This weekend I happened to be going to Kyushu and one of my managers asked me early Friday morning to interview a candidate living in Miyazaki. We were to meet in Hakata, and I wasn't too happy about interrupting my break until she told me that he was a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations). You see, in our company the letters...

One of the business world's most interesting job categories is design and marketing. And yet the opportunity for English-only foreigners to pursue this career path in Japan is extremely limited - mainly to positions servicing export companies, where the materials...

I find that both managers and our customers fall into the trap sometimes of trying to find staff who are a perfect fit for the task at hand. "Get me some experienced bilingual engineers!" I'm told, "But don't be charging me full fare for them." Well, unfortunately, with the increasing influx of foreign firms wanting to take advantage of Japan's economic turn around, the demand for bilinguals has never...

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...