I’m involved in my company’s recruitment process, and we get a ton of foreign applicants living in Japan. In the fully Japanese application form, we ask about Japanese and English proficiency, as most of our position require Japanese.
The majority of foreigners would simply select “business-level Japanese”. But the moment an HR member gives them a call, it turns out they can’t speak any Japanese at all.
And while we do have a few positions that don’t require any Japanese, these candidates give off a VERY bad impression by lying about their very obvious lack of Japanese skills in the first place.
So, perhaps … don’t lie? What’s the point even?
49 comments
I think it’s less about lying and more about an extreme overconfidence in their Japanese level
Why do the HR people always sound like they’re balancing a giant brick phone from the 90s on their shoulder while they are taking a piss when they call?
JLPT is a poor indicator of actual communicative ability. And people who only have casual conversations with friends tend to think, “What more is there to learn?” At least until they pick up a novel and try to read it.
That said, “business level” is extremely vague.
Because “business-level Japanese” is a near-meaningless statement. It’s heavily subjective.
As someone whose Japanese is barely conversational, I’m definitely guilty of overselling my Japanese proficiency when applying to jobs. With communications happening through email or Slack, and translation apps readily available, I know that I can survive and even thrive in a Japanese speaking office. In fact, I’m doing that right at this moment. Yet, many companies will still demand business level Japanese from their candidates, when in fact that’s not really all that necessary. So, if I see a job ad where I feel like I’m a perfect fit except maybe not meeting their language requirements, I’m still going to apply, oversell my Japanese ability and then work stuff out at the interview stage. Some recruiters will be like you and insist my Japanese is not good enough, others will review my profile a bit more holistically and let me meet the team, then go from there. That’s how I’ve landed two jobs here so far (starting at N5 level), and I would recommend anyone to do the same in all honesty.
You can’t imagine just how bad people are at self assessing their own level of skill (which is why I absolutely hate when I receive resumes with skill dots).
They probably don’t willingly lie, it’s just some form of dunning kruger effect. The guys are just not yet good enough to realize that they are not good.
A lot of people feel N2-N1 is business level, and JLPT gives them this image. It’s more conversational, in my experience. It could be that they’re answering based on their test results?
Because job listings often exaggerate the requirements necessary to do the job, very rarely will a company list exactly the bare minimum requirements for the job, there’s usually some leeway. This doesn’t only apply to language skills.
Source: my current job said they required japanese skills, but I did all my interviews in English and got hired. I’m learning japanese on the job.
I sell myself as conversational as I’m still working on my Japanese. With that said, I’m unsure of what japan wants from foreign workers amidst its self proclaimed labour issues.
There are many foreigners here that would take an honest salary if given the ability to work in the department and learn on the go (assuming they can follow along)
In the same vain, I see job posts asking for bilinguals who have years of experience, certificates and specialised knowledge and the pay is the same as someone at an 英会話 and I just wonder who are they asking for…
sometimes it is not their fault.
N2 is equivalent to business level usually.
but you will be surprised about the number of N1 holders who can’t hold conversation fluently.
I have N2 and it has been 4 years since I got it. My level would be probably around N4 at best since I only use english on daily basis.
Cause wtf is “business-level Japanese”? Horribly subjective term. At least in the states it’s super common for applicants to oversell their abilities.
Some people are probably just bullshitting. In this case, of course you are right, bad first impression if they actually can’t speak it at all.
A couple random thoughts though.
In defense of bullshitting: With how much of recruiting and job-hunting is done online with check boxes and pre-set levels, I can definitely imagine a bunch of HR people selecting (arbitrarily) “Business Level”, when in reality all the position needs is a basic conversation level. People don’t want to self-select themselves out of positions that they can reasonably handle, even if they aren’t *technically* there on paper.
In general: “Business Japanese” in some cases just means N2. People might have that but be pretty shit at talking to people on the phone. I took the JLPT in Korea with a bunch of college students and high school kids from the foreign language high school. Plenty of them passed the test but many probably couldn’t hold a conversation.
On the other hand, officially “Business Japanese” doesn’t *actually* mean anything. To some people it will be a level less than fluent/native, but capable of general written/spoken Japanese. To others it will require being capable of writing and speaking all the various keigo and phrases you need to be a functioning salaryman.
If you list None-Beginner-Intermediate-Business-Fluent-Native as the options, a TON of people will choose business based on their own interpretation (and picking anything less than that seems like a death sentence for any application).
I have a friend who worked in an all Japanese office setting. He barely speaks Japanese. His boss got angry when he mispronounced 人口…
They could be very good at reading/writing(or typing)/listening but shit at talking. That’s me, but I don’t oversell my Japanese, if anything I undersell it and hope they’re impressed that it’s better than I said it was
On the flip side I have met people/ work with some who have jlpt1/2 yet cannot speak Japanese for shit and cant at all give presentations/ talk in meetings.
