Educational backgrounds in Taiwan and the U.S.
I’m from Taiwan and grew up in Tao Yuan City. After I finished my bachelor’s degree in computer science at Tung Hai University (東海大学) in Taiwan, I entered the University of California, Irvine to pursue my major where more educational resources and developed technology related to software were available. After studying for 1 year and 3 months there, I got a master’s degree in computer science.
What made me decide to work in Japan
Apparently, I don’t have any connections with Japan, but I chose to work in Japan for the opportunities and interests to challenge overseas.
Working in the United States seems very hard for me because there are so many people and competition to get higher positions in such environments is very harsh, especially for foreigners whose native language is not English. Also, there are some issues with living there longer such as VISA matters.
On the other hand, in Taiwan, there are fewer opportunities for software engineers than in Japan because Taiwanese technologies are mainly about semiconductors and hardware in general.
Furthermore, I’ve been to Japan several times and studied Japanese since I was a university student in Taiwan. At first, it was just like a hobby for me. I wanted to learn a new language as my second language and took a very introductory Japanese class at the university. It was really fun, so I continued to study mainly on my own and passed JLPT N1 in 2021, before going to the US. After I went to the US, I took online tutoring classes with a Japanese teacher to maintain my Japanese skills. So, I wanted to challenge myself to work overseas and chose Japan as my working place.
Job-hunting through FAST OFFER International
When I searched about career opportunities on the Internet, I found the information about FAST OFFER International and registered in June 2023. Looking back, the overall process was so smooth.
I took some mock interviews with the staff at ASIA to JAPAN and got an offer from a Japanese company. After passing an online test, I took the actual interviews. The interview with a company had 2 steps and all were conducted online. The company has many foreign employees and has been globalized, so most of the conversations were in English, excluding a little checking about my Japanese language ability at first.
As I applied to software engineering, I was asked some technical questions and solved a program using coding during the first interview. In the second interview, I talked with an officer and was asked not only about my technical knowledge but also my personal background.
Within about 2 days after the last interview, I got an offer from the company. I was very happy to get the offer because the company has a global perspective and English is a common language for all employees, so I thought the company offers a good working environment for foreigners. Also, it is actually a big company in Japan, and I thought big companies would match with my personality better because it’s my first career, so I decided to accept that offer.
Future vision and message
I’m not sure about my future career path, but I’d like to work at the company for at least 3 to 5 years and enhance my professionality and hope to become a technology manager in the future. Also, the company may expand the business into other countries, probably in Asia, so joining the business overseas would be very challenging but also interesting.
For those who want to get a job opportunity in Japan, please try to improve your presentation skills first. Actually, my mother tongue is neither English nor Japanese, but if you want to find a job in Japan, you should be able to express yourself in other languages and show your abilities or reasons enough to be hired. I’m sure students who want to seek jobs in Japan are already skillful enough in their majors or their professions, so the only thing you need to do is to try to tell interviewers about you and your skills as much as possible. I know many of you are worried about language usage in interviews, but I think even if you don’t take JLPT N1 or N2, it doesn’t necessarily matter because there is a format for the interviews in most cases. So, try to prepare to answer every expected question beforehand. And be careful about keigo (polite words) when you take interviews in Japanese!
