By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive


It's often more important which companies you decide not to work for than which companies you do.

This includes your prospective manager, peers, the company culture, the industry and company's relative standing in that industry (both now and as it's positioned for the future).

This needs to align and synch with your overall career plan and career path.

This becomes even more critical the better you are at quickly landing job offers, the older you become or if you have had any substantial Career Damage in the past.

Think about this. Very carefully.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and joyous New Year!

Thanks for all of your support this year and we look forward to a wonderful, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

Dear James,

How can I gain employment in Japan, specifically in Tokyo? I have a Bachelor's degree, 30 grad hours earned and a TESOL certificate (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). I am not a native English speaker and I am over the age of 35. I tried in 2012 to find a job while I was in Tokyo for 9 months and lost a lot of money that way.
What are the chances of teaching German there?

Kind Regards,

- TN

TN's Skills Inventory:
1. Bachelor's Degree
2. Graduate School: 30 hours earned
3. TESOL Certification
4. Languages: 
     (a) German: Native speaker
     (b) English: Native Level Fluency
     (c) Japanese: Advanced Beginner

Dear TN,

Thank you for your question. First please allow me to explain a few things about the Japan employment market for foreigners (gaijin / 外人).

1. Unlike the US, if you are coming from a Western country of origin and you hold a 4-year bachelor's degree, it is fairly easy, fast and straight forward to receive a working visa. The working visa, though, will require the sponsorship of a company along with a minimum monthly income. This can vary based on various factors, but simply Y250,000 is enough, which is what you can get at most full time teaching gigs as just a point of reference.

2. The trick then is finding employment. In general, unless you have specialized skills that are in demand and/or business level Japanese, your employment options in Japan are extremely limited. These often fall into the categories of English teacher, recruiter/executive search consultant, restaurant / hospitality and so on. There are obviously many exceptions, which can be leveraged based on both your skill at packaging and presenting yourself, your ability to locate, surface or create a job and timing and luck.

3. In general, for the English teaching jobs (or foreign language teaching jobs - French, Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish, etc.), the schools prefer someone who is young -- under 35 years old and often the younger the better. They also prefer or require a native language speaker. Again, there are always exceptions if you know how to play the game.

4. Because these schools get some many inquiries they want to reduce their time in shuffling through resumes. In addition, over the years, countless people have talked about coming to Japan and then when the time comes when they get the offer they bail as they say it's too low a salary or too much of a hassle to move, etc.

5. The people that do join the school or company, many times will leave quickly or find that they aren't happy, as their expectations are misaligned with market realities and the companies needs.

Okay, now back to your point. From everything you have told me, getting a job should be easy for you if you focus on your strengths, overcome any objections they have and you package and present yourself well.

You didn't mention the details of how your job search went when you were in Tokyo nor what companies or industries you focused on and applied to? So it's hard to answer details, as I would have to know that + did you land interviews? Did you take interviews? How did they go? Did you get second interviews (invited back)? Any offers? If you were rejected, why? What was their feedback? What was your opinion on why and so on?

In any event, let's go over a few quick strategies. 

1. To hire a foreigner outside of Japan is a major hassle for Japanese companies because of all of added logistics and so on and the risk that you won't take the offer after all of that hassle, and if you do take it you still may not show up, and if you do show up maybe you won't stay long -- so over come that.

2. To hire a foreigner even in Japan is a hassle for all the issues as number one, as they still need to go through the paperwork and responsibility of sponsoring your visa, getting you acclimated to Japan, and often serving as your housing guarantor -- but by being here you show passion, commitment and skin in the game.

3. If you have additional skills as you do, you can also leverage your native language skills by working for a company that does trading or business with a country that uses your skills. So you could join a Japanese trading or industrial company that needs to work with Germany or German-speaking countries. You would be the bridge or interface.

4. You could also teach German, but the opportunities will be far, far more limited than English teaching -- it's a niche, but it could be lucrative.

5. You age can be a pro or con depending on how you spin it.

Okay, here is the strategy I would pursue. The quickest, easiest way to get a job and your work visa and to get setup in Japan is to teach English -- so go that route. Once you are here, on the ground, get setup, settle in, save money and build up your skills, you can move out of teaching if you like or stay in it.

Specifically I would do this:

1. Plan to physically be in Japan to meet these companies face to face -- the English schools. But don't come. First, identify the schools, both big and small, and send a short email explaining your desire to teach at their school.

2. Open a dialogue, then get then on skype for your interview.

3. Once you've done that, repeat with up to 10 to 15 schools.

4. Then once you've figured out who seems serious, etc. let them all know you'll be in Japan on your own dime and want to meet them face to face -- if you are cash-strapped and can't do that, then get them to commit over the phone and close them that way. You could then wait until all of sponsoring paperwork is done and only come to Japan once your visa is granted.

