I learned about FAST OFFER International Program (formerly Study Go Work JAPAN Program) delivered by ASIA to JAPAN through my classmate who participated in 2018 interview. Even though he failed in his first try but he strongly recommended ASIA to JAPAN to me since it was totally free for accommodation and transportation. I have been interested to work in Japan after I had 3 months of internship at Saitama, Japan, so I decided to give it a try.

With the easy application process where I just need to fill up application form and upload my resume at their homepage, I have managed to complete the application and successfully received an e-mail from Mr. Sanpei where I was notified for first Skype interview with Mr. Sanpei. The Skype interview was short and simple but you need to have some Japanese language knowledge for you to understand the questions and elaborate more especially on your research study, if you get pass the interview, you will be needed to do a PR video and paperwork to describe your final year project, internship you have done, project that you involved previously and of course your reason to work in Japan.

After uploading those materials, you will be assigned to a mentor who will guide you on Japanese way of interviewing. I was assigned with mentor, Mr. Kanbara who used to work as engineer. My mentor is extremely friendly, and he is always ready to help me. At first, he read through the materials that I uploaded and point out my mistake or point that I can improve. Once I received interview invitation from Japan companies, Mr. Kanbara explained in detail on question might ask by interviewer and how to prepare myself for the interviews or tests.

He also explained to me the flow of interview, in most cases there will be 2 interviews per company where if you passed both you will receive job offer from the company and get a chance to visit the company then only you decide whether to accept the offer. I received a total of 6 interview invitations and was asked to make a ranking of interested companies among the 6 companies. The ranking was used in arranging the interview session, Asia to Japan is very thoughtful, always helping us to unleash our potential.

For interview session in Japan, ASIA to JAPAN arranged literally everything for me from flight ticket to bus ticket in Japan and they are free including the accommodation. On the interview day, ASIA to JAPAN will try their best to let you prepare for questions that tends to ask by those companies. It really helps me up since I was too nervous, and I eventually forget the script that I have prepared. I got 5 interviews on the first day, I end up passing only 1 company and received their 2nd interview on the next day. Even if I failed to pass 1st interviews, I was notified by ASIA to JAPAN about the reasons.

The feedback from companies did helps me to prepare myself better for future. On the second day of interview, I received a job offer at the same time I passed for 1st interview for another company. On the 3rd day, I went for company visit in Kobe, it was roughly 3 hours Shinkansen journey from Tokyo to Kobe. I thought I will be visiting the branch office in Tokyo thus I was totally surprised when I realized that I would travel to Kobe which is more than 500km from Tokyo.

I was given a week of time to consider about the offer. At last, I accept the job offer and decline the 2nd interview from another company. This Japan interview trip is not just a job seeking trip to me, even if I failed all the interviews, I still earn lots more interview knowledge that I couldn’t get from any other source. Well, I was very glad and happy that I get an offer. I’m supposed to start working on April 2020, but it was delayed due to Covid-19. I hope Covid-19 settles down as soon as possible so that we can resume our daily life and of course for more people to join ASIA to JAPAN’s job hunting activity!