If you love Japan and want to live here longer to discover the culture, working here is an option. But how to find a job here in Japan? Same as most other countries, you will need to speak business level Japanese if you want to work in Japan. But there are still exceptions. A lot of companies here are open for foreign people if you can speak basic Japanese (around N3 level of the JLPT test), especially roles like software, application engineers. Big companies known for hiring foreigners like Rakuten and Mercari, have very global engineering teams with multinational employees.
1. Search from a job posting site
Daijob is one of the biggest job posting sites for foreign or multilingual candidates to find a job.
You could just update your English or Japanese resume here, the HR of the company or recruiters from agents will contact you for the possible positions.
Also creating a profile on LinkedIn is a good idea. Known for its social media features for business professionals, you can also utilize the search function to help you search for the relevant jobs filtered by locations.
As LinkedIn is also a big social network, you could try to connect to the person with similar experience as you to find a way out. Let’s say you couldn’t speak good Japanese, have no programming skills, but were wondering if you could find a role in Japan. Searching by “People” to look for if there is anyone who can’t speak Japanese but is working in Japan. If the person is now working in Company A, that means Company A is now might welcome for the similar background.
Another option is the job advertising site Indeed.
Indeed has a comparatively reasonable posting price so that means the companies with limited budgets can also use it to post their jobs. You could find both large and small companies here and check if there is a role for you. But from my impression, the applicants are quite a lot, so it might take time for the HR to reach your profile in the pool.
2. Contacting a recruiting agency
When you apply from the job posting site, your profile will go into the company’s HR database. It is like an E-commerce push to order function, very convenient but also has its setbacks. It is very straightforward, which means there will be a lot of irrelevant applicants in the pool as well. Imagine not every company has many Human Resource members, limited resources means they don’t check the pool every minute. So there is also a high possibility of your profile sink at the bottom.
To avoid this, finding your own recruiting agency would be better. The recruiter in the agency usually contacts the HR by mail or phone directly, if you could let them recommend your profile, the possibility of getting an interview chance is higher.
There are many recruiting agencies in Tokyo making services for multilingual candidates with Japanese and English ability, but most of their jobs require at least a business level of Japanese. Agents like Jellyfish (https://jellyfish-g.co.jp/) is also dealing with roles from the basic level of Japanese.
3. Apply from the company’s home page!
This is the most aggressive way of job hunting. If you feel interested in the specific company, just go to their homepage and try to find the email of the recruiting team and send directly with your resumes attached! It is email so it will directly go to the recruiter’s email inbox.
One episode I heard from my friend is that while she was in her own country she succeeded in getting an offer from a Japanese company based in Tokyo. She just sent around her resumes and reasons for applying to more than 100 emails found from the corporate homepages. Then she got six companies’ responses within which three were willing to interview her. Then she scheduled the interviews around the close dates, and booked a flight to Japan with a travel visa. And finally she got one offer! That is the most exciting story I heard about job hunting. Of course nowadays due to the pandemic situations, companies in Japan are getting more positive on remote working, so it might also be possible to have interviews from home.
The birthrate of Japan keeps on decreasing these years, which becomes a social challenge little by little. So they will get more and more welcome to have foreign manpower to support the business. Even not mentioning this, Tokyo is an international city, with the correct methods, I believe you could find your dream jobs here!
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