I'm in my second month of seishain employment with an IT company, but in my fourth month of employment overall (I started under contract in 2005). The company mentioned nothing about a probation period after I converted to seishain, but among the paperwork items...

Every now and again, it seems like every 7-8 years. Japan goes through an economic cycle which stimulates all kinds of events that weren't previously imaginable. For example. in 1989-1990 it was sky-high valuations for land and where land became the main peg for personal net worth, getting loans, and of course making profits. Then in 1997-1999 the stock market made a brief but...

The byline at the bottom of each of these columns promises that Terrie will personally answer every email received. Certainly this creates a steady flow of mail to the family letterbox, and about 1-2 hours work answering the 3-5 enquiries a day. However, it has its rewards as well, especially when...

When we first founded Daijob as a business in 1998, the Japanese economy was in a deep funk and many foreign firms were laying people off. It was indeed a challenge to be launching a recruiting business in this market! As we started to go out and do sales, we discovered two realities. Firstly, that although the market was downsizing, HR managers were...