News Letter

1.I-HoP News (by Mariko Katagaki)
-I-HoP summer holiday
I-Hop will be closed from August 13 to August 19 during the summer holidays.
Responses to any inquiries received during this period, will be sent after 20th of August. Your understanding is greatly appreciated.

– Career Plan Survey 2019
Web-based Career Plan Survey 2019 for all the international MC & DC students and Postdocs is now open. You have until August 31st to input your response to the survey.
The survey is essential for planning and fine-tuning career support programs such as “Career Consultation”, “Japanese Language Learning Support” and “Transferable Skills Seminar” which I-HoP provides.

You can access the following URL from your smartphone or PC to answer. We kindly ask for your cooperation
http://bit.ly/2xUNF7z
*The survey may not work properly in Internet Explorer 8 and 11.

-JLPT Online Half Test
As we sent the information by another email, the application is open until August 22.
http://bit.ly/2OOFrcH

2.JLPT information
As you know, the JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) will be held only twice a year.
The next chance is December and the application period will be August 20 (Tue) – September 20 (Fri), 2019 (-17:00).
We strongly recommended that you check the website and apply!!
http://bit.ly/2YxiQpr

3. Memo from the Visiting Professor (Y. Iida)

My dear International Students and Researchers,

From July 26 through August 31, I-HoP will conduct the annual career plan survey. We appreciate your active participation in this survey by responding to the questionnaire on the web or through your smartphone. The survey is anonymous except for the case when you accept contact by I-HoP for making an appointment for the individual career counseling. The survey is a bi-directional communication tool between you, all the international graduate course students and postdoctoral researchers of Hokkaido University, and I-HoP because we will learn from you what your future career plan is, and the programs or seminars you want us to provide for supporting your career plan, while you will deepen your understanding of our services such as individual career counseling in English or in Japanese.

4. Dale Carnegie Seminar – Negotiations
Registration is open now for one of the most premium seminars that I-HoP provides, “Negotiations” by Dale Carnegie Training. Book your full day on Friday, September 20 and immerse yourself into the world of active learning by the president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, Dr. Greg Story. If and when you join one of the biggest corporations such as Fortune 500 companies, and you are treated as a candidate of executive management, you will probably have a chance to attend the Dale Carnegie Training. They have been providing this executive training to world major corporations for more than 100 years. Graduate school students and postdoctoral researchers of Hokkaido University are all qualified as a candidate of leadership in academia, business or government in the future, and you deserve to attend this piece of seminars which most of the business leaders have taken. You will learn Negotiations, especially focusing on resolving disagreements with others and establishing a win-win relationship.
Seats are limited, so hurry and register through the Hi-System.

5. Seven Steps of Career Management Process

Starting from May, this section deals with the seven steps of Career Management Process that you need to follow through when you plan to start job hunting or change your career path. The process outlines the cases for non-academic career pursuit but it in general covers most of the academic career as well. The seven steps of Career Management are defined as follows:

Step-1 Make up your mind for the change
Step-2 Assess your value
Step-3 Identify Jobs and Tasks
Step-4 Gather Information on companies/institutions
Step-5 Initial Decision to narrow down to a few targets
Step-6 Recognize the gap and catch-up with training/education
Step-7 Apply for a Job

The topic of this month is Step-3, “Identify Jobs and Tasks”. In this step, you will have to understand what kind of jobs and tasks (occupations) that you want to be engaged in. Many of you may want to become “Researcher”, “Scientist”, “Analyst”, “Scholar” or another scholastic profession. If you want to enlarge your area of search for an occupation to the limit, visit http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ . This database contains all the occupations available in the United States. In reality, you will have to narrow down your search options. What Ph.D. students may want to recognize is the versatility of your “transferable skills”. From the human resource management viewpoint, Ph.D.’s transferable skills can be defined as follows:
1. Can identify and find a problem. (not waiting for a problem to be given or identified)
2. Can create solutions for the problem. (logical and critical thinking and methodology for validation)
3. Can validate the solutions relentlessly with many trials and errors until it reaches to a conclusion.
4. Can explain the conclusion logically (by publishing paper which can withstand peer review)
5. Can disperse the conclusion effectively and widely (by paper presentation in a conference, etc.)
This is a major difference between undergraduate or master course students. The afore-mentioned skills are essential for corporate staff such as Marketing, Business Planning, Intellectual Property Right management, Quality control, etc. in the world of business. The best way to understand what the jobs and tasks are in the real business is to ask seniors who are actively engaged in the occupation. The next practical method is to attend any internship programs by yourself. If you are not sure what occupations are suitable for you, use Career Counseling by I-HoP (English and Japanese), by Career Center (basically for Master Course students in Japanese), or register to job-matching agencies for PhDs such as the following:
1. アカリク就活サポート (https://acaric.jp/modules/static/?content_id=42) if you are fluent in Japanese
2. Active Connector (http://www.active-connector.com/home/ )