It has been a month since my last post. During these 2 months I have been extremely busy with job hunting in USA as well as research and study. Applying for jobs in the states has been tougher since the recession. For this reason, I tried not being too selective and applied to as many companies that still fall within my field of interest. I am interested in applying for jobs in Japan as well, that is why I also attended Boston Career Forum 2009, which is the biggest job fair for English -- Japanese bilinguals. Basically, I was looking for positions as Software Developers/Engineers. This post broadly explains the processes involved in job hunting in USA and Japan (through Boston Career Forum). I hope this post will be helpful for people interested in applying to either.
Job Hunting in USA
US companies are different from Japanese companies in that they expect fresh graduates to be immediately productive once they enter the company, whereas Japanese companies generally do not expect fresh grads to be work-ready and tend to train fresh graduates from zero. This is reflected heavily in the job screening process and interviews. Japanese companies emphasize more on the potential of the interviewee, hence, the interviews are mostly Behavioral. On the other hand, interviews for American companies consist of a series of Technical Interviews with one Behavioral Interview in the end. The questions asked in Technical Interviews range greatly from very basic questions to hardcore technical ones that sometimes you have never encountered in school. In most cases, you are required to explain your answer orally and convince your interviewer.
Throwing out quizzes in the interviews is probably a part of US companies culture. In many of my interviews, I was asked quizzes like: “Why manhole has round shape?”, “Given 10 jars filled with the same number of 1 kg balls, only 1 jar is filled with 0.9 kg balls. How do you find which jar is filled with 0.9 kg ones with only one measurement?”, etc. These are the examples of the most famous ones. I even had one interviewer asked me a question from Die Hard 2: “You have 2 empty cups. One can hold exactly 3 liter, the other one can hold exactly 5 liter. If you have infinite amount of water, how do you get exactly 4 liter of water?”. For financial companies, they mostly ask probability questions. Sometimes the companies want to see how you react in a specific situation. A friend of mine was asked: “In 5 seconds, what is 39x41?” just as he entered the interview room. Of course this problem would not even take more than a second to solve, but when you are in panic even the simplest problem can be very hard to solve.
In the States companies come to school twice a year (in September and February) to hire students whereas in Japan, students have to attend external career fairs to get to know the companies. Students wear suits and attend this campus career event and visit companies booths. They talk to the representative of the companies at the booth and if the recruiters are interested, they will be invited for interviews the next day. In general, after this on-campus interviews, there will be 1 or 2 phone interviews consisting of both technical and behavioral questions. Each phone interview can be 30 minutes to 1 hour long. If you pass these interviews, you will be flown to the HQ of the company to do On-Site Interview. Hotels and plane tickets are paid by the companies. You don’t need to pay a single dime. In the HQ, usually there will be 3-4 interviews waiting (each is about 45 minutes to 1 hour long). This will be the climax of the screening process and they will grill you on hardcore technical stuff. On the night of the interviews, you will have dinner with the staff and HR people. Sometimes they show you around the city and give a tour around the company as well. Approximately 2 weeks after these interviews, you will be notified of the result. Usually they will give you a month of time to consider the offer.
The job application for students usually starts from the beginning of September to the end of November. For internships, it is usually around February -- March. Getting a job in the States would be much easier if you graduate from US universities and still reside in the States (due to logistics convenience). For people outside the States, you can apply for US jobs at monster.com or any similar sites. Not all companies accept foreign students because foreign students would need H1B1 visa to work in the States. And in many cases, small -- medium sized companies do not provide visa sponsorships. For this reason, lots of foreign students apply for big companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc (for engineering companies); for financial firms, Goldman Sachs, BoA Merrill Lynch, etc.
Boston Career Forum (for work in Japan)
Boston Career Forum is the largest career fair for English -- Japanese bilingual annually held in November in Boston. Lots of Japanese companies, including American firms that operate in Japan, come to Boston specifically to recruit students. BCF is only a 3-day career fair. Usually companies spend the first 2 days to interview as many candidates and decide on the 3rd day whether to give them offers. The screening process is pretty short compared to when you apply to American companies. And extremely short if you compare it to screening process when you apply for jobs in Japan (from inside the country).
The process is pretty simple. You apply through BCF website around September -- October, create your English and Japanese resumes on the site, and send them to companies that interest you. In many cases, there will be pre-screening questions. If you pass this stage, sometimes you will be given a web test consisting of English, Japanese, Math, and a personality test. The companies will then notify you whether you can advance further based on your score on the test. If you make it, you can then make an appointment for interview in Boston. Otherwise, they would ask you to do “walk-in” to visit their booth. Of course you want to get as many appointments as you can, because these are like fast-passes in Disneylands. The seat for interviews are very limited (around 20-30 people for each company), and you will have the priority if you can get the appointment. However, do not worry if you cannot get appointments for an interview. Try to visit the company’s booth and talk to the HR staff. There is still some chance that you can get interviews.
In most cases, there will be 3 interviews during the 3-days career fair. If your interviewer likes you, he/she will invite you for a dinner. Now, this dinner is officially not part of the selection process. But, it is a good chance to network with the people you are going to work with and know more about the position. Usually you will be invited for a dinner once you pass the 2nd round interview. The dinner can also be the deciding factor to get the offer from the company if you build give enough impression to all the staffs. Sometimes they intersperse behavioral and technical questions in the dinner conversation. Don’t let your guard down. In some cases too, you will have several dinner invitations from different companies. Carefully consider which dinner you want to go (you can only choose one!). You can ask whether or not the people from the division you are applying for will be present, because usually they are your next interviewer and you would want to build good relations with them. If they are not present in the dinner, you might as well want to consider going to the other one.
Since this is a career fair for English -- Japanese bilingual, you will be asked to create both versions of your resume. Now, Japanese resume is different from English resume in that English resume is more uniform or standardized. You list all your skills, work experience, education history in English resume and use the same resume for different companies. But Japanese resumes require you to write specific reasons why you are applying to that particular company, why are you interested in that particular division, what do you want to do in the company, etc. You are even required to state your health condition, hobbies, etc. Tailoring specific resumes for each different company is very time consuming. It is a common thing to do when you apply for Japanese companies and everybody does that. However, I strongly oppose this idea and suggest you not to do that as it is very inefficient and pointless. Because they will ask you exactly the same thing in the interviews anyway and in many cases, these are just for formalities. Rather than spending your time to create specific Japanese resume for each different company, I suggest you do detailed study of the companies and prepare the answers for questions they are going to ask in the interviews. I have seen a lot of students wastefully spending their time writing Japanese resumes during the career fair while they could be visiting companies booth to network with HR people and staff. When you need a Japanese resume, you can just directly translate your English one.
A video introducing Boston Career Fair:
In Sum..
In my opinion, job hunting in US would be a bit harder (currently) than finding jobs in Boston Career Forum because of the recent recession. And it has always been hard to get a work visa in the States. It does not mean that Boston Career Forum is an easy one either. However, since the companies flew their way out from far Japan just to recruit people in 2 days, you will have better strategic standing. Both cases are hard in different ways. Job hunting in US is hard because the interviews are highly technical. Boston Career Forum is intense because it is preparation-oriented and time consuming. For example, in BCF, I had to do interviews non-stop from 9:30 AM till 5:30 PM on the first day. You always have to be ready for the next interview when you finish one and remember what you want to say for a different company/division. The most important thing (in both cases of applying for US jobs and Japan jobs through BCF), however, is to keep your spirit high. Don’t lose your hope just because you just got rejected by a company. A friend of mine always set this motivating status on his MSN and I would like to share it with you all: “It is not how many times you fall, it is how many times you rise up that counts.”
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