“Fake it till you make it.”
A saying a lot of desperate/wise job seekers follow. 🙂
Maybe your company should set keywords to distinguish the candidates. Business-level Japanese with several years of working experience in Japan to screen the candidates.
There are so many people who pretend they can speak English and Japanese. I heard one case from my friend, their HR recruited a staff who can’t speak English and Japanese. That’s totally insane bec their place needs bilinguals…I do feel sad for them.
Many of us people applying for jobs often have our time wasted by HR so you can politely deal with some slight inconveniences as well
As someone who regularly do interviews, yes, you will need to deal with embellishment. Let them have their bad impression (especially if they are applying through an agent), you don’t need to care about that.
Fortunately, it’s easy enough recognize language skills so unless the candidate has something else that’s great enough to offset this you can cut the interview short
Wages have hardly moved in 30 years but candidates are expected to undersell themselves to shacho?
Was in charge of interns at my previous company. We westerners tend to massively overestimate our Japanese ability and many try to show a can do attitude e.g. if you just try hard enough you will be able to manage the language until then.
Had a marketing internship position which required minimum N1 (or equivalent) Japanese proficiency since the person would be working in a Japanese team. Was stated as that in the requirements. But kept getting applications from Europe and the US from people who had no or only beginner’s Japanese.
Had one persistent guy flip on me because he was rejected from CV. “How dare you deem my Japanese to be insufficient without an interview?!”. He had just gotten N5 and was studying hard for N4…
Probably for the same reason employers lie all the time about job requirements or are simply totally clueless about them AND then lie during the interview AND continue to lie after they hire an applicant.
Hey Op can you dm me the recruitment company as I’d greatly appreciate some assistance navigating a career.
I can barely speak daily conversation N5/N4ish
– no lie!
Lol but seriously looking for some work that’s not English teaching.
Do you differentiate Communication and Reading skills?
My Japanese skills differ greatly depending on which of these are asked about.
Well there are two obvious solutions, aren’t there? The first is to require the JLPT, or to stated as strongly recommended. The second is to put in the job description that the first 10 minutes of the job interview will be conducted entirely in Japanese.
Because there are obvious solutions that haven’t been enacted, I imagine that the people who could have made those changes are happy wasting their time, probably because they don’t want to do other tasks that the bosses might throw at them if they streamlined matters.
You sound a bit like you shouldn’t be involved in the recruitment process if you don’t understand why people put “business level Japanese” even though it doesn’t match your perceived level of what that should be.
I’m afraid to ever claim I have business-level Japanese because, while my reading and listening skills are good, my speaking and writing abilities lag behind quite a bit as I don’t get as much practice in those two areas as I should. If I were to be in an all-Japanese environment every day, I’d probably improve those areas much faster. It’s just getting to the all-Japanese environment that’s my challenge. Though I’d still not be inclined to lie on my application, I can see why people exaggerate their ability just to get their foot in the door.
Very simple. Specify a JLPT level (or equivalent fluency) as a prerequisite for applying for the job.
I know, that’s not what the JLPT gives you, but actually it’s what it’s intended to achieve.
Or maybe someone’s skills and knowledge are actually more important than understanding keigo? Hmmm.
I’ve had interviews for jobs where the job listing merely listed “proficiency in English and Japanese” — and the actual requirements for the positions have varied wildly. It’s such a nebulous term. Proficient doesn’t mean “native speaker,” nor does it mean “fluent.”
One job really just wanted a native Japanese speaker who was also a native-level English speaker (with 5+ years experience in a niche industry that you can only get working abroad, because the Japanese version of this industry is stuck in 1999).
Another job really just wanted to make sure you weren’t bullshitting and could handle the Japanese portions of the job. Work and company is entirely English, but requires reading Japanese quickly. Interview was conducted partially in Japanese and test was entirely in Japanese.
In the US at least, if you don’t check the certain requirements, then your application will automatically get discarded.
So probably the same mentality here ?
At my current job, Japanese was mandatory despite it being an international company. I have been here for over a year and I have never used Japanese. That is why they lie.
Not only that, if it’s just communications on Slack or via email, you can easily get by with ChatGPT and asking it to translate something in keigo with near perfect translations.
In fact, I had an interview 2 days ago and I told them I can’t speak very well Japanese, but if its just on Slack or email communications, I have business level Japanese.
These are the same people who think that “conversational Japanese” means knowing a few greetings and being able to ask where the restroom is.
Hmmm… I’ve had the opposite experience. Jobs ask for N1 and I don’t have it, but when I go to the interview or do phone calls they say my Japanese is good enough. I’ve never taken JLPT either.
Maybe people heard stories from people like me and assumed that’s how it works but didn’t take into account it doesn’t work with shitty Japanese? Just a guess.
