News Letter

1.I-HoP News (by Mariko Katagaki)

The CEO of the company supporting international students for their job hunting is coming to Hokkaido University and talk to you about “How’s like to work in Japan?” and the “Important things to work in Japan” on October 31st.
Also, you will have the opportunity to discuss with him about your career.
Join and get the tips for job hunting in Japan!!

– Career Seminar How’s like to work in Japan? (10/31)
http://bit.ly/2q4P4Ie

– Career consultation days (10/31-11/1)
http://bit.ly/2Vw245l

*We apologize that the application button had not shown on the website, but it was already recovered on Oct.10th.
We are looking forward to your application!

2. Memo from the Visiting Professor (by Y. Iida)

My dear International Researchers,
Negotiations by Dale Carnegie Training was held on September 20. Dale Carnegie Training is 107 years old training firm specialized in communication skills. They rarely come to Hokkaido and are providing seminars primarily for big companies. But thanks to the long-standing relationship with I-HoP, they care to visit Hokkaido for the past five years. The topic we have chosen this year was Negotiations. Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, was the lecturer. He has carefully tailored the contents to Ph.D. students and researchers by inserting examples of cases which are familiar to the academic person. Negotiation takes place very often. For example, you will negotiate on “Choosing a restaurant for dinner with a friend”, “Asking your professor to purchase a new test equipment”, or “Permission for taking day off”. The objective of the seminar with the workshop was to make the participants achieve the following goals:
1. Recognize the four dominant behavior styles; Expressor, Driver, Amiable, and Analytical.
2. Identify your style and how you react under pressure
3. Sell effectively to people of different styles
They consider every negotiation a sales opportunity, and you better accomplish your objective (i.e., sell your idea) by strengthening the relationship with your counterpart.

3. Career Management Process for PhD

We have been explaining the seven steps of Career Management Process since May. Before we start this month’s explanation, the seven steps are shown below again for your reference:

Step-1 Make up your mind for the change
Step-2 Recognize yourself and your value (Self-Assessment)
Step-3 Identify Jobs and Tasks (Occupations)
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

We will explain the Step-5 “Initial Decision to narrow down to a few targets” this month. Before you narrow down the target, you must maximize the opportunities and options. Because you do job hunting while you do your research activities, which is your priority, you must use your time effectively. A combination of reactive and proactive approaches may be an effective use of your time. The reactive approach is to let someone else search for opportunities for you. There are many match-making sites to which you register your data. Based on the information you have disclosed and registered, the agent or match-making companies will search their database to see if there is any matching with open positions information that they receive from their client companies. There is no cost for job-seekers because the agent will receive a contingency fee from the client company once the candidate joins the company. Some of them have English homepages and are capable of consulting in English, such as;
Active Connector (http://www.active-connector.com/home/)
Glassdoor (https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm)
CareerCross (https://www.careercross.com/en/)
There are a handful numbers of matching agents who are dealing with international students. Due to a huge demand for IT and AI-related job, you will have wider options if you have skills in programming, statistical analysis, or mathematics.

If you want to keep your career option open for academic jobs in Japan, it is always recommendable to register yourself to JREC-IN (https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekTop?ln=1). This is a career support portal site managed and operated by JST, Japan Science and Technology Agency. All of the open academic posts and research staff positions in Japan can be found here. If you read Japanese, try to log-in to the Japanese page. You will discover ten times more open jobs than in English. A similar database with much global coverage is Euraxess (http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/jobs/index).

While you are reactively waiting for any input from these third-party services, you may proactively search for the companies as explained in Step-4. Regardless of reactive or proactive pursuit, you will expose yourself to the open labor market to some extent. Once you are exposed, you will have a higher probability to get connected with somebody or some company. That will give you, hopefully, handful options for your potential target companies.

Based on the conditions and career vision that you have established in Step-1, you will be narrowing down the number of target companies to 3 or 4 at most. You will have to put some serious efforts to prepare yourself for seeking positions, so it is better to concentrate to the selected few. Please keep in mind, however, that always leave your door open for any incoming opportunities that the third party (matching agent, your professor, I-HoP, etc.) may bring to you. When narrowing-down the target, remember that the larger the target company is, the harder the competition will be. The total number of companies in Japan is 4,210,000. So-called large companies count 12,000, which is merely 0.3% of the entire companies. There are many excellent mid-sized companies whose total employees are less than 300 (in the case of the manufacturer).