Not getting a job but getting an interview in a Japanese company
The core concept
This idea came again from D&D and my old thoughts about looking for employment.
It’s about researching the Japanese market, creating a resume, getting ready for an interview and attending it. Sounds like job hunting, but I try looking at it rather from a side of language learning in action, so let’s dive into my mind and see how it might look!
Finding a bunch of related fields
The first stage is a stage where I have to create a resume, I thought. But the thing is, to create a resume I have to offer myself as a working unit of a field, so instead, firstly I’ll start by highlighting all the fields in which I feel I can fool people by pretending to be a part of that field.
My primary fields are language learning, teaching, and backend web development. But for this challange it’s not what I need. What I’m looking for are the fields about which I have quite a wage understanding, but they are still related to the things I’m good at, so if I read a book or two, and then do some interview preparation practice, it should fool an interviewer into thinking that I’m actually a working unit at that field. For me it would be, marketing, finance, human resources, international connections, etc. I’ll have to find more of those. Just write them down for now and be ready to add some more to them while doing other preperation stuff.
Preliminary market research
The next step would be to make a dive into the Japanese market. I think first it’s good to get a good grasp of it in general, questions like “How many public companies are there?” “How many startups are out there?” “How and when do they hire people?” “How many companies are in fields that I wrote down?” “What do they use to find candidates?” “What do companies look out for in general?”
Grasping the core idea of the market in general is a necessity, as well as creating a good understanding of how many companies are out there that can offer an interview.
It’ll be good to have a spreadsheet with all the companies of Japan that could potentially have an interest in my character (base it on the list from the previous point), this makes it more like a game where I see all the stats.
Deep diving into one field
So now, having a grasp of the market, understanding of what I can propose, and a list of suitable companies, I can start building my character.
First I’ll choose one field about which I feel particularly good, and identify companies specifically for that field. I’ll try to research what skills they need, how the CV should look like, and what experience they want. At this point it should go as deep as possible. Also, at this stage I learn the basics of the field and try to learn stuff that will help me look like I’m a part of it.
Creating an image
After having gathered all the necessary information, I can start creating CVs
In my CV blank, which is my character sheet, I can now put anything I want as long as it’s believable enough. As a baseline, I’ll use my actual age (+3-4 years sometimes maybe), ethnicity (unless I want to fool them with it as well), and level of Japanese, but for other things like education, experience, visa opportunities, location, field of course! I can go as far as my imagination takes me!
And of course I’m not making one CV! It’s interesting to see how the reply rate would change according to having just work experience without a degree vs degree but no work experience. Would I be able to make a CV with no work experience, nor education, but make it just so interesting for a recruiter so they would call me anyhow? A lot can be done here!
Getting ready for the interview
And now I’m getting to the essence of all this. After getting to the interview, I’ll have to demonstrate a lot of things like
- Keigo, and different levels of it in case it’s a multistage interview
- Understanding of the culture and work culture
- Understanding of my subject area
That gives me a good framework of understanding what exactly I have to learn now!
For the Keigo I’ll first try to understand the nuances and how it works within a company on different layers, for now on paper. It’s necessary to start listening to the interview recordings, which I have to find in plenty on youtube. Start taking lessons on italky with someone who has worked in a company, so they can give me assistance with that as well, I can try talking to them in different keigo registers and get corrected. Another thing I want to try is going to a random Italki voiceroom, assigning each person there their workplace and title and without saying a word of warning starting to talk like I’m in the office.
Culture and work culture are mostly regular information gathering, which includes reading articles, watching youtube, and maybe reading a fun how-to book.
Understanding the subject area is probably one of the most beneficial things here. First of all I’ll have to learn about it in Japanese. I’ll probably have to write a few articles in an appropriate register and see where I’m getting stuck or switch to a non-professional tone. I’ll probably have to also learn quite a few phrases really well, as a framework.
So this is where I’m getting a lot of Japanese output practice even before attending the interview itself!
Getting to the interview
As one would expect, before getting to an interview, I’ll have to send my CVs to companies, but just sending CVs would be boring, and probably not that effective. Instead, I’ll choose companies where I would want to have an interview, and I’ll create a cover letter for each of them.
(Now looking it up, I understood that in Japan it’s just a part of the resume, not sure how it works yet, but I have the vision so I’ll continue with it)
So yeah, writing a cover letter and personalising a CV is a perfect opportunity to do a lot of writing practice!
But, to create such a letter, I’ll probably have to dive a little bit deeper into each company, go to their page and see what they do, how big they are, see what people online say about it, and question myself if I really should be going for an interview there?
This step is going to be a balanced letter, because as for now it sounds like it takes a lot of time. I probably won’t do it for each company.
Getting through the interview
In this imaginary step I can define three main objectives.
- Prepare for the interview
- Get through the interview
- Get them hooked for more interactions
After getting an offer for an interview, I shell dig even deeper into the company. Knowing what it does, what it needs, and what the customs are there should help immensely.
I’ll also be recording the interview. While it lasts, the only thing I can do is use all the preparations of mine, all the knowladge and language skills I’ve acquired, trying to be as much in caracter as I can, like Odysseus who returns to Itaka, and seeing a shepherd, who in reality is Afina in disguise, immediately comes up with a 5 page story, teling about his origin, who’s son he is, who’s killed whom from his family, and so to whom he seeks vengeance.
Another very important thing here is, to try and use some tricks, to make their side want to interact more with me. Maybe they can offer some kind of guides before the employment, or better some kind of guided courses where the person would explain something and interact with me (and maybe other people who want to get the job), maybe it could be showing me to more people and making them talk with me, as a part of some kind of procedure. I might even try to get a probationary, for a week or two in a rare case? This point is up to my research, I’ll have to figure out what that possibly could be.
After the interview
After the interview is finished, I’m left with a video recording, which now can serve me for further improvement.
First of all I can identify my language weaknesses and mistakes. Then I can work with them by creating Cloze type cards with mistakes – the usual strategy I use for Italian lessons.
Then I’ll have to figure out what wasn’t that good about the content of the interview, what I didn’t know how to answer, where my facade knowledge was too shallow. I’ll have to identify my weak points in understanding of the subject area and make them stronger for the upcoming interviews.
Afterword
Foohoo, I couldn’t imagine this post becoming so long! Everyone who has read it through – 心の奥底から感謝いたします！
This post was probably the most fun to write for me, I really enjoyed it!
If you folks have any ideas on how to make this even more fun and language related, I’ll be glad to see your responses!
Thanks again for reading and cheers!
If you have any decks where you folks did something simmilar, could you share how did the graph went down?
