I'm going to be interviewing a bunch of foreigners here in Japan who have jobs

that are NOT teaching English.

Because that's the one thing we all want to know, right?

How we can get a job that's not teaching English.

So today I'm here with Chris, from the channel OkanoTV.

Hey Chris!

Hello hello

So actually you've had several jobs here, right?

I guess I should start from the beginning.

I started out as an English teacher because my Japanese ability wasn't good enough.

And it's actually kind of difficult to get a non-teaching job if you're not in Japan.

So when I first started I was an English teacher-- Eikaiwa, then an ALT at a junior high school.

During this time I was practicing my Japanese.

If you don't have the JLPT N2, (the Japanese Language Proficiency Test)

if you don't have like the N2 level

it's kind of difficult to get a job outside of teaching English.

N2 means you have business-level Japanese.

So once you have that certificate, many companies will kind of be interested in you.

Even if you don't have that much experience, as long as you're bilingual English/Japanese

then that's already a good enough asset to have.

So what I used was a recruiting company called Hays.

Have you heard of Hays?

I have not.

Hays is a very global recruiting company, I think based in Europe, I believe.

But yeah they're pretty big in Japan.

And they help with many different industries:

sales, marketing, advertising, even finance.

A lot of these positions are mid- to senior-level.

So getting a junior position is a little bit tricky.

But if you can have a good interview in Japanese then I think you're solid.

For [some foreigners] you already have the benefit of being a native English speaker.

So if the company you're applying to is all internal: they want to speak Japanese and

and external: they want to speak English

then you're kind of a specialized employee.

Okay.

So what jobs have you done here that are not [teaching] English?

So I worked for a real estate investment firm,

a Japanese firm.

That's crazy!

And that was all internal it was Japanese and external it was English.

I dealt with foreign clients.

The interview was in Japanese.

They had me do some translation, interpretation.

So obviously your Japanese confidence level has to be pretty high.

You know there are some jobs where you don't need that high a Japanese ability.

But just to be safe, obviously, you should basically aim for N2.

Once you pass N2 you're kind of safe, I think.

How did you get the real estate job?

So that was through connections.

So connections are always good, obviously.

I entered that company as an English teacher.

But I wanted more responsibility.

I was the only native English person they were in contact with, so

I kind of became the interpreter/translator for that company.

And I wanted even more responsibility,

so they kind of gave me more of a sales [position]

and I was in charge of many clients

kind of like an account executive kind of position.

After that I was in marketing.

That was through the recruiting company that I was talking about.

And that was very interesting.

That was mostly English, actually.

Oh really?

Because I was more of a global marketer within Japan.

Wow.

Okay, so the first one you ended up with a job where they kind of wanted

you to do more so it moved on from there, and then

the second was with a recruiting company.

So they actually help you find the job.

Yeah.

I don't know how it is in America, but recruiting companies in Japan,

if you can find the correct one, they do EVERYTHING for you. Literally.

You just make your resume, you give it to them, and they will basically apply to the job for you.

They'll talk to that company's recruiter for you.

And if you have some flaw in your resume,

like maybe you quit a job early, or maybe you don't have the correct experience,

they'll give the company you're applying to an excuse,

like, "Well he quit this job because..."

And they actually believe the recruiter a lot more, obviously, because this recruiter's a professional

and you're just an applicant.

I had no idea about recruiting companies.

I didn't even know those existed.

So you pay for their services?

No, free. Really?

Everything's free. How do they get money?

Well they get money because

the company that hires the recruiting company to hire for them,

they'll pay them a fee.

And that fee is usually equal to one month or two month's salary of the applicant's salary.

Wow, okay.

So companies that want to hire employees,

sometimes they don't want to look for employees themselves; they just

hire a recruitment firm and say "Hey, go find me a good employee."

Yep.

Huh.

I mean there are companies like Google, big companies that have their own recruiters.

But I think they want to find like the perfect match.

So they're going to outsource to everyone and see what applicants come.

Instead of getting hundreds of applicants if they just use their own recruiters,

they will get, I don't know, 10,000s of applicants

where they can outsource to many different recruiters.

Wow, okay. I had no idea that was a thing.

All right, so look at joining a recruiting- recruiter?

Recruiting company, yeah.

Look at joining a recruiting company here to get a job.

Just be careful because like on GaijinPot

there are some recruiting companies that are kind of sketchy.

So just be careful.

I got offered many jobs to be a recruiter at a recruiting company

through GaijinPot.

So if you get those kind of offers, just make sure you research the company a little bit

before you dive in.

But typically they're very trustworthy.

Okay. So do you know names of certain companies that are legit?

Yeah, so I think the top 3 recruiting companies that I would mention would be:

1. EN World, which is spelled EN World.

2. Hays, like I mentioned before,

3. And Wahl & Case.

Wow, that's really interesting! I had no idea about that.

That's really good advice.

All right, thank you, Chris!

Thank you.

Woo!