Work Visa without a colleage degree but 10+ years of experience on QA (IT)

3 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

   —

   **Work Visa without a colleage degree but 10+ years of experience on QA (IT)**

   I have been reading this:

   [https://quickjobsjapan.com/career-guide/starting-job/procedure-of-changing-from-a-student-visa-to-a-working-visa](https://quickjobsjapan.com/career-guide/starting-job/procedure-of-changing-from-a-student-visa-to-a-working-visa)

   and some other links but I cannot find which exact papers do I need to proove I have 10+ years of experience in a field.

   The information on the internet differs from source to source and I just would like to know if somebody knows or had experience getting a work visa in the same situation as me.

   My situation is, I almost got my student visa, so I will be moving to Japan and studying Japanese in an institute.

   Right now I work as a contractor for a German company, I have been working with them for about 6 years, and they seem to have offices in Tokyo. I talked to them and they told me that they will get me a part time position which the student visa legally allows.

   So, how realistic is to think that they could try to get a work visa for me?

   I have around N5 Japanese knowledge, but my company is fully English speaking. I don’t have colleage studies. Everything I know I learnt it on the Jobs and only me can do those tasks in my current position, hiring someone new would take several months of training.

   I have 10+ years of experience, but I am unsure how should I proove them, since some of the companies for what I worked for are unreachable to me now and others changed name within my country. I do have the tax reports that those companies paid to my government to have me as an employee, would this work or mean something?

   Which other papers should I try to start looking for that could help me get the work visa?

   Any tip is welcomed.

   *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/movingtojapan) if you have any questions or concerns.*

2. If they’re willing to get you into the office, would they have been willing to do an internal transfer for you? It won’t be an option for you if you’re moving to Japan as a student unfortunately, but the internal transfer only requires that you’ve been working at a foreign branch for at least one year before they relocate you to a Japan branch.

   ​

   >I have 10+ years of experience, but I am unsure how should I proove them, since some of the companies for what I worked for are unreachable to me now and others changed name within my country.

   Do you have any performance reviews that would include a description of the work you were doing at the time of the review? Do you have contact details for old managers and could you get them to sign off on simple letter? A colleague of mine used the experience route and he just reached out to his old managers, wrote letters describing his job duties (obviously playing up the aspects that related to the work he was going to be doing at my company), and had his old managers sign them. That worked.

   >I do have the tax reports that those companies paid to my government to have me as an employee

   These probably aren’t overly useful. Certainly include them, but if they don’t specify the work you were doing they won’t help prove that the experience was relevant.

3. When I was proving my work experience for HSP purposes (already been in Japan) I was told by immigration lawyer to omit any contractor work. I had letters of employment on agency stationary and/or contracts but lawyer told me immigration is only interested in regular ft company work history or entrepreneur history. Also any work that overlapped with studies was slashed. Could be only in case of HSP but might happen when getting regular visa too.

   Citing email from my lawyer back then:

   > Regarding professional career, I excluded a contract period at ***** based on the immigration authorities’ regular practices not recognizing contractor work at all.