Job hunting has not been going well. Suffice it to say that it has gone nowhere.
My failed attempts to find other lines of work have been rendered ineffective, so I have come to face the music and with grimaced teeth plunge once again into the world of IT.
So for the past few months, I have been scouring JapanDev, TokyoDev, DaiJob and that most loathsome of dank corners of the internet, LinkedIn. I scoured day after day for backend engineer roles in Osaka where I might be a strong candidate. Hunting was sparse, due to the beast that is Tokyo being a gravity well for all tech companies in Japan.
Nevertheless, I still found ample catch. I fired off my updated CV, both in English and Japanese, at plethora companies. Idly I sat and waited for what I believed to be an immediate stream of messages asking, pleading, imploring me to interview.
Yet they never came. Time and again I was rejected with nary an acknowledgement that they had even read my CV.
After reviewing the documents you submitted, we regret to inform you that we will not be able to offer you a position at this time.
My inbox bursts with likewise messages. Even when pressed for reason why, they responded with identical messages.
Perhaps more disappointing were the recruiters. Like vultures they swarm over job hunters, picking and pecking at you for your attention and CV, and requests for 30 minute calls to assess your desired role. After half a dozen of these filled with unfulfilled promises, I stopped giving them my attention. They harvest your CV, through whatever jobs they have on their desk (which you can often find on job boards anyway), and after you explain that they don’t not meet your expectations, they disappear into fog with echoing promises of contacting you again in the near future.
There was one company where I came close. A foreign-owned IT company based in Osaka invited me to interview. They were looking for a bilingual Project Manager to act as intermediary between their Japanese clients (collecting requirements) and their English speaking tech team abroad (creating technical tasks and reviewing work). It sounded perfect for me. I can make regular use of my language skills; be in Japan working with Japanese clients; not coding or at least very little, maybe just doing some automated testing. I thought for sure it was the one. Tragically, after strong 2 interviews, I was abruptly given the boot. I pleaded for explanation, and they were kind of enough to grant me a call where they explained in full. My experience and Japanese ability were strong and they all agreed they like me, but the role requires even higher ability than I think they realised. Their reasoning sounded sincere and I trusted their words. I asked if there was a possibility that they could take me on an an engineer instead and train me up so that the next time such a PM is needed, I will be ready. They sounded very open to this idea, but internal politics and management meant they are incapable of making such an offer at this time.
And so we move on. During these months I had deduced 2 key points I had failed to recognise early on.
- Indeed JP may be the largest job in Japan, at least for tech jobs.
- I did not list my key skills up top for ease of reading.
- Placing my experience as a part time English teacher at the top of my CV was self-sabotage.
For point 1, I am finding many many more jobs suitable for me. They are not foreigner-centric as some of the aforementioned websites, but nevertheless I am targeting a Japanese work environment so perhaps this is better.
On point 2, I failed to recognise a key aspect of humanity: we are all lazy. A HR team reviewing CVs will burn through them rapidly, only thoroughly reading those that catch their eye. Therefore, what one must do with their CV is making it eye-catching. How can a software engineer achieve this? Staple technology names and buzzwords front and centre so they can instantly judge you as capable of tackling their tech stack. And so I did that. I placed a label at the top, followed by a table containing all the technologies I have confidence in feigning knowledge in (God forbid they ask me any serious questions about them though).
And point 3, this came as advice from one of the few kind recruiters I talked with. While I thought placing my English teaching job would demonstrate some transferable skills (talking with Japanese people, communication, expressing myself to non-native English speakers in English etc.), what I may have done is label myself as nothing more than an English teacher. The AI bots stood at the vanguard of company recruitment stations would fail to read past this line, and so immediately judge me unworthy of passage to the HR team beyond.
I now await the response of several companies on Indeed, as well as a possible follow-up from that company I interviewed with before. Some applications are filled with promise. Perhaps I may finally get lucky.
All of this so that I may finally achieve my goal of living the life I had envisioned upon my decision of moving to Japan, as I sat on the spare bed in my mother’s house back in the UK, a bed that took up a majority of the room so that standing space is an act of contortion, my old sick dog at my side, fancying an adventure away from the crumbling vestigial of the once great Britain.
Just having plenty of money would suffice, I think. They say money doesn’t buy happiness. I would argue those people just don’t know how to have fun. The world is filled with amazing food, thrilling shows, fascinating museums, exhilarating video games, and most of all, fun people. As I am now, on the pathetically meagre salary of an English Conversation Instructor, I am hamstrung as to what activities I can do. Working 5 days a week is hardly enough to cover my bills. Keep in mind I mostly cook food for myself, and simple meals at that. Forget extravagances such as holidays, nice clothes, or even a visit to the dentist. I have been living a poverty life, and I am tired of it. I have the skillset to earn so much more and life a real life here in this late-stage capitalist nightmare.
Will I truly live out the rest of my life in Japan? I don’t know. It is rather nice here. And the UK is a sinking ship, particularly as ultra-right wing fascist parties like Reform and Restore Britain grow in power. Knee-capping Britain with Brexit wasn’t enough for them, now they plan to drown the nation in the pool of it’s own blood forming at its feet. Disgraceful. I cannot even bring myself to call myself British anymore.
The horrors persist, but so do I. Genius strikes at random moments throughout the population, and I believe this meme is one of those moments. It has become my mantra as of late. Tragedies, setbacks, stumbles, hiccups and downright fuck-ups may have befallen me, yet I do not falter. I persist. For luck comes to those who wait. Luck, like genius, will strike at random times. You cannot predict it. You cannot force it. You must be simply ready to receive it the moment it does. So you must simply persist until she does.
I persist.
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