Hey, it’s been a while.
I would usually use this blog to write about my ‘adventures in Japan’ but I would like to address something that has consumed my life throughout these past few months. Job hunting in Japan. Whilst it was most certainly not a ‘fun’ or ‘exciting’ adventure, it was a considerable challenge and I think it deserves to be recorded so that future generations can look back and wince in pain at ‘what it used to be like’. This is going to be a really long one, so I won’t be offended if you skip between sections! Anyway, without further ado, let’s get started.
An Introduction
The spread of coronavirus has quite literally plunged Japan back into its medieval state of 鎖国 (Sakoku), leading them to both postpone the 2020 Olympics and totally prohibit entry to the country from any non-Japanese nationals (allegedly even returning foreign residents). Long story short, it’s really not the right climate for foreign job seekers. This understandably threw dampers on my desire to seek employment in Japan, but as someone who changed their university degree from chemistry to Japanese and translation studies with the specific intention of living in Japan, giving up now would have been a major blow to my self-esteem. So I didn’t, and I managed to see it through to the end. Therefore, I would like to use this blog entry as both an informative piece and an homage to my own experiences thus far. I’ll start by explaining the ‘normal’ job hunting process in Japan and how it had to adapt to counter the spread of COVID-19, then going on to recount my own experiences as a foreigner trying to break my way in to the country. As an extra bonus, I’ll throw in where I managed to find employment and what I’ll actually be doing there when it starts in April.
Job Hunting in Japan
So, we’re going to start by talking about the bog-standard method of Japanese job hunting, or 就職活動 (shūshoku katsudō), which is a period of time that resides within the nightmares of all but the most resilient Japanese students. Why? Because it is possibly the most frustrating experience that any young person has the misfortune of finding themselves in. Allow me to explain.
For the average Japanese student, job hunting will begin in their penultimate year of university. Realistically, however, the earlier one starts looking the better. This may seem obvious but it is actually really important as many companies will completely finalise their recruitment process over a year in advance of the advertised job actually starting. That’s right – if you haven’t secured a job by March 2020, you will likely miss out on lot’s of opportunities for an April 2021 start. This was a problem I faced too, as whilst I spent my penultimate year of university studying in Tokyo, I had so much work to do that I couldn’t spare the time for socialising, let alone job hunting. As a result, I came back to the UK knowing none the wiser and ultimately missed the recruitment deadlines for many of the companies I was originally planning on going for.
So let’s explain the job hunting process itself. I’ll list the steps neatly here and explain them in more detail later on, so make sure to fasten your seat belts.
- Pre-entry (プレエントリー)
- Explanation Session (説明会)
- Entry Sheet (エントリーシート)
- Aptitude Test : 1-2 times (適性検査：1-2回)
- Personality Test (性格検査)
- 1st Interview : HR (一次面接 : 人事)
- 2nd Interview : Managerial (二次面接 : 責任者・管理職)
- Final Interview : Executive (最終面接 : 役員)
- Job Offer (内々定)
Note: Many Japanese companies also implement ‘group interviews’ in which you are asked very similar questions to a normal interview but there will be 2 or more interviewees giving their response in turn (it really sucks). There can also be ‘group discussions’ which are similar to group interviews but involve intercommunication between participants, usually in the form of cooperating to solve a task (these suck even more).
Personally, just reading that list back makes me feel nauseous. As a disclaimer, some companies may have 2 interviews, others only 1, but this list should reflect the recruitment process used by the large majority of Japanese businesses. The problem with this process is that it is extremely time consuming. Just because you passed steps 1-7 does not mean you will pass step 8 (and in fact many people don’t), meaning that, if you fail, all of the time you spent getting to that point goes straight out the window and you’re back to square one. To counter this disappointment, the average number of companies that a Japanese student applies for during their job hunting is around 20, but many people recommend to go for 30-40 just to be safe. Here’s a scenario to put it in perspective. You are a Japanese student in your penultimate year of university and want to start job hunting. Like many others, you want to start your career in Tokyo, but it takes you around 3 hours on the bullet train to get there from where you currently live. Traditionally, i.e. up until this year, all explanation sessions and interviews, even exams, had to be attended in-person. So if you applied for 30 companies, even if you were lucky enough to attend 2 explanation sessions per day, you would still have to go to Tokyo 15 times just for that first step. That’s 90 hours of travel and a whole lot of money just to find out if you like the companies you are thinking of applying to. That’s just the first step, but I will touch upon the exams and other steps later on whilst regaling my own experiences.
