I am a stressed Graduate student at a Japanese university in an English-based program.
Currently, I am interested in and researching about the job hunting experiences of international students in Japan. Having job-hunted myself, I know how it can be but I also know many of us can have vastly different experiences, so I would love to hear about them 🙂
Maybe some questions to give you guys some general inspiration:
What were your original goals after graduation?
What did you think when you first learned about the job-hunting system in Japan?
Did you have any fears or concerns before starting?
How did you experience the job hunting? Did you do it the “traditional” way? (e.g. job fairs, entry sheets, group discussions, 2\~3 interviews)
Did you receive a lot of support from your uni, other organizations, or those around you?
Did something shock you? Disappoint you? Pleasantly surprised you?
What are some of your thoughts looking back at the whole job-hunting process?
If you have any experience or thoughts, I would love to hear about them!
3 comments
1. Originally I didn’t have much particular plans. I wanted to join a company related to my studies but those were few and far between. Other tham that, I considered remaining in academia or finding any job.
2. It was frustrating. Since I was a PhD, I couldn’t go thru the shinsotsu system. Of the shinsotsu system that I did get interviews for, I felt it was too sheltered and they treated candidates like little kids.
3. I guess language was the only fear. I just passed N2 and while I could get by, I wasn’t anywhere fluent.
4. I did the traditional way at first, job fairs, entry sheets all that stuff.
5. I did a little. The career center of my uni did get me 1 interview, but nothing came of that.
6. The shinsotsu system kind of upset me. I felt there was no focus on asking skills and that they were just looking for yes men as opposed to people who have vision, a plan and specialized skills.
7. I realized that getting a decent job requires connections. A lot of career fairs, and even recruiting to some extent are just looking for “filler” positions. It is very important that whoever is hiring you understands your aspirations as opposed to netting in a giant pool of candidates and just picking out someone based on some formula.
I will try to answer few of your questions, as I just recently started working in a Japanese company after finishing my Phd at early thirties.
Regarding original goals, at start I wanted to go through all the way of academia. However, I realized through my phd that I did not wanted to go through infinite post doc hell and instability that life is. I can say I did the “traditional way”, however with the caveat that I applied only to positions that I could interview in English and do entry sheet in English. That totalled to 8 companies or so I guess (I did not research it deep though).
Out of these 8, I only had interest in one, which is the actual one who decided to interview me. I actually did not use any service from my university, on the contrary, they were quite unhelpful when I needed a recommendation letter from them, and lucked out that in case of phd, you can get that letter from your advisor. Although in some sense their name helped.
My process was fairly simple, it was two one hour interviews, where I actually had to present my research in the first 15 minutes or so followed by a QA section from what I guessed st time from senior employees. Then some traditional HR question from the obvious HR guy.
I got the answer at same day through phone call about results.
So I guess my experience is quite unique and diffentt even though I applied through traditional way. All I can say is I think that my research aligned to what they are also doing and it was just a case of good match.
No experience. I knew from the outset there was essentially no work to be had in my field here.