How can I leave recruiting?

24 comments

1. Have you considered going into tech? It doesn’t require Japanese. Maybe your husband can help you out in someway ?

2. Even if your colleague knows your other account, won’t they know this is you anyway based on all information you’ve given which they probably know lol

3. You can pivot into basically anything but you need the skills. That’s it. So, what do you want to do? Changing industries without retraining is exceptionally difficult, so you might need to be willing to go back to school or train in another industry. You could switch your visa to a dependent visa which will allow you to study while working part time.

4. Could you not just find another recruiting role in a different company?

5. Try your recruiting ability to recruit yourself into another work even at an entry level.

   I’m surprised by number of agents. Recently set myself open to work and there are dozens of agents already. Seems too much competition and work.

6. I’ll never get tired of the irony of a recruiter asking how do I find a job…

   Good luck though.

7. Sounds like the perfect time to quit your job and find yourself. If you can afford it, take a break from work and try figure out what excites you.

8. Have you considered ALTing, at least for a while? The pay is probably worse than what you’re currently on, but the hours are really short, usually 8:30-4:15 or shorter, and school holidays off. There’s not a lot of responsibility, no overtime, and often a lot of free time during the work day (although that will depend on your school)

   Its not really a long term career but it might be good for your mental health to do a job that’s low pressure for a year or two. Use all that free time to rebalance yourself, study Japanese, and figure out what you actually want to be doing.

9. I guess you’ve probably realized English only versions of the jobs you’ve got experience with a rare here. Even gaishikei firms will want some Japanese.

   Time off work would allow you to plow into language study.
   Personally I took a one year career break and went from no Japanese cert to N2. As your partner has N2 they are an excellent resource.
   You could get a part time job or volunteering for convo practice. When you start a family is up to you cowboy!

   But If you think you will be long time residents and potentially parents then getting your Japanese level up will be key. That’s possible in maternity leave but I sense you’ll be preoccupied..

10. Well dunno if helps, but if the short term goal is to improve your numbers, im in tech looking to “upgrade” my career lol

11. How far into your 5 year visa are you, and do you plan to stay in Japan longer?

    If you think you will be here long term, the best advice I can give is quit your job, suck it up on the wage loss, and go full bore into Japanese language study. At a minimum, your life gets easier. At a maximum, a world of opportunities opens up.

    I have been an internmediate speaker for a long time. Even at that level it is really quite difficult to get opportunities. You need to get demonstrably business level to open up various opportunites.

    I have a few recruiter friends. There career path has been pretty much JET to recruiter. Some have started their own recruiter businesses. Haven’t seen anyone move on from that.

12. If money isn’t really an issue, I would recommend working in a restaurant to pick up the language. You will have all sorts of opportunities for conversation, and coupling that with reading in Japanese in your spare time, you should be able to pick the language up to a comfortable job-search level.

    However, know that capitalism at its best will always be soul crushing because it will always call for growth to sustain the system, which means better and faster at all times.

13. How is your financial situation?

    If you and your husband are doing reasonably well and have enough income as a unit, you might want to consider working part-time.

    There’d obviously be a big hit to your salary, but you’d get a lot of extra time which you could use to study Japanese, gain another skill or pursue a hobby.

    I might get downvoted for this, but you could even consider being a housewife, especially if you want kids anyway. Obviously don’t just have kids because there’s nothing else to do, but if you do want kids anyway then being a mother is a full-time job in and of itself and holds plenty of value, especially in conservative Japanese society.

    If reducing your hours or quitting your job are not realistic (if your husband doesn’t earn enough to support both of you), then as I see it you have three options.

    1. Change jobs to a different industry like teaching or general affairs in a foreign company, taking a small(er) hit to your salary but putting yourself in a better place mentally.
    2. Quit your job and reduce expenses. Maybe consider moving to a cheaper place, quitting subscriptions, replacing restaurants with home cooking if you don’t already cook every day etc.
    3. Stick it out. It sucks, but if you’re earning reasonably well right now then the money you make now will facilitate your ability to change or quit your job later or have kids. It might be worth working for a little longer to build a cushion to help you switch to part-time work.

    Sorry I don’t have any advice for the recruitment industry in general – from what I’ve heard from a friend in that industry it’s the sort of job that you do for maybe 3 years, make a ton of money in a short amount of time, then burn out and leave.

    Whatever you do decide to do, good luck and do let us know what you decide to do.

14. I feel like the sidestep of recruiting would be something HR related, so maybe look for a Western company, where English and N2 Japanese is viable, you already have people skills if you’re a recruiter, you know how a lot of things work on the HR side.

    Edit – just noticed the n2 is your husband, but I imagine you some Japanese if you’re a recruiter, so I stand my original post.

15. I dunno about other people, but if the targets are stressing you out even though you are very capable, then I wouldn’t bother trying any harder.

