Getting Work in Japan

Getting a job in Japan is really quite different compared to getting a job say in Canada or in North Amerca in General. My experiences in Canada were that you would go and hunt for one on your own, looking through job websites and companies that have posted online that they are looking for people. Then you'd just fire them over a copy of your resume and a cover letter telling them why you are interested in working for them.

In Japan it is kind of different. They way things work in this country is that people go to University (maybe they might study), then about a year before graduating they attend job fairs in Japan to check out prospective companies and then use a matching system that is a part of the University to land them selves a job. Almost all students from a University get placed using this method. The one significant down side is that they have no job finiding skills.

The interesting thing that sparked all of this was a conversation I had with a friend of mine in one of my classes. He asked me if I was planning to get a job (he is also a masters student) because this was the time of the year to start looking and getting prepared (all of this is done in a year in advance! I think it's way to fast btw), so I told him that I haven't decided yet. I am still doing some thinking on the matter. But I told him in the end that if I were to get a job in Japan that I'd probably get one and work here for a few years and then move on. He had a bit of a shocked reaction.

There is an image in Japan that when you get a job in a large company that you would work there for a really long time, pratically for life in many cases. Meaning that my perspective about jumping from company to company is, literally, quite foreign to them. The idea of company hopping or something like that has a bad image in Japan. From what I have heard, it means that for you to leave a company, there must have been something wrong with *you.* Do it too often and companies will be afraid of hiring you. Sure that is something I can agree with if put into excess, but what about working in a place for about 4~5 years and then moving on to a new company? That idea is also quite foreign to them but it is starting to gain some acceptance from what I've heard... how much, I really don't know.

In North America, I do know from what I have read, it is quite common for people to change jobs every 4~5 years, even total career changes during those times. I'm all for that since I'd get bored doing the same job for too long a period of time. Can you imagine, working at the same place for 40 years until you retire? I can't. But being able to find other jobs that you are capable of doing is very important from my point of view. I'd rather not be entirely dependent on a single company for my livelyhood because it's not safe. Who knows what the face of technolgy will look like in the next 40 years? Let alone in the last 20 where computers have revolutionalized the way we do things. Who knows, one day you might be out of a job... instead of panicing about it, I'd rather know how to catch other jobs and hop back onto my feet.