It's been a long while since the last time I updated the resume. The last time I had updated it was nearly 3 years ago, after graduating from my masters program. I am (un)offically in the hunt for a career adventure. I believe that I can earn more and grow faster than what the managers think that the average person can over here.
I mentioned earlier that I wasn't so hot about waiting 4~6 years for a promotion. I think that one of the biggest faults of an organization is limiting the speed at which a person can climb the ranks is a fatal mistake, since no one will have an incentive to take on more responsibility than they have right now. But hey, that's bureaucracy and politics for you.
Interestingly for the past 3~4 months, I have been looking at other opportunities in different organizations, the pay is dramatically better and pretty good for even a young person like me. I've started sending out applications... no real bites for positions just yet.
It's been a long while since I did any real work hunting, preferably, this time in a more "Western" organization as I find my mental capacities are much sharper when I work and communicate in English. Good Japanese skills here are very important and can even improve the value of a worker too and I intend to work on that as well... I just don't have an incentive to do anything at the place where I am currently employed. But I digress...
What I realized after getting into the working world again (since the last time I did any kind of job hunting when I was graduating from my undergrad studies) is that the nature of the resume has changed. I was good at marketing myself as a student with my resume, which was padded with a lot of good academic achievements, what I realize now is that I can't play those up as much any more and have had to chance the format of my resume to reflect the kind of work and my new work interests.
Not in all cases, can one send a cover letter out for each application as for the recruitment sites that I've been working through now only use the resume to evaluate a candidate, to which I realize my resume is too engineering heavy for the positions that I've been looking at.
The other thing about looking at job postings, especially at recruitment sites is that they have concrete job descriptions and approximate salary ranges for the kinds of people they are looking to hire, which is really different compared to the standard Japanese system where you just apply, then they accept you and then figure out where in the company they want to send you. I am far more comfortable with the normal western hiring practices.
I've made the mistake of sending out too poorly tailored resumes to too many job openings that there aren't any new good ones at the moment so I am going to have to slow down and think of strategies of improving my skills set to get a good position elsewhere. It is an interesting experience to be back in the work search world again.
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