Luckily I didn’t have to do any physical travelling for my job hunting, but it’s absolutely worth thinking about the mental impact on students after they’ve spent such a ludicrous amount of time and money on applications, most of which will inevitably be met by a simple rejection email without a lick of feedback. Luckily, however, there is a simple solution and it only took a global pandemic for it to come into effect.
COVID-19 and the Transition to Online Recruitment
As a kid I imagined the year 2020 would see us all riding around on robotic dinosaurs and shooting each other with laser beams. Okay, it’s not particularly realistic but in terms of technological progression we’ve actually done far better. What 2020 does offer us is a hugely saturated market full of both educational and recreational apps and devices through which we can learn languages, new skills and even help cure mental illnesses all from a small device in our pockets. This means you can keep in touch with family across the globe, learn languages without leaving one’s country and even meet new people in different countries without leaving the house. So why on earth did it take us this long to implement online interviews?
If COVID-19 has a silver-lining, it’s that traditional face-to-face interviews have been taken off the table. They can’t, and shouldn’t, be an option. This no-doubt caused a great deal of stress to HR workers across the world as they had to recruit new staff without actually meeting them in person. However, online recruitment has now come in to full effect and is being praised by not only applicants, but also the recruiters themselves. Recruiters can also dial in from home, meaning they can get through far more interviews in less time than it would take if they were run in-person.
Remember that recruitment process list a few paragraphs up? Imagine it now, but every step can be done from your computer. No travel costs, less wasted time and you don’t even need to wear trousers whilst you talk to the big cheese. Of course it’s still time consuming, and there are certainly areas in which the process could be streamlined, but it’s a drastic improvement on what was happening before. Most companies still require an in-person interview for the final step, but this is understandable and also important for the applicants as they will be able to assess the working environment that they are applying for. So, given I acted as something of a lab rat in this transition, I’d like to explain the rest of the process through my own experiences.
My Personal Experience and Opinion
I’ll tell you honestly, I’m not an interview guru or a master of Japanese recruitment. In fact, out of the 30 companies I applied for, I only received an offer from 1. Sure I could blame it on the status quo, but where’s the fun in that? There’s no easy way to categorise my experiences as all companies are different, but I will try to split this section according to the aforementioned list that we have all come to know and love, starting with pre-entry.
Pre-Entry（プレエントリー）
This step isn’t particularly difficult, and has no effect on one’s application, but is important for keeping track of the ridiculous number of companies that you are applying to. The biggest recruitment websites in Japan are Mynavi and Rikunabi, stellar examples of the inconsistencies of ‘b’s and ‘v’s in Japanese transliteration. Through these services you can submit your ‘pre-entry’, basically conveying the fact that you’re kind-of interested, to as many companies as you’d like. However, what I found was that companies using these websites for recruitment were primarily expecting Japanese people and nothing else. Both websites are exclusively in Japanese, so perhaps it’s not too surprising? Either way, I applied to around 20 companies through Rikunabi alone but hardly made any progress whatsoever and had to rethink my strategy. In my case, I decided to scrap it all and start using Disco Inc.’s bilingual Career Forum as my primary job hunting platform.
The Career Forums typically take place in cities around the globe, with notably large ones in London, Tokyo and Boston. However, COVID-19 saw most of these events move online and therefore made them much more accessible to those not living in the cities that host the events. I attended the online London Career Forum in April and made progress with a handful of companies, but ultimately got completely dropped, including from one company I had done 4 exams and 2 interviews for, leaving me absolutely devastated and completely unmotivated. After finishing my dissertation and other university work, I tried again with the Tokyo Summer Career Forum, which had also moved online, and was again rejected or totally ignored by many of the companies I applied to. One company in particular invited me to attend their explanation session, but I was completely unable to book a slot despite following their instructions to the letter. Upon sending them a very polite email (employing my best honorific language), a pleasant lady replied explaining to me that my Japanese was not technically ‘native’ and therefore I was not viable for the position. She explained this all to me in Japanese too, so I was left slightly bewildered with a splash of exclusion and a bit of a grudge. Anyway, I politely refrained from replying and turned my sights elsewhere. Let’s take a look.
Explanation Sessions (説明会)
Apart from the company I mentioned above, most others were more than willing to welcome non-Japanese people to their explanation sessions. The only real barrier I felt with these was that the time difference between the UK and Japan meant the sessions were frequently very early in the morning or very late at night for me. This unfortunately led me to give up on more than a few places due to the fact that attending the sessions is compulsory and I often wasn’t willing to stay up until 4am to find out about a company I had never heard of. Also, some sessions lasted up to 2 hours which gave plenty of information about the company but was a total deal breaker if it started any time after midnight.
