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Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
Interviewing for a Job in Japanese
A job interview is always a slightly unnerving process. You are usually placed into a small room with four or five interviewers (or inquisitors, if you prefer) who try to pick you apart with tweezers.
Interviewing is doubly difficult when you have to conduct the meeting in a foreign language. But if you apply for a position in a Japanese company that requires Japanese language skills, this will likely be a hurdle you will have to pass before you are hired. A Japanese language interview may also be a requirement if you apply for a job in the Japanese branch of a North American or European company.
I had my first Japanese-language job interview in 1990. I was a senior at the University of Cincinnati, and I was applying for a job at a Japanese transplant firm in Ohio. My Japanese language skills at the time were solid but not yet polished. I was still prone to nervous mistakes.
I was interviewed by a gruff Japanese plant manager who spoke with a difficult rural accent. Fortunately, though, I made it through. (I even received a job offer----though I ended up turning it down for reasons that aren’t relevant to us here.)
How can you ace your first interview in Japanese? Below is a list of suggestions that should be helpful.
Make sure that you’re ready. Realistically assess your current language skills. Suppose that a particular job requires business-level Japanese language abilities. If you have been studying Japanese for only eighteen months, then you probably don’t yet have what it takes. The key word here is yet. The diligent language student is always improving; and the skill level that is beyond you today may be asameshi mae 朝飯前 (a cakewalk) in six months or a year.
This doesn’t mean that your Japanese has to be perfect. As I mentioned above, my Japanese language skills were still quite rough when I interviewed in Japanese for the first time. But you should at least be functional before you step into an interview situation.
Learn the relevant terminology before the interview. In the course of your Japanese studies, devote special attention to the specialized words that are applicable to your industry and profession. Get in the habit of making lists of words. (This is one of the techniques that I describe in Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One.) Buy a good technical dictionary, as well as a general-purpose Japanese vocabulary primer. If you work with these diligently, then the right words will always be at your fingertips.
Rehearse. You can likely imagine at least some of the questions that you will be asked in the interview. You may not know the exact words that the interviewers will use, but you can at least anticipate the general direction of their inquiries. Take advantage of this knowledge and map out your responses in advance. (This is, incidentally, a good idea even when you are interviewing for a job using English---or whatever your native language happens to be.)
The worst scenario would be for you to spend an undue amount of time fumbling around for the right answer---and the right Japanese words---while your interviewers wait. (This can make for some very awkward moments.)
Know the basics of polite and humble speech forms. You don’t have to fully master sonkeigo and kensongo before the interview. (Even some native Japanese speakers struggle with subtleties of polite and humble speech.) But you can gain points by learning the basics and using them at appropriate points during the interview.
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Unless you are very unusual, your first interview in Japanese will likely be a flawed performance. Therefore, it may be a good idea to get some “practice interviews” under your belt before you try out for that high-flying position at Sony. If you prepare yourself well and relax, then you should be able to sell yourself effectively in Japanese.
