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Rejected resumes: how did you find your English-speaking job in IT sales/project management/marketing?
I've been job hunting here in Tokyo for 4 month… Anyone with experience working at an English-speaking or partly English-speaking company in Tokyo? Or anyone with HR expertise? I'd love your advice.
I've been job hunting here in Tokyo for 4 months now, but haven't had much success.
I focus on companies that accept English resumes to ensure a foreigner-friendly recruitment process (I passed the N1 this July, but I generally work more comfortably in English).
I've been applying for similar roles that match my experience. Still, most of my applications are rejected based on my (English) resume alone.
[I have around 8 years of experience in IT sales and project management in my home country, plus 4 years in digital marketing from managing an online shop. Japanese (N1), English (TOEIC 990/990, not my native language)]
I've only managed to get two interviews so far: one with Amazon and one with PayPay, but unfortunately, neither worked out.
Question: How did you find your job, and what was your approach?
If you've been through this process, I'd really appreciate any tips on structuring a resume, finding the right roles, or knowing which companies are open to "foreign" candidates.
Any helpful links or resources would also be amazing.
Thanks so much in advance!
Four months with only two interviews when you're getting through Amazon and PayPay screens tells me the resume itself probably isn't the bottleneck, the channel is. Those two came from companies that hire on capability, but most mid-size Japanese firms still filter through 書類選考 where a recruiter spends maybe 30 seconds and looks for a Japanese-style rirekisho format even when they say English is fine. I'd stop cold-applying to those and go through bilingual agencies instead: Robert Walters, Michael Page, and especially the smaller ones like East West Consulting and Top Talent Japan, they'll actually push your profile to hiring managers and tell you why you're getting rejected. For IT sales specifically, the roles that really want you are at foreign SaaS vendors (Salesforce Japan, Datadog, Snowflake, HubSpot) and their 外資系 integrators, and those almost always hire via agency or referral, not the public 採用 page. One concrete fix: put your N1 and TOEIC 990 at the very top of page one, because a lot of screeners assume "foreign name = no Japanese" and reject before they read anything else.
The N1 is your strongest card and it's probably buried somewhere on page two. Japanese HR at these companies screens for one thing first: can this person survive the internal meetings and the 稟議 paperwork. Move the language certs into a header line right under your name, and if you have any Japanese-language work samples or client-facing experience, even small ones, spell them out.
Beyond that, the angle most people miss is 紹介予定派遣 and contract-to-hire roles. A lot of foreign SaaS vendors in Tokyo bring people in on a 契約社員 contract first,
have u tried linkedin recruiters directly, not just applying? half my friends got in that way tbh
Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.
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