From the sessions I did attend, there were a few different delivery styles. Some of the larger companies such as Accenture and PwC had their own recording studios which made them look like daytime TV shows, whereas other smaller companies either rented smaller studios or just spoke into a webcam. Possibly my favourite type, however, was the interactive explanation session style. With this, there would be a host (usually someone from HR) and several other active employees present in the call too. Sometimes these employees would simply be there to answer questions put forward in the chat, but other times the session would be split into groups and you would get the opportunity to speak to them face-to-face. I found these to be the most engaging as you can actively ask questions and learn a lot more about the company than you can from being talked at for 2 hours straight. That was a brief explanation of the explanation sessions, so let’s move on to the application itself.
Entry Sheets (エントリーシート)
The Career Forum service submits your English/Japanese CV to any companies you pre-apply to, but most of said companies will invite you to sign up for their MyPage system. This keeps all of their recruitment internal, which I totally understand. One thing to note, though, is that many companies use the MyPage system so make sure you know which login details are for which company otherwise you may get locked out forever. Once you sign up, you usually have the options to upload a picture of your face, submit between 1-3 entry sheets depending on the company/role and take their aptitude test(s).
The entry sheets share a similar format between most companies and usually require your basic information alongside your reasons for applying to the company and role, what you put most effort into during university and any extra qualifications you may have. More specialised positions will ask about your research at university or any project experience you may have. Unlike British companies, however, they do not tend to ask fresh graduates for employment history or references, which is quite nice.
In total, I submitted 21 entry sheets. However, this includes some companies that used a video entry system instead. Video entries were more interesting, as you had to introduce yourself and explain a certain topic within a very short 1-3 minute video. Whilst I think they certainly lack the level of detail one can put into an entry sheet, they are no-doubt more interesting for both the applicant and the recruiter so I thoroughly enjoyed doing them.
Right, on to the dreaded exams!
Aptitude and Personality Tests (適性検査)
Much like everything else addressed so far, the style of exams and their difficulties differed between companies. That said, the ‘SPI’ exam style was used in the majority of places that I applied to. The SPI is usually split into 2 sections, ‘言語 (language)’ and ‘非言語’ (non-language). The language section is essentially Japanese language-based questions aimed at Japanese people, focussing on the structure of set phrases, analysis of long texts and logical insertion of sentences into said texts. As a non-native speaker of Japanese it is hell on earth but also a great opportunity to improve. For me, despite passing the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test around a year ago and having studied Japanese at university for 3 years, studying for these exams really re-opened my eyes to the level difference between advanced and native speakers. They are super difficult. In fact, I’m going to use the next few months going over practice questions as a new method for learning Japanese as they are that tricky.
The non-language section of the exam is essentially just maths and logic-based questions, but I had quite a lot of problems with this as I had never studied maths in Japanese and the questions have a strict time limit so will automatically proceed to the next question if you don’t answer it in time. I did maths to A-Level at school and never really had any problems with it, but there were certain problems such as ‘つるかめ算’ (tsurukamezan) which would be basic knowledge for a Japanese student, but we are not taught it here in the UK. Tsurukamezan doesn’t even have an English Wikipedia page or direct translation as far as I am aware.
There are many other exam styles, mainly ‘WebCAB/GAB’ and ‘Tamatebako’ which are more maths-focussed and include sections on logic, code-breaking and abstract reasoning. Some companies also employ English tests, but they’re not as common as I would have liked…
Finally the personality test is more of a chore than anything else. It consists of hundreds of questions that you have to rank in order of importance or pick which side is more like you. For example, the left hand side could be ‘I hate rules’ and the right hand side could be ‘I can’t think for myself’ and you would have to pick between them as there are only 4 levels with no neutral middle value (i.e. X○○○○Y). I didn’t mind it at first, but it is literally the same exam for every company so you end up doing it 20-30 times as it consumes your soul and makes you question your own reality.
Away with that, let’s take a look at interviews instead!
Interviews (面接)
It’s been a long journey so far, but thank you for sticking with me. I’ll try to breeze over the main questions I was asked in interviews and explain the process as simply as I can. Most companies have more than one interview, with the first being a fairly ‘casual’ chat with somebody from the recruitment team. When I say casual, I mean less like you’re decorating your words for God and more like you’re talking to a well-respected uncle. The main questions I was asked in the first interview are as follows:
- Introduce and sell yourself i.e. notable experience, skills, hobbies etc.
