I’m a sophomore at an American university studying Computer Science who is interested in moving to Japan after graduating. I was looking around and found that the two most important things when finding a job in Japan are language ability and work experience. Well, in my case I’m already N1 level and pretty fluent at Japanese, but I’m interested in moving to Japan right after university so I wouldn’t have had any work experience in the field. Can I still move to Japan like this?
What are some ways of getting a job/visa? I have a friend who got a pretty good job through recruiters, though he had fluent Japanese *as well as* a decent amount of work experience. I also heard of a strategy where, people get a crappy English teaching job simply to get the COE, then they immediately dip and apply for other jobs. How viable is this strategy?
How should I go about applying to jobs after graduation? What websites are good for that? For those of you who have used recruiters, how was your experience with that? What are some good recruiters I can look into?
Are there other options out there that are better? Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**How should I go about getting a Data Science/Data Analyst job in Japan?**
I’m a sophomore at an American university studying Computer Science who is interested in moving to Japan after graduating. I was looking around and found that the two most important things when finding a job in Japan are language ability and work experience. Well, in my case I’m already N1 level and pretty fluent at Japanese, but I’m interested in moving to Japan right after university so I wouldn’t have had any work experience in the field. Can I still move to Japan like this?
What are some ways of getting a job/visa? I have a friend who got a pretty good job through recruiters, though he had fluent Japanese *as well as* a decent amount of work experience. I also heard of a strategy where, people get a crappy English teaching job simply to get the COE, then they immediately dip and apply for other jobs. How viable is this strategy?
How should I go about applying to jobs after graduation? What websites are good for that? For those of you who have used recruiters, how was your experience with that? What are some good recruiters I can look into?
Are there other options out there that are better? Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
​
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>I also heard of a strategy where, people get a crappy English teaching job simply to get the COE, then they immediately dip and apply for other jobs. How viable is this strategy?
This isn’t a good strategy. If you try to apply for a new job within weeks of being hired at an English teaching company, most interviewers would see that as a red flag. If you stay teaching too long, you will become entrenched in it. Any decent company should be able to get you a COE without relying on an English teaching company.
You can search job sites like Doda, recruit linkedin etc. Recruiters can be helpful, though in my experience, the jobs they introduce tend to not be as good as ones you find on your own or get through connections.
>I also heard of a strategy where, people get a crappy English teaching job simply to get the COE, then they immediately dip and apply for other jobs. How viable is this strategy?
This is a ***terrible*** strategy that could end up screwing you over in a number of different ways.
It’s going to be a huge red flag to the people screening your application, because ditching a job that quickly doesn’t say great things about your character. It’s also going to be a red flag because it screams “I want to live in Japan at all costs” and kinda reeks of desperation. So you may end up getting passed over for jobs because of it.
It’s also going to be a huge red flag for immigration. While it’s not outright visa fraud, it’s kinda-sorta skating along the edge of it. When you go to change your status of residence (because an English teacher and a data scientist would be on different statuses of residence, aka: different visas) they’re going to ask some pointed questions about whether you ever actually intended to work for your original employer.
You’ve got N1 and a degree in a relatively in-demand field. You can get hired directly. Just talk to recruiters and/or apply to jobs directly. There’s no need for any of this cockamamie nonsense with getting a throwaway job.