🤷♂️
Just post the job listing in Japanese and conduct the interviews in Japanese.
I don’t see the problem.
I do interviews of software engineers for the company I work for, and because it’s a consultancy, the engineers are required to speak to the Japanese client at times. Not only have many candidate’s Japanese been quite obviously non existent, but the ENGLISH ability of some of the (mostly Indian/Bangladesh) candidates been appalling also! How do they expect to get hired?
They lie to get jobs. Most requirements are embellished.
I’m shocked at the number of people here who think “Business level Japanese” is vague. You’re expected to do the interview, train, work, communicate with co-workers, bosses and clients without sounding like a baboon. Even with minimal googling, you can tell that BJT is more difficult than JLPT N1.
Sometimes you are hired without the written requirement level because they WANT a specific level of Japanese and not NEED it. It just means that your professional skill was more valued.
I once applied for a job and specifically told the recruiter that I DO NOT speak Japanese.
I roll up for the interview, and the interviewer starts in Japanese. I told her I don’t speak Japanese, and she frowned, and checked my resume which said ‘Japanese- spoken’.
Turns out the recruiter added it in. Lesson learnt- never ever send a word document of your resume to the recruiter.
Joke’s on my current employer. I speak Japanese just fine, but I’m actually shite at the actual job part of my job and nobody’s caught on yet.
There are some people that grossly exaggerate their abilities, but in some cases I can imagine it’s done to get past getting automatically filtered out. I’d hate that.
That being said I’ve had to work with someone who on their LinkedIn listed “full professional proficiency” of Japanese, and then proceeded to record an interview of a Japanese person from our company, *hire a freelancer* for transcribing the audio, then failed to translate that transcription to English because both her and her freelancer couldn’t figure out what was being said, and then left it to me and my colleague to do it… what the fuck.
A good 90% of my “business” emails are “了解しました。おつかれさまでした。”
… and that’s it. Maybe I thow in a yoroshiku if I feel like being daring and risking confusing someone.
Japanese is mostly about following scripts, and these scripts are highly specific. Even if someone is perfectly capable of speaking “business Japanese” that doesn’t mean that they have memorised the “taking an interview call script”. This is literally something that is taught to university students during their job hunting phase because **even native Japanese speakers don’t know it.** Just like they’re taught the protocol for job interviews. I’ve seen these scripts, and they are most definitely scripts complete with stage directions.
And on joining a company the **native Japanese speakers** are handed scripts for handling customer calls in the way **that specific company wants**.
So honestly this entire “must speak business Japanese thing” is just such nonsense. Yes, some basic Japanese proficiency is required, but beyond that it’s just a question of training the candidates to follow the company script – **just like they do with freshly recruited Japanese university students**.
Honestly I think that a lot of people involved in recruitment in Japan have been through this process of being trained themselves, but lack the self-awareness to recognise that they were in fact being trained.
Anecdotal but I (N2 haver) recently had a phone call with a recruiting company. I’m seconding what the other guy said about why th di recruiters sound like they’re calling from inside a blender. My native Japanese husband was in the room during the call and he said even he couldn’t make out what they were saying
I’m part of the hiring process at our English-speaking agency in Tokyo and it’s the same but reverse. A lot of Japanese people saying they speak Business English, and they cannot hold a basic conversation. As many have said here, depends on the gig and if it actually needs the language requirement so I think a lot of people see it as a bit of a joke requirement.
Because “business-level Japanese” is not a very good measure. Some people are better readers than speakers. Some may have good Japanese skills but just suck at interviewing in general.
I suggest that you come up with a stricter measure, like requiring a specific level of JLPT to apply.
If you are positive that they lied, just reject, ban, and move on.
Would your HR even give a call if my resume says “basic level Japanese”?
People doing what they can to get through the screening process. Do you blame them? Find a way to change your screening process if it bothers you.
“Business level” is meaningless out of context. Engineer who interfaces with english documentation and only communicates with chat? N2 is no problem.
Interfacing with Japanese only customers on a daily basis? N1 may not even be enough.
Both are “business level” but without context are wildly different.
Frankly, job ads often come across as if they’re looking for anime protagonists instead of actual people. I’m sort of in the opposite situation to the people you’re complaining about – I can, genuinely, speak Japanese, but get turned off by experience requirements or things that pretty much are experience requirements without explicitly being so.
Personally, I deal with “must have saved at least one planet by the age of 15” job ads via the old fallback of long-term unemployment and self-hatred, but I can’t blame people for reacting to the realisation that it’s all bullshit by lying about some things and, if they’re lucky, hiding from HR the fact that they’re (shock horror) a human being with as many imperfections as the rest of us.
This happens in every non-english speaking country with English too. People think they can get by with bullshit and then reality happens.