick days, and twenty nenkyu. I know lots of people would probably do terrible things to get my job.
The issue with being an ALT though is the lack of permanency. I’m married, and as of earlier this year, have a kid. I worry about continuing to do ALT work as it’s always just year-to-year contracts, even if it IS a good contract with a good BOE. I know from personal experience that you can be doing a great job as a direct-hire ALT, but somebody up the chain can always decide they’re going to go with dispatch or jet or something and then you get booted. Happened to me a couple years ago with another direct hire position, me and every other direct hire got the boot and dispatch took over.
Ever since then, I have had a lot of difficulty believing in the stability of it year-to year. So I”ve been looking around at other jobs.
Back in my home country, I had certifications and experience in an industry that I’m not gonna be able to work in here for various reasons. So I’m coming at the market with an arts degree, conversational Japanese, and a family to support. Not the best of situations, but here we are.
I had an interview for a hospitality job for a place that’s just opening up soon that’s hoping to pull some international clientele, and so they want a few native English speakers on hand. The interview went well, they’ve told me I”m past the first round of selection and they’re making their final decision. It seems like a nice place and a potentially fun job – get to meet lots of people and help come up with ideas for events, promotions, social media stuff… I’ve got some connections to people in my area I could use to help do events, my spouse is a native of this area and through them I’ve learned a bunch of local places of interest… provided they decide they want me, the job seems like a good fit. Except for the salary.
The range the hospitality job offers is from 23万. So that’s likely what they’re going to offer. But! They did say that this will lead to a permanent, full-time position. They also stated annual raises and bonuses twice a year (based on the performance of the business, which as it’s new is still an unknown, but still). They also pay overtime, so chances are I will be working some overtime and getting paid, though that’s not a big selling point, if you work more hours you get paid more, makes sense to me.
What I’m wondering is, whether this will be a good move for my family in the long term. On one hand, less money is a pain point for us, as we’re already tightening our belts a bit now, and were thinking of having a second kid. I don’t know if a Seishain position like this will eventually outstrip what I”m making in my cushy BoE job. Plus it’s gonna be much harder on free time. I clock out at 4:15 monday to friday now, and with a hospitality job? Who the hell knows.
My spouse also works in a hospitality job, so they can vouch for the fact that there will be less personal time, but that from what I’ve said and the job description says, could very well be fun. It would require me to really make an effort to spend time with our kid each day, whereas right now, it’s pretty simple. But I worry if I stick with ALT work it’ll let me down and I”ll have to eventually take a less paying position, and end up doing side work anyways to help pay for the kid’s stuff once they get to elementary, junior high, etc.
I”m also worried I might be getting a bit worn out on ALT work. I like it alright but every year it changes depending on schools, teachers, curriculum… Plus, it’s tough to see myself still doing it when I’m 40 years old.
I know of course that nobody here can just say what’s best for certain, but if anyone has thoughts, comments, questions, etc. that could help me contrast and compare my choices, I would sure appreciate it.
10 comments
>They did say that this will lead to a permanent, full-time position.
If there is anything I learned, don’t count on what people say. Get it in writing. See if you can get seishya-in track written somewhere in the job contract. It happened to some people I knew. Employment Contract says fixed working hours, but boss let them have flex time and a bunch of other non written perks. When new management rolled in, all those perks poofed into smoke and every employee was forced back into fixed working hours.
I think you’ve already sorted most of the bads of the industry out, so I’ll just add some extra bits I was told by some of my buddies.
First, you night want to consider the impact that working on shift (土日祝 included) night have on your family life. It’s definitely something you wanna talk about with your wife before taking the job. Also, make sure you won’t have to work on graveyard shifts: working from 15:00 until 9:00 of the following day (with some 2-3 hours of rest in between to avoid the “max 8 work hours a day”) or something like that seems to be the norm.
The sooner you get out of ALT work, the better.
23万円きついわ、、、
I took a pay cut to leave the ALT industry, and it was a rough couple of months as a single person (although I have a girlfriend). Can’t even imagine how it would be with a family. I did recover and now am paid much higher, but are you sure you’re willing to risk that? Hospitality doesn’t seem like there’s much upward mobility unless you actually own the hotel, become a manager, etc.
1. I’d wait till your a bit more stable before having sprog #2.
2. Hospitality has some upward mobility. ALTing has none. Unless the BoE is willing to hire you permanently I’d move although if money is an issue and you’re getting by okay now maybe wait till your contract is up.
3. If your spouse works hospitality then you know what the job is going to be like. Especially as the “low man on the totem pole” but at least you’ll have some security and regular raises.
I can’t offer much advice, but here’s my experience for perspective.
I am single, and worked at a hotel for 3 years. 23万 was the base pay, but the company also provided housing (3万 deducted from salary), I didn’t need to pay electricity, got health insurance & nenkin as well. The company thankfully followed the rules on overtime from my batch of new employees; every hour of overtime was paid, and time was clocked every 15 minutes. My seniors were less fortunate, they were paid only if their overtime exceeded 30 hours per month, called みなし残業 or 見込み残業.
I was promised 2 days off for every 5 days work; your standard divide but as you say, the exact day changed every month. We were able to request which days we wanted off for the next month and they were usually able to accommodate.
Some of my colleagues were mothers with young kids, so they requested every 2 Sundays off, and were also mostly granted. This was for back office work.
The restaurant staff were busier. They often couldn’t get the allotted number of days off in a month because they were so busy. The tradeoff being they had all those days “given back” during the hotel’s annual maintenance period. i.e. they got 2-3 weeks extra to their annual break.
You mentioned your spouse also works in hospitality, so you know to expect to work on weekends and national holidays.
23万 worked for me because I’m single and I could save up on living costs (utilities was covered, I occasionally took home any leftover まかない food). Maybe you could compare the salary offer to your spouse’s, or see if they offer any other benefits/allowances, since you have a family.
You are smart to get out of the language teaching industry, but is this your only option? What does your spouse say about careers, advancement, and salaries in hospitality?
If there is a reasonable to high probability you can eventually reach a higher comp and stability in say the next 3 years, then maybe go for it. If not, I’d look for other opportunities/industries.
I wouldn’t want to work for 230,000 plus unpaid overtime and without all the holidays the ALT job gives you. Sounds fucking dreadful and below minimum wage at Macdonald’s back home.
Being an ALT is pretty shit, but it’s less shit than that sounds. At least it has SOME benefits such as long holidays, low stress and downtime to do something else like study or whatnot.
I wouldn’t worry too much about losing your job if you’ve been here a while. You should be entitled to at least 6 months of hello work money should you get booted and that will likely be about 200,000 yen going by your current salary. That’s more than enough time to find something else.
I’ve changed careers twice in Japan and each time I carefully worked out the pros and cons, and made sure I had a backup option in place (like picking up part-time work in the industry I left). I feel like in this situation you are moving your career forward in a positive way, especially as you are getting out of eikaiwa. It’ll be scary – both of my changes were too – and it won’t be risk-free. But in my case looking back I am very glad I took the leap each time. Good luck!
I’m a former direct hire ALT turned seishain. My situation is different from yours, but I strongly urge you to ditch ALTing asap. Like others have said, it has zero career advancement or job stability. That initial jump will be difficult at first, but the long term benefits far outweigh the easy money of ALTing. I took a substantial pay cut but I also have a long term visa, job stability, tons of benefits that I didn’t when I was an ALT and opportunities for career growth and salary increases.