Hello! My name is Kenji, I was born and raised in Amsterdam, Netherlands. My mother is Japanese and my father is Dutch. I speak fluent English and Dutch and I went to Saturday Japanese School growing up but I learnt Japanese seriously after coming to Japan for work. During my time in Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, I majored in mathematics. 

I was always interested in Japan as I visited my Japanese family in Japan every 2 years. After graduation, I worked at a Japanese firm in the Netherlands as a Data Analyst & Business Analyst for 6 years. I realized I wanted to work in Japan and even though I faced many rejections due to my language barrier, I found Adecco as a Switzerland staffing agency. I struggled a lot in the first 3 months due to my poor Japanese, but I was lucky that the managers  supported me in language acquisition and heard my story, which grew my career. In my case I was already a professional in my field, but I believe students who are job hunting in Japan will face similar cultural differences. So I hope I can support you well just like how I was supported when I first started working in Japan. 

I’ve been working as a commercial excellence manager at BD Japan for 1 year and a half now. BD Japan is a medical company that improves medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. I work in the IDS unit where we work on diagnostics, like germs you can be infected with. There are many subsidiaries/departments of BD Japan that sell a variety of products but each have a slightly different management style.

I graduated from Amsterdam university of Applied Sciences in 2008, I studied theoretical mathematics and how statistics can help companies. I also interned for half a year at Towers Watson as a Junior Consultant, where I applied what I learned and used the experience to present my thesis for my senior project. Aside from my studies and internships, I enjoyed the slow student life in Amsterdam. Because the government supports paying the tuition fee, many students would take longer than 4 years to graduate, allowing them to stretch their studies, relax in life, and travel the world. I was able to pay my own tuition fee which was less than 2000 euros by working part-time at restaurants. The government also offered a lot of sports, so I engaged in many sports such as basketball, tennis, boxing, and rock climbing. Of course these benefits come from paying 40~50% tax but If I were to summarize Dutch universities in one word it would be Freedom. 

When I first started looking for a job from outside Japan, I faced many difficulties. I tried some online interviews from the Netherlands but I always felt judged through the scope of whether I can perform in a Japanese environment. Because of my basic Japanese level at the time I faced many rejections and recruiters often said “skill wise you are perfect but we don’t know about your Japanese ''. Although the job market has changed and Japanese firms are hiring more diverse workforces now, I can imagine it is still very hard for international newly-grads. My biggest advice to students who are job hunting is whenever you decide on a company, you should look at the team you will be working with rather than the company itself. My first job in Japan; Adecco, could not speak English at all. So they invested in me to learn Japanese 2-3 times a week. After I mastered Japanese, my market value rose considerably which was an extrinsic motivation for me. This goes to show that when you look for companies, you should look at the company culture and choose somewhere that’s willing to invest time in you.

My second advice is to separate yourself from the Japanese newly graduates. As international students, you have a different advantage that cannot be assessed with the Japanese recruitment system. What Japanese firms are looking for are specialists who can speak two languages. Even though as newly-grad students you may not have work experience, try to sell your skills as much as possible. By sharing your diversity and wise thinking, you can differentiate yourself from the average newly-graduates. For example, your first step could be to try looking for an internship or specific job description instead of a general position.

LANGUAGE AND TECH SKILLS

If you can already speak both Japanese and English, I would recommend students to study more technical skills. During my years as a pricing manager I realized there is a demand for specialized workers with IT skills. This is because Japan is facing a labor shortage which means less skill, so technical skills will be useful. At first I was studying a lot of Japanese but afterwards, I studied technical skills such as analytics and programming once a week. Anything related to technical skills is recommended. Learning and improving yourself does not have to end in university. In the long term, for your career and resume, if you can speak both Japanese and English and have technical skills, you have an advantageous position for a good salary and career path.

A Commercial Excellence Manager will develop, implement, and utilize standardized sales reporting tools to support the sales process by visualizing key performance indicators and feedback. As a Commercial Excellence Manager of BD Japan, I currently manage a team of 6. I have two main goals as a Commercial Excellence Manager. The first, is to streamline all the sales processes with the systems. All information from the sales teams will go into the system and support the future process. The second is the digital transformation of the internal system and back office support as Japan is still very analog. While Japan may seem very highly developed, many firms are not digitized, so there is a lot of potential to standardize and optimize. I only learnt programming in the last two years but it is possible to come up with solutions to solve digital problems. So to interns who are joining BD Japan, you may start with no knowledge but with one day or a week of problem solving you can grow considerably and your value is much higher than the people who do the same thing for 10 years.

When I first joined BD Japan, I worked as a BI analyst & Pricing manager. I analyzed pricing and proposed to the business how to price. I was given the opportunity to become a commercial excellence manager when I found out the people could not communicate in English with the IT department. They asked me to lead the division since I had previous experience in software implementation and good language skills.

Why did you choose BD JAPAN?

I chose to work at BD Japan because of two reasons; career and finance. In terms of career, when I worked in the human resource industry, margins were lower and salary was lower. I was already a manager but it was difficult to climb up the ladder with my level of confidence in Japanese. BD Japan is more global and has more potential product-wise so I decided to work here. In terms of finance, the medical industry is well-known for having a higher salary than the human resource industry so it was also a reason for me to switch.

BD JAPAN’s Working Environment

I’ve worked in many different Japanese firms but BD Japan's work culture has a lot of American influence. They listen to the shareholders and the corporate culture is fast. BD Japan tries to embrace diverse thinking and growth mindset but Japan is not a very diverse country so it can be hard. I was fortunate that both the companies I worked in Japan had management that wanted to embrace diversity, but I believe some companies in Japan will advertise diversity and not execute it. BD empowers their workers to speak up and there is freedom to propose anything, and interns should not be afraid to ask if they do not know something.

Who is a fit for BD JAPAN?

Those who