things are looking up!

SO! Last week was a busy week. I had interviews at 3 different Personnel placement companies: Vision Consulting, Panache, and Robert Walters. All seem to be decent sources for bilingual IT jobs in Japan (at least they send me more leads than Recruit has).

Monday was with Vision. They sent me some good leads, but when I got to the interview the guy (should I say his name?) was a real prick. He wasn’t paying attention to me. I was upfront about wanting an entry level position because I don’t have any formal experience, but he still belittled me. He asked me the same questions more than once… and he didn’t seem like he really knew about IT.

Wednesday was with Panache. Nice people. My advisor there is an 8 (out of 10 meaning she’s pretty cute… not anything to do with job performance. But on that note she was 100% better than the guy at Vision.). They had contacted me by email and phone and already had a job lined up for me to interview for. I had to skip through a bunch of the normal registration processes and actually moved my interview with them up from Thursday to wednesday to give room to the company I’d be interviewing with … which ended up happening last Friday at 4 (but I’ll come back to that).

Friday at 6pm, I met with a Robert Walters agent. We found out quickly that we have a mutual friend and the interview was relaxed and smooth. One thing I have to say about this company… NICE OFFICE! And the reception girl was pretty hot too… (I should be focusing on jobs… especially since I’m married… but the stress of job hunting seems to make me notice other women more… or maybe its just because I’m out and about seeing women around me other than just the students and teachers at my school…)

So back to the actual real job interview I had on Friday at 4… The company is an international law firm… not sure I should say where, but its a pretty prestegious company. Law offices in 25 countries and they do over a billion $ in business every year. The position is an entry level help desk job. No formal experience required… CCNA MCSE etc are helpful… most important seems to be an interest in IT and the ability to communicate in Japanese, especially in email.

The interview went great. The head of their 2 man IT dept at the Tokyo office (soon to be 3 when they hire someone) is actually taller than me… real nice guy. Seems like he’d be really pleasant to work for and he seems like he cares about his work and his employees. Minimum overtime, maximum educational exposure (its a small team so its easy to involve everyone in all aspects of the IT management I’ sure…), pay would be the same-ish as what I’m making now (and I wouldn’t ask for more, honestly…).

Now, I’ve been asked back for the Japanese version of the interview and an aptitude test…. TODAY at 4pm. So… hopefully I can pull this off. I get nervous just thinking about it… because I do have confidence in my day to day conversational Japanese, and I know I’d be ok if someone sent me an email asking for computer help in Japanese, but I don’t know how well I’ll be able to handle a conversation about IT stuff in Japanese. Sure, a few weeks on the job and I’d get to brush up real good! But, at first? Coming from a ZERO it exposure job where I teach English? I wish I had joined the computer club here at my highschool sooner…

Anywho… I hope I can get this job and finally start being useful! Maybe by the beginning of June I’ll have a new job!

no turning back »« ahh… NES