Nov 3, 2008 | What I learned from the Boston Career Forum

The claim is that the Boston Career Forum is the world’s largest Japanese-English bilingual job fair, and I took a day off from school to head to Boston and see myself what it involved. I figured it would be a sizable event where I would be able to tout my language knowledge and head home with a few job offers under my arm.

I was wrong.

I like to think that the worsening economy could have to do with it, but in the end it sounds exceedingly whiny. The job fair was held at the Boston CEC, and in total there were 170 companies looking to fill (apparently) 1200 positions, most of them in Japan. Here’s what I didn’t know:

1. These were mostly Japanese firms that had traveled from Japan in an effort to recruit Japanese nationals who a) happened to be studying in the United States or b) made the effort to travel to the United States in order to attend the event.
2. There were candidates who were there from all across the United States as well as abroad (including several from Norway) which puts into perspective the amount of effort and dedication that some have put in order to snag a job.
3. Bilingualism was not stressed insofar as they expected you to have some knowledge of English, but given that 3/4 of the people there spoke English and Japanese impeccably, anything less is a disadvantage.
4. Given that many of the firms are Japanese and most of the applicants were themselves Japanese, submitting a resume that was not in the Japanese format could have been considered odd. Some of the people I knew stapled three formats together: A standard format resume written in Japanese, an English resume, and a Japanese format rirekisho.
5. Perhaps 60% of the companies there were financial firms, including major Japanese banks like Mizuho, Nippon Chuo and others. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, among others, were also there.

Also written on this day..

• 2004: Thoughts on the Elections