5. Prior to this, you need to set up your resume and interview framework. Don't focus on your not native speaker, you're older and so o. Rather reframe like:

a. I'm mature, experienced, I know exactly what I want and I'm professional.
translation: I'm a problem free employee.

b. I have US degree and a TESOL certificate. I'm highly qualified to teach this, more than most people. If they bring up you are German / have German as your first language say, "That's why I'm qualified to teach -- I taught myself English at a native level and have a TESOL certificate, I can do the same for my students.... and so on..."

c. And then focus on your interesting in Japan,you'll be hear a long time and that it's nice to work with a school that values mature teachers.... 

There are many other ways to do it, but that's a way to reframe any perceived negatives as positives and also put to bed their worries.

You can also do the same thing by contacting non-schools that may need a German speaker -- they won't list so those jobs, so just cold-call the company directly.

These resources may be helpful as well:
1) Can't Get A Job (or The Job You Want)? Master The Job Search Lifecycle
2) The "Young, Educated & Unemployed" - A Major Misunderstanding
3) Career OverDrive! Solutions

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

Over the years I've seen a few patterns emerge from otherwise talented people:

1. They give up too soon. As soon as the going gets tough, they fold. Often this is due to the obedience / approval seeking behavior taught within the school system. That may be fine for a student who just needs to graduate, but in the "real world", that is, post-school life, well it will harm you and your career often greatly.

2. Many folks label and then internalize valuable market feedback as "failure". Let me be clear here: It's only failure if you:

(a) label it as failure
(b) don't learn from it
(c) refuse to get back up

Stop labeling your experiences as a "failure" and start extracting value from these experiences by conducting post-mortem review. These reviews can be as simple as spending 10 minutes thinking what you learned, good and bad, from this experience, making some notes and seeing what could be tweaked or improved next time. Beyond that, see your "failure" for what it is -- a learning experience. And when we are learning, we make "mistakes" - they different between failure and mistakes couldn't be clearer.

(a) a failure is an outcome, not one event. It means you most likely haven't learned and the process is over because you didn't get back up.

(b) mistakes happen when we learn. It is an ongoing process and the most valuable part of the mistake is the lesson or lessons that we learn. 

Start to reframe your view of the world that way and see how fast you will improve.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

So many of us, myself included, have been in situations where we either don't attempt something or spend too much time worrying about some future event that may very well never come to pass.

If you've seen the heart-wrenching clip Christopher Maloney prior to his taking the stage to sing and then singing you know what I mean (give it a look below).

Two lessons (and a bonus) From Christopher Maloney's Experience:

1. Put yourself out there. Until you put yourself out there, you can't benchmark yourself or find out if you're good at something, need improvement, love it or hate it. This takes some risk, but it's mostly psychological risk. This is often compounded as people tend to label learning experiences as "failure" and then give up or avoid future opportunities to improve themselves. Don't be like that.


2. The difference of worrying about the future and being "in the moment". When Christopher stepped onto the stage he was overtaken with stage fright, shaking and becoming teary-eyed -- and who can blame him? But once his song came on and he opened up his pipes, he immediately went into a trance as he was overtaken by the music and his passion as he was transformed into another person -- with an amazing voice!


3. Bonus Lesson: When Christopher was asked by the judges why he had kept his beautiful, rocking voice hidden for all these years he said that people told him he wasn't good enough and that he would embarrass himself or fail. 

They said, "Don't come on here, you're gonna embarrass yourself, make a show of yourself."

Fortunately for him and for us, he finally went ahead and put himself out there. It was also beautiful to see the love and support he had given to his grandma and that she returned in supporting him. The bonus lesson: dump or disassociate with those who bring you down, and double-down on those who support and love you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1T9-I3wx8I#t=23

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


There are two primary, legal and simple ways to win almost any competition and which involves no cheating.

(1) Prepare and then perform better than your competition. This is often very hard which is why so many are reluctant to rely on this.

(2) Brainwash the other competitors, saddling them with emotional and mental blocks.

If you follow the way societies works, including American society, you'll soon see that (2) is most often how those in power, seeking to gain or consolidate power operate.

If you simply disconnect and deprogram yourself from these myths and memes you'll find that success will come faster and easier than ever.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


Myths and memes. 
 
Love it when people soak them up.

Less competition for you and those that understand the way the world truly works rather than how the social engineers would like it to be.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

Over the years, first as a college student looking for my first "real world" professional job and then later as a hiring manager, a business owner, a recruiter and a career coach, I've noticed the same Myths & Memes and misconceptions popping up time and again. 