- What did you put the most effort into whilst at university?
- Why are you interested in Japan?
- Why did you choose our company rather than other similar ones?
- Where else are you applying for/how far along their recruitment process are you?
- What is it you want to achieve by working for us?
- Where do you want to be in 5-10 years time?
- Questions about experience/entry sheet
- Do you have any questions for us?
- Is there anything you don’t feel like you had a chance to convey during the interview?
All-in-all nothing too offensive. The question about which other companies you’ve applied for is always really difficult, and asking the interviewer questions at the end is just as important in Japanese interviews as it is here in the UK. I had 6 first-stage interviews, 1 of which was a group interview, and passed 5 of them so I don’t think the difficulty level is particularly high. As long as you’re nice and know what you’re talking about, it shouldn’t prove too challenging.
The second interview, however, is much more important. It will usually be with managerial or supervisory staff instead, meaning they will know exactly what kind of person they need for the job and whether you really know what you’re talking about. Again, I’ll list some common questions here:
- Introduce and sell yourself i.e. notable experience, skills, hobbies etc.
- What did you put the most effort into whilst at university?
- Why are you interested in Japan?
- Why did you choose our company rather than other similar ones?
- Where else are you applying for/how far along their recruitment process are you?
- What is it you want to achieve by working for us?
- Where do you want to be in 5-10 years time?
- Questions about experience/entry sheet
- Do you have any questions for us?
- Is there anything you don’t feel like you had a chance to convey during the interview?
Notice anything… fishy? That’s right, they’re pretty much exactly the same questions as the first interview. Part of the reason for this is that they want to check you aren’t lying about anything you’ve said previously, but it certainly get’s a bit repetitive as an applicant. I’m not Japanese and they may change the questions slightly to reflect that, but it seems relatively common. Whilst it may be repetitive, the second interview allows you to appeal directly to the people you may end up working under and ask them questions about the job that the previous interviewer may not have known the answers to. Long story short, asking questions at the end is very important.
Finally, there’s the ‘final interview’. I only had 2 of these so can’t really comment on what the process is like in general, but one of them was almost identical to a regular second interview and the other was completely different. The latter was quite intense so I would like to share my experience here.
My most recent and final interview was actually quite down to earth despite how it may sound when I describe it here. Unlike previous interviews in which there had been mainly 1 or 2 staff present in the call, this one had 4 higher-ups including the CEO attending from a large office room. From their perspective, my face was plastered onto 2 big projector screens at the front as I tried to convince them I was a good candidate for the job. After introducing myself, they asked me questions in turn with the topic varying from person to person. Whilst there were still questions about why I want the job or why I want to work in Japan, I think there was a lot more focus on finding out how committed I would be and whether I would actually cope with not just the job but also living in Japan long-term. This is something I had not been asked too much about in prior interviews but I was moved by how different their questions were. There were no traps, no ‘what kind of breakfast cereal are you?’ questions, just honest concerns and good conversation. I scraped my way through and managed to pass the interview, receiving an offer the next day. Given I was on the brink of giving up and going to do a master’s degree, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how I felt when I strolled into my parents room to tell them my 4-5 month battle had finally come to an end.
The Future
That just about sums it up! Obviously there’s a lot more that I either couldn’t fit into the post or can’t make public, but for now I am very pleased to announce that I will be starting a new chapter of my life at Intelligent Wave Inc. as a systems engineer next April.
This has always been a fairly lighthearted blog where I would just write about travelling and decent food, a trend I’d like to continue if possible, but for now it’ll be goodbye for another year or so until I have managed to settle into my new position. Of course if COVID-19 breaks through into COVID-21 then all will be lost and my life plan will be absolutely ruined, but here’s to being positive and hoping it doesn’t come to that.
Stay safe and try to stop the virus spreading so I can get to Japan ASAP!
See you all next year.
quick nose around Hakata station because of running for the train but I managed to make my way to Kitakyushu without any major problems. On reflection, I do regret not stopping for a bit in Hakata to buy the はやかけん transport card. Japan has many different designs for their IC transport cards which usually depend on the prefecture/region that they are bought in. I decided to keep these as souvenirs rather than the fancy CocaCola bottles shown above because they’re lightweight and won’t explode in my luggage. The ones I have so far are ICOCA (Kansai), SUGOKA (Kyushu) and mono SUGOCA (Kitakyushu monorail). Tokyo uses PASMO for the underground and SUICA for the Metro, so I will go and buy those at some point too.
BristolGaijin 