Featured

job hunting

Japan has a new bar just for people thinking about quitting their jobs, and the drinks are free

Tenshoku Sodan Bar seeks to fill a need that’s not served by the traditional job-hunting process.

Read More

Japanese job-hunters reportedly dismayed by requests for “photos showing who you are as a person”

Anything’s OK, just nothing too natural, or unnatural, or unflattering, or revealing, or stodgy… but, you know, anything is OK.

Read More

Japanese clothing chain offers an answer to job-hunting suit conundrum

Yofuku no Aoyama suggests a new suit service to suit job-seeking students.

Read More

Japanese ministers call for reform of company hiring practices that focus on new graduates

With jobs getting harder to find, it’s important that more people have the chance to be hired.

Read More

New Pantene commercial interviews Japanese trans individuals about difficulties of job hunting

Sending love and light to the LGBTQ+ community.

Read More

No gender, photo, or first name – Japanese company makes major shakeup to job application forms

In Japan, looking for a job usually means snapping a photo, but not at this company.

Read More

We got a haircut at “Japan’s Leading Barber” and walked away feeling like a million bucks

From a boy in a suit to leader of the free world in the blink of an eye.

Read More

Women in Japan are often required to wear heels for job hunting and office work, but the #KuToo movement wants to squash that part of the dress code.

Read More

“Face Hiring”: Japanese cosmetics company Isehan’s new hiring campaign is causing a stir

The company is impressing people with its interest not in beauty, but in personality!

Read More

Pantene ad asks why people in Japan are forced to look the same when job hunting

Hair care brand shines a light on outdated practice that forces women to sport the “job-hunting hairstyle” in order to gain employment.

Read More

Getting turned down for a job hurts, but one company wants to do what it can to help job-hunters bounce back from a rejection.

Read More

Japanese advertising agency breaks tradition by recruiting people who got held back in school

When a company ensures that everyone deserves a second chance, it’s a company worth working for.

Read More

Vegeta struggling to find work under Abenomics

If an interplanetary warlord can’t land a job in this economy what hopes do the rest of us have?

Read More

Foreigners in Japan sound off on the top four quirks of the Japanese job-hunting system

Looking for a job here in Japan? You better prepare yourself for these four quirks.

Read More

Japan’s Twitterers summarize fear in short phrases, prove some things are universally frightening

“Do you know what day it was yesterday? It was our wedding anniversary.”

Read More

Can you sing at least one anime song? Then you’re a step closer to a job with this company

Pass the first stage interview with karaoke! Or, by playing wink murder.

Read More

To handwrite, or not to handwrite? Recruiter lays into ‘laziness’ of young Japanese job hunters

Traditionally, Japanese resumes are handwritten on a special form. Recently, however, typed resumes are becoming more common – and one recruiter is not happy about this. Writing anonymously on Japanese website Hatelabo, the blogger, who works for a chain restaurant in Japan and is involved in recruitment, sets out his reasons for why an applicant who submits a typewritten resume should be the first to find their application on the “no” pile.

“You young people, don’t you have any common sense?” he asks of applicants with the typed resumes. “Are you crazy? In my day, this would have been unimaginable!” Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the handwritten CV.

Read More

Tokyo Gas commercial gets taken off the air for being too cruelly realistic

As any young Japanese college graduate can attest, Japan’s hellish job hunting process can be one of the most stressful and demotivating periods of a person’s life. Numerous rejections, along with that feeling of isolation after seeing those around you get job offers, is enough to make anyone severely depressed.

So what does that have to do with a gas company, you ask? A commercial by Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. which features a girl in the midst of the job hunting process has been stirring up controversy and was even taken off the air. Why? Apparently, its portrayal of the painful job hunting process was so accurate that it left people feeling a little too miserable after seeing it. 

Read More

“Be a blank slate”: The way to get hired in Japan?

As far as things not to say in an interview go, you’d think it’d be pretty high up on the list. But the young Japanese university student, rejected by all the other companies he’d applied to, was prepared to take the risk. “This company is the only option I have left,” he pleaded with the interviewer. “I’ll do anything!” An unusual strategy, certainly. But he got the job.

Japanese site Niconico News reports that the man is now entering his ninth year of employment with the company, so it seems the gamble paid off. But is the company’s positive reaction so unusual? Some Japanese employability experts are arguing that, for many companies, the ideal graduate recruit is a “hakushi” – a blank page that the company can do what they want with. When companies train new recruits extensively, an across-the-board willingness to learn is valued more than previous experience.

Read More

Japan’s hellish job hunting process “shuukatsu” gets animated, terrifies netizens 【Video】

During Japan university students’ final year, many go through a long, physically and mentally draining process of finding a job before they graduate; a process known as “shuukatsu.” Students don matching black suits and attend job fairs, company briefing sessions and employment seminars en masse in the hopes of obtaining a job offer, or “naitei.” Young people often complain about the soul-sucking system and how difficult it can be to land a job offer without completely abandoning your personality along the way.

Recently, an animated short film has been making waves among Japanese netizens for the horror movie-like way it portrays the difficult and often depressing job hunting process in Japan. 

Read More