All the old posts from the old Your-Japan.com on the Your-Japan Blog Network

This week became a lot busier than I thought. It’s been interesting to see waves of contacts that I made when I first arrived come back around now. I’ll break it down day by day.

Monday - I got a call from a translation company that I had been contacting recently, but their HR center is located in New York so the call came in around 1am. Meh, I guess I’m not really in a position to complain. It ended up not really being an interview, but rather the person in HR just wanted to confirm sending me a translation trial test by email. The translation test is really…hard. I don’t really think this one is going to happen.

Tuesday - I had lunch with a fellow from recruiting company number two, but he actually just quit his job to set up his own recruiting company. He gave me some advice on avenues to pursue that I hadn’t thought of before (magazine companies, universities, etc), but nothing really materialized from the meeting. Nice guy though, and he paid for lunch.

Wednesday - I had an interview with investment company number four. This one went pretty well. The interview was mostly in English, with a short interview in Japanese to test my ability. The English interviewer was really easy-going, and is actually a big advocate for bringing in people fresh out of college (my kind of guy). Hopefully I’ll get a follow-up email soon once he checks with different departments and ¡Èassesses their needs.¡É

Thursday - My first interview with a hotel here in Japan. I’m kind of split with this one, because even though the two Japanese people who interviewed me (interview all in Japanese) seemed to warm up to me, they also just seemed to compliment my Japanese over and over. I mean, I expect the usual ¡ÈYour Japanese is so good!¡É every once in awhile (although the less the better), but it usually doesn’t bode well for me if they keep doing it. It usually means they see me as more of an ¡Èoutgroup¡É person and use the complimenting to reenforce that feeling. We’ll see if they actually follow-up with me.

Friday - This was a pretty crazy day. I met with the recruiting company (number one) of the original headhunter (he left to go to work in Hong Kong) and they told me that they were going to open up a research position and that if I wanted, it would be there in September. This is an attractive position for several reasons. First of all, it is a small business, half Japanese and half foreigners. My primary job responsibilities would be calling potential clients (people looking for jobs) and customers (businesses looking for clients) and assess their needs…in Japanese. This means both phone and email primarily all in Japanese. One of the Japanese guys who is in charge of all the translation there used to be a university professor and they basically said that he would mentor me on my business Japanese. My only hitch is that I don’t want to get sucked into just talking with all the foreigners at the office. They all seem pretty close and tight-knit and I’m not really sure I want to get drawn into that. Pay is great and a full month and a half of paid vacation per year. They were even cool enough to let me go out and keep looking for jobs so I can figure out what I want to do. And then if I decide to go with them, the position will essentially be waiting for me.

In the afternoon I had an interview with a medical supply company in Japan that I had just sent a random email to. I had done an internship back in the states every summer during university at a medical supply company, so I had picked out a bunch of them in Japan to send emails to. The place is the Japanese branch of an American company, so they’re always needing documentation to be translated, as well as interpretation for when they send teams to the States or vice-versa. The interview was entirely in Japanese as well and seemed to go over very well. We talked about what kind of salary I wanted, where I would live, etc. Most of my interviews don’t get that far. They then ended the interview by saying that they just need to contact the home office in America and they’ll get back to me. Needless to say, it seemed to go very well. This company looks good because the environment is entirely in Japanese. No English. The only thing is that it seems like kind of a traditional Japanese company environment, so it might not be as flexible as the recruiting company from the morning. We’ll see if they give me the positive response I’m expecting.

The two big triumphs of the week was:
1. The job offer from the recruiting company
2. I got called back for a second round of interviews at investment company number two! Interviews start Monday.

Looks like I’m in the safe zone now. I can always take the recruiting job and I don’t have to teach English.