    If you get paid more for trying harder then that’s all the motivation I need to do better.

    I do care how the work is done as a reflection of myself, if the goals/outcomes are reasonable.

    Having said that, I have no understanding of your industry and background.

16. Why not work remotely for an english speaking company?

17. Some international companies (law firms in particular, based on my experience) will hire HR managers or BD managers who don’t speak Japanese. They have assistants or in-house translators who can translate things into perfect Japanese for client-facing documents, and a lot of the work internally will be conducted in English amongst colleagues in other offices.

18. I think for most people, the most intuitive career strategy is to increase or maintain your income level. If you think in terms of maximizing income minus expenses, sometimes a high paying job isn’t always the best option. I took a 20% pay cut moving from the Bay Area to Kansai, but my rent, health insurance and taxes went from 85% of my income to about 25%. I earn less, but I keep more.

    I don’t know your situation, but perhaps you’d have more attractive options if you considered shifting gears in terms of your lifestyle. A lot of lower-stress jobs start to make sense if your bills are small. More modest financial goals can really widen the possibilities. If you look outside of Japan’s big cities, this isn’t so difficult to find.

    For example, maybe start your own company? If your bills are pretty high, that probably sounds insane. Running a business is hard, but if it doesn’t have to generate a ton of income, then it doesn’t have to be *crazy*-hard. Japan has a lot of casual, almost hobby-like companies that would never survive in the US. You know the type. Shops that are only open two or three days a week in the afternoons, or craft vendors at farmers markets. That isn’t to say that people don’t take them seriously, but people do invest the time and effort that makes sense, and that isn’t always “all of it.”

    I think there is more room to calibrate a level of effort that works for you than you would have in the US or the EU, especially if your husband’s income is roughly the same.

19. Definitely advise either trying to get a job as internal recruiter at a company, or trying to take a bit of time off to go to language school/look into courses that could give you a skill and Find out what you like. Good luck!:)

20. You are 30f and thinking about delaying children? 🤣
    Get your freak on and start now ffs.

21. >I do not speak Japanese–the idea of moving came up rather quickly for me, and while I’ve been studying ***here and there***, it hasn’t amounted to much more than pleasantries.

    I’m going to be blunt with you here, but this quote basically summarizes your working career. You’ve gone ankle deep into work and language and you are not satisfied with the result, as to be expected. How deep are you willing to dive into not just Japanese, but *anything*? You’re not against settling down in Japan, but are you *for* it? Can you commit to learning anything for a few hours every day? As Bruce Lee once said, spend 10000 hours in anything and you will master it. This will guarantee you a job in the field of your choice. Probably don’t even need 10000 hours.

    My recommendation: Do ALT while learning Japanese and maybe a light technical skill (ITIL, A+, etc) for the jobs you’ve been recruiting for and you might have something desireable after a school year, but it sounds like you jokingly have one foot out of the door on your career.

    Bring on the downvotes.

22. A lot of people in Japan come in on ALT visas and quit to do recruiting.

    Since you are in a recruiting position that you are having enough of my suggestion is;

    First set some firm boundaries in your personal and professional life. Do your best while at work, but figure out a time that you end your day and stick to it. If they pressure you to perform high, enthusiastically say you will do your best and ganbarimasu ! Then go home at whatever time you go home at.

    No one likes to not hit their numbers, but if this isn’t your end game then even if your contract isn’t renewed that is in some ways easier than quitting. If you are employee then it is much harder to fire you. AND you have only been there 7 months – it will get easier with time and they don’t expect you to know everything. So take some of the pressure off yourself. Make sure to use your days off.

    I would not quit without having another position found and agreed upon. I would give my notice.

    My recommend is to search big American tech companies like Amazon for anything not requiring Japanese. Then just start applying. I know those kinds of companies want to hire women. You are in a unique position of being able to search for some of these during your day job too. There are lots of tech positions that aren’t coding – project management, sales etc. This way if you go back you might be able to transfer.

    I would also research Linked in for people who have worked at your company or other recruiting companies before and see what jobs they landed in afterwards. Focus on English resumes with people who don’t speak Japanese.

23. Maybe talk to a recruiter in tech sales, customer success?
    I mean if you are a recruiter and your husband is a 30 year old IT engineer who speaks Japanese, I assume you got him a sweet gig and you do not need much extra income.

24. You could go to Japanese school for a bit or self study to increase some opportunities for yourself. Also, many friends of mine came from education/recruiting and switched into coding – many are self taught and it allows for remote work, hard work though of course but you could do it!

    Also there’s the entertainment industry, a lot of my friends work for production companies either as video editors, videographers, marketing, etc. It seems fun.

    OR find something else and freelance tht shit 🖤 u got this! There are many feasible alternatives, don’t let anyone tell u otherwise fr. Everyone makes their own path