School: School of Advanced Science and Engineering
Gender: Male
Country: Republic of Korea
Graduated in March 2015 / Started Work from April 2015
Job Offers: Trading Company
Reasons for working in Japan
I actually have lived in Japan for a long time, but it was not a big matter whether I could remain in Japan or not when I started my job-hunting. If there is a job I want to do, it could be okay for me no matter what country I would live in. I tried to think about what I really wanted to do and my future deeply, and realized the work that I wanted to do was in sogo-shosha (trading company), a peculiar industry that is active only in Japan. That is the reason why I decided to find a job in Japan.
I have been interested in how to expand the range of use of the good Japanese products and technologies. As a result of some research, I have found out that sogo-shosha offer such services, so I chose to pursue my career by working at sogo-shosha in Japan.
Number of industries and companies approached
5 sogo-shosha (general trading), 2 senmon-shosha (specialized trading), and 2 IT companies.
Starting and ending period(s) to job-hunting in Japan
Preparations for Tests (SPI, etc.): January 2014
Submission of Entry Sheet and Interviews: February – April 2014
Ways/ Methods of job-hunting
I used the newspaper and the internet. The information I could get from friends and seniors were also helpful.
Challenges (difficulties) faced during job-hunting
I consciously tried to introduce myself without exaggeration during the interview.
Message to international students who plan to job-hunt in Japan
You should not take the job-hunting in Japan easily because you are not Japanese. The most impressive thing I felt was that there are no discrimination between Japanese and non-Japanese in assessment. Sometimes I hear that there are some companies which apply a different appraisal standard for foreign students, but the companies which tests I took demanded the same or higher level of Japanese in all processes. It is necessary to prepare for what you are demanded, like Japanese, English, high conversation skill, among others.