Often it is so-called "Career Experts" who give life to these Myths & Memes that you the reason you can't find a "good job" or a "suitable job" or "establish a career" is because you are somehow lacking "skills" or the appropriate "education". If and when you finally do land a job, if you don't get promoted or worse get forced out or blocked and decide to leave, these "experts" will chalk this up to it being, you being, a "bad fit" or "poor fit" for the company.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong for many reasons (e.g., we've previously talk about the SWAN Principle and the cost of acquiring new skills or going back to school).

Alright so let's get to this . First,  need to understand that skills by themselves have no value. Period. It doesn't matter how good you are or how much demand there is for those skills, you must have the ability to monetize your skills either by monetizing them on your own or most commonly by plugging into someone else's platform or system.

Now let's talk about the actual patterns you'll see over the life of your career and, in particular, let's discuss what I call the Job Search Lifecycle.

A) In the simplest terms, this view explores the skills that we need:
1. You need the skills to do the job.
2. You need the skills to find the job.
3. You need the skills to land and close the job.
4. You need the skills to maintain and keep the job.
5. You need the skills to plan and manage your career.

B) Now, let's look at a more granular view of the lifecycle and skills needed:
1. Skills acquisition: As a starting point, you'll acquire some amount of skills. They may be hard skills, soft skills, some combination thereof or even simply potential. But in the end, you'll have (and need) something of value to bring to the table of the prospective employer or customer.

2. Packaging: Once you have acquired your skills you need to package them. What are you offering? Is it easy to understand what you do? What is your value proposition? Do you make me money? Save me money? Reduce stress? Enhance productivity?

3a. Job Identification: Now you need to find a position to apply to monetize your skills. You need to identify the job so you have a target to apply to. In some cases, these are easy to find or locate while in other cases you will need to surface them. Much of this depends on timing and luck, so if your dream employer just filled the position you want or you've come into the process very late, there's often not much you can do. That said, just like a lottery,  you need to be in it to win. You don't have a chance to win if you aren't in the game, so you'll need to put the time and effort into this (which is your "lottery ticket" or the price of entry).

3b. Job Creation: Many times, however, the ideal job you want doesn't exist now or just isn't "open". The prospective employer you'd like to work for may not even think such a job is important. So what to do? Well, in this case, you create this job at the prospective employer.

4. Presenting: Once you have packaged your skills, found some targets and approached the prospective employer for a meeting (the interview) you'll need to present yourself to answer their main questions and concerns, to see the fit you have with their culture and team and to demonstrate the value you will bring as well as to assess your interest in working with them.

5. Negotiations: These include title, salary and total package, start date and perhaps the proposed career path that may be your future while you are with the company.

6. Closing: Closing the offer and starting your job.

7. Onboarding: The first 90-days at your new job are critical to set expectations and impute your value, understand the written and unwritten rules of the road and the personalities and politics involved.

8. Job Maintenance: This includes keeping and maintaining your job, your skill sets, working to position yourself for a promotion, building new skill sets and connections and making sure you have concrete deliverables and takeaways from your current job to prove to your next prospective employer what value you can add to them, based on what you added at your now current job (soon to be previous company).

9. Repeat Process: At some point you'll most likely begin looking again for a new job/position, either in the same company you are now working or externally.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Silicon Edge

Recently Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, sat down with Marc Andreesen to discuss The Future of Work, Cars and the Wisdom in Saying 'No' (full, unabridged version on Forbes Magazine here: Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen).

In this interview, I was particularly struck with Marc's views on the impact of the ever-accelerating and widening technological adoption on the job market, and the elimination of entire categories of jobs as well as his comments on education and the need for re-training.

Andy Serwer: We all understand that the Internet revolution is inevitable at this point, but it’s also kind of controversial. There are scads of new jobs at Facebook and Twitter and other places, but what about the ones that are destroyed by the inroads of technology into every industry? Are you actually creating more than you’re destroying?

Marc Andreessen: Jobs are critically important, but looking at economic change through the impact on jobs has always been a difficult way to think about economic progress. Let’s take a historical example. Once upon a time, 100 percent of the United States effectively was in agriculture, right? Now it’s down to 3 percent. Productivity in agriculture has exploded. Output has never been higher. The same thing happened in manufacturing 150 years ago or so. It would have been very easy to say, “Stop economic progress because what are all the farmers going to do if they can’t farm?” And of course, we didn’t stop the progress of mechanization and manufacturing, and our answer instead was the creation of new industries.

From my vantage point, this is completely off track for one main reason -- in the earlier stages of mechanization and automation we had far, far, far fewer people on this planet so that these productivity increases could support and sustain larger and larger populations. In addition, the rate of change was far lower and more localized. It was the difference of seeing single family home burn, to the firebombing off an entire city with no where to run to the simultaneous firebombing of an entire country if not world.