Hello!
As I searched on this sub, I read IT certifications are ***not really*** worth in Japan, but my current job really encourages us to take some of them, so I thought searching for a certification that could be even a *bit* advantageous when Job hunting in Japan would be a good idea… since I HAVE to get certifications.
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>Background: (27F) I have a degree equivalent to a Bachelors (studied 5 years) on IT, Networking and managing projects. I am 6 months in working in a Cybersecurity company in my home country as my first job, and this weird company makes you work in several IT platforms while getting certifications for each of them (think of Jack of all trades, master of none)
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>My languages are native Spanish, good English (my certifications were done in English) and N4 (I know I have to work on this)
I don’t have a “I need to go to Japan right **now**” urge *yet*, so I plan to work at least one year in this company.
Here are my questions:
\-IT Certifications are ***not really*** worth in Japan as I read, but is there any certification that you recommend anyways? As in “I have a friend who has this one and helped him…” or “I read about this one a lot in job listing”. As for now I have some Splunk, AWS, Fortinet and CATO certifications. Have knowledge of CISCO and Checkpoint too but never tried to get certified.
\-My job on paper currently is “Starter Cybersecurity Engineer” -this is because it’s a “job training” program since I am a fresh graduate, but it **IS** a full time job with **full** payment- will this “*Starter*” part in my job title be a problem when job hunting? Should I just say I am a “Cybersecurity Engineer” right now?
\-I have more experience doing *support help desk* and consultancy tasks than “*hacking the NASA*”-kind of cybersecurity activities. If I desire to follow the help desk/consultancy line of work, would it be against me on job hunting that my current job experience will be on “Cybersecurity”? As far as I know, Cybersecurity in Japan is well… not really amazing.
\-Do Japan recruiters use LinkedIn? I am starting to post my certifications there with some Japanese in hopes some recruiter sees it haha. Or should I look in other platforms?
PS: I do not like programming, and I don’t know programming. I am **not** suited for that kind of positions like Software Developer (that seems to be the most popular IT Job 🙁 )
Thank you so much and have a nice day!! 🙂
8 comments
Wild suggestion, but have you tried, I dunno, looking at LinkedIn to see if jobs in Japan and Japan-based recruiters are on the platform?? Have you tried searching this sub for past posts discussing where to find IT jobs?
The AWS stuff is pretty useful.
AWS SAA would be very useful.
Can confirm that AWS stuff is good. Google Cloud Platform is also popular in Japan, so might be worth looking into that as well. What type of security and regulations are being used varies per country (think variations of ISO certs), so it’s probably best to keep those kind of certificates more general/global.
Microsoft certificates seem to be useless in Japan.
AWS and Azure for sure
Japanese are crazy about excel and outlook meaning Microsoft meaning Azure active directory too. Knowing both aws and Azure would be good
Why Japan though? You can make a way better living in the US, have a better career progression, and will avoid all the hardships of living in a country where even after years of intensive study your language abilities will be lesser than those of a middle schooler, and you will never be considered part of the society.
Following this thread as I feel like OP’s background is a bit similar to mine:
– 29M with a diploma in general IT, no bachelors, but 10+ years of career experience
– Started as helpdesk and now an mid/senior systems administrator specializing in cloud services and infrastructure
– I have my AWS SAA certificate, but it has expired and I did not renew it
– Currently at an N4/N3 level
– I also do not like programming and would not like to do that all day, but I do make small scripts here and there for automation purposes
On sites like [https://japan-dev.com/](https://japan-dev.com/) which show IT job listings, it’s a shame that most of the listings are for software engineering related jobs (although the creator of the site did say they may look into expanding into other sections of IT). For myself, I am currently working on getting up to an N2-N1 level while studying to become SRE (which is also seems to be pretty hot right now). I hope that helps.