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What are your experiences of going through a job interview process at a Japanese company?

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I was surprised by the question "Tell us something bad about yourself". Fortunately I said something funny like "My wife thinks I talk too much". I got the job.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

I was surprised to find other candidates being interviewed at the same time in the same room (group interview) by the team of interviewers.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I was surprised to find other candidates being interviewed at the same time in the same room (group interview) by the team of interviewers.

I too, was surprised by that, I was trying to get a part-time job with a world famous company and they also asked me strange and odd questions and asked me possible scenarios how to deal with customer situations and it was very off putting, stressful and in the room I was sitting at a table with 16 other candidates and there were 42 total at other tables in the same giant room. The problem is also, when you are asked a question, every single person is staring at you and to make a long story short, I didn't get the job (thank God) I found something better, but it is not the most pleasant thing to go through.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Of course I never believed it but I was told, more than a couple of times that I was "over qualified"... One of the times the person interviewing me said : "We weren't expecting someone with those kind of qualifications ! We just need a lady to make and serve the tea and answer the 'phone...! You'd soon get very bored here !" (He was actually a very nice guy, a quite young Chairman and Managing Director... !)

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I've been on both sides of the table in Japan, both an interviewer and an interviewee, many times. As an interviewee you'll see them scribbling down stuff on forms, and the questions seem fairly standard. As an interviewer I learned that there's nothing standard about the Japanese interview process. Here are some examples:

Irrelevant criteria - They'll rate you for crazy stuff like the handwriting on your resume forms (and even if you're a foreigner fluent in Japanese and your kanji are "technically" good you'll find yourself rated near the bottom of the barrel for stylistic reasons). Its not just handwriting, there are other things, but mostly it boils down to your employer having conducted no job survey, having no job specifications, and only the vaguest idea what the person who did that job before was actually doing with their time.

It isn't what you know, it is who you know - This will be a punch in the gut for many foreigners, but in most cases the interview is a formality. They've already decided who they want and they're just going through the motions. Of the approximately 40 or so interview committees I've sat on over the years (I avoid it where possible) only once did they select someone other than the person they were thinking of for the job... sure the forms get filled out, but at the end of the interviews there's a long "chat" and the scores are "adjusted" up or down by a point here or there... and the person they want always ends up at the top.
1 ( +3 / -2 )

Helps to have money and just do interviews for the fun of it.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

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