Re: [tlug] Looking for Summer Internship in Japan

[Nicolas Limare <nicolas+tlug@example.com>]

Hi,

> Nobody looks at the true skillset, no matter how you present it unless you
> can claim that you have written code in the asked for language for many
> many many years [...] When looking for work, the most promising
> approach is to only focus on what you have done during your last
> three years of work and try to remove all else.

I went looking for a job three months ago and I had a more nuanced
experience. My background is image processing, no experience out of
academia, no experience in a Japanese environment, 6 years working
remotely from Japan (out of Tokyo) with foreign people (Paris
researchers).

I had no contact in the tech community; I was planning to ask on TLUG
if nothing came out, but I didn't need to.

Job search websites (japanese ones) recorded my profile and sent me
offers for jobs I was absolutely not interested in. Useless.

I went to a "job fair" to let a few companies know I am there;
distributed CVs and business cards, and some of them recontacted me
later, but this is not for a quick recruitment.

Hello Work introduced me to haken companies and local CAD software
players. The local Hello Work office for foreigners is more used to
provide service to dekasegi brazilians working in car factories, but
they were willing to help me, and helpful. A polite old lady calling
human resources is more likely to secure a first interview than me
with my broken Japanese.

Recruitment companies[1] were nice, with different stories.
* Some of them (the Japanese-oriented ones) helped me a lot to
  format my resume and CV in Japanese, and sent my profile to many
  companies, mostly in the car industry where image processing is
  increasingly used.
* Others (the English-speaking ones) focused on the software
  engineering side and introduced me to potential employers in
  different industries (finance, search engines, ...).

I had contacts with about 20 companies, phone interviews with 10,
face-to-face with 5, in Japanese and in English. In one company,
interviewers were more interested in my approach to software problems
than my skill list. They use C++ but were not worried that I was more
a C guy whou could never figure out how to use Design Patterns. And we
drifted to discussions that could have happened with geek friends over
a beer[2]. I'll work with them from next month. It's a US company in
the financial services industry with offices in Japan.

What I learned from these three months:
* Applying through the "recruitment" pages of company websites is very
  slow, some answers come 2 months later, some just never come.
* Lots of Japanese companies recruit freshly graduated candidates
  directly, but for experienced people they often ask recruitment
  or haken specialists.
* A higher university degree is good to get the attention of
  recruiters, but can also worry them if it's not exactly matching the
  job you are applyomg to.
* You will find some helpful people in the Hello Work office and/or
  some recruitment companies; when someone is responsive, go forward
  and do as much as possible.
* Some interviewers focus on a narrow skillset, but others are more
  interested in you as a potential coworker; try many different
  contacts, many companies, and drop the ones you dislike if they
  haven't already dropped you :).
* Japanese language skills are crucial for some local companies, even
  major global tech ones[3].
* I think joining a foreign company is easier than joining a Japanese
  one, but the latter is not impossible with sufficient language
  skills and some local experience. Smaller companies are probably
  more open to unusual profiles.

> You would only get an interview if you could answer the question
> "But have you done a project based on 7.5.1, not 7.5?" positively
> with a confident "Yes, I am a 7.5.1 expert, I know virtually nothing
> about 7.5 at all, never even knew it existed, for me the universe
> started with 7.5.1".

You probably don't want to work for people with this attitude. They
deserve the idiots they will get.

[1] I wouldn't call them head-hunters, they were not hunting for me, I
    contacted them.
[2] How to do object-oriented programming in C, and why? Is a
    zero-sized array legal? Why is assert() deactivated with -DNDEBUG,
    and is it good? How to get 3% faster in an interpolation?
[3] Couldn't work at Sony because I can't read enough kanji for their
    internal communication; I have only JLPT N3 level.

-- 
Nicolas LIMARE
http://nicolas.limare.net/

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