Today's column is a plug for one of my other interests besides job advisory: the media. I started publishing back in June 1994 because I was frustrated with the lack of quality information out there about Japan. What really got me going was the fact that foreign firms were employing over 1 million people in Japan, and yet there was little...

An acquaintance asked me several weeks ago about the unspoken rules for socializing with clients. As a female, she was particularly concerned about whether her eagerness to close a deal might be misconstrued as something else. Hmmm, interesting topic... Let's start with male-to-male socializing. It is often said that the biggest deals in Japan get done on the golf course...

It has often been said that women are the most underutilized resource Japan has - certainly if you look at the boards of listed companies, one sees virtually no women gracing their ranks. A recent statistic quoted just 200 female board members in Japanese listed companies, versus 54,000 male directors. Indeed, women who have done well in their careers are...

Just as with pay raises, the topic of asking for leave in Japan can be a thorny one, if you don't follow the unwritten rules. But before advising you on how to ask for the unusual, let's take a look at just which leave is specifically allowed. As I have written previously, there are 3 levels of contract when...

In the last couple of weeks we have been entertained by TV news reports of politicians who haven't paid their Social Insurance installments, even as they push for a clamping down of ordinary people who are not paying into the system. In some cases, the politicians had not paid...

For the last 2 months, Web chat rooms in India have been buzzing with speculation about jobs in Japan that sound too good to be true. A company called Saturn Jobs in Dubai (as of writing, the web site is still running at www.saturnjobs.com) was offering a range of positions in Shibuya, including those for accounts clerks and...

Being an uninvited guest employee in Japan is a bit like being an encyclopedia sales person. You knock on 9 doors and they slam in your face. But on the 10th visit you find someone with a child who hasjust started middle school and has been thinking about buying reference materials. Actually, the Japanese have a saying that the only successful sales person is one...

If you're living outside of Tokyo, your best bet of getting a job as an "uninvited guest" is going to be with a smaller firm wanting to export/import. In 2004, there are many mid-to-large sized firms reevaluating their foreign strategies and deciding to develop overseas markets for themselves. If you're lucky, you might wind up in a company that is...

You've been in Japan for a little while and you realize that getting a decent job isn't going to be easy. Maybe you are teaching English part time or working in a bar to make ends meet - but how do you get to the next step? Especially if you're outside Tokyo and don't know anyone? Well, this is when it comes time...

At the start of 2003, DaiJob Inc., created a fully licensed recruiting joint venture in Hong Kong, with a partner there. The new company in Hong Kong is called DaiJob International and the joint venture with this company enables DaiJob here in Tokyo to take client requests for positions outside Japan, now meeting...