Anyway, the interview today went well, though I didn't think I said anything too impressive. The interview was with a Japanese manager from Japan via video conference and there were one Thai and Japanese in the room with me too. The interviewer was really, really nice! I spoke everything normally and politely and I didn't use Keigo at all. I probably should have done that to make me look more "professional" because Japanese level of politeness is considered extremely important in business, but I just...couldn't be bothered! It was too difficult for me to use Keigo naturally. And I thought the most important thing was to tell the other person what I want to say, so I was just saying normal polite Japanese.
The company is considered as "Japan's major hotel reservation website" (quoted from their homepage). You are probably familiar with the website Expedia and this is like the Japanese version of that. The office is extremely small here in Bangkok though, probably no more than 15-20 workers in total! I went to interview in sales and coordinator position and the main tasks are making contacts with hotel to make contract with the company, translating stuff for the homepage, taking care of Japanese customers, and...coordinating. The job doesn't look like it is required English skills that much and I guess most of them will be in Japanese.
The interviewer said he thinks I'll need to learn a lot more if I get the job. Well, of course, I have zero working experience! And he said they planned to expand their business to Thailand more so it'll probably be a lot of work for me and asked if I am ok with that. For the small company, I guess it's like that, because they don't have a lot of people so it feels like one person has to help out with many things, unlike the big company where all the system is set and the workers are considered as just a small part of the big picture.
I'm not sure what to think about the company, but I'm curious about the pay. If I need to be doing a lot of work, the pay should be quite favorable. I know I'm just a new graduate, but I'd like to see myself as a new graduate who has choices and I can choose where I want to work!
This week I've been feeling pretty weird. One day I feel brave to try out anything new and think I have a lot of choices awaiting for me, the next day I feel scared like hell about my unknown future for the rest of my life. I've been feeling really up and down lately. Bipolar, that's probably the word. Never thought I'd be like that because normally my mood is quite stable. I still think I'm freaking out that from now on there is no clear plan of what I am going to do anymore and I can't adjust to this thought just yet. I've lived with life full of plans for many, many years and it's really strange now to not have one single plan or goal ahead of me. I'm freaking out that I don't know what I should do with my life next, but I guess I'll have to keep going.
[Edit] The day after I wrote this, I got a call from the recruitment agency saying that the company wanted me to go in for the second round of interview some time next week! The agency said they sent 5 people in with only me being a new graduate but the company said they like me the most. Interesting...why would a company want to hire a new graduate instead of other experienced candidates?
[Edit] The day after I wrote this, I got a call from the recruitment agency saying that the company wanted me to go in for the second round of interview some time next week! The agency said they sent 5 people in with only me being a new graduate but the company said they like me the most. Interesting...why would a company want to hire a new graduate instead of other experienced candidates?
1 comment:
"why would a company want to hire a new graduate instead of other experienced candidates? "
Japanese companies are used to hiring new university graduates, so they know about training new grads. Trends are changing, and there are more Japanese who change jobs during their career, but this was less common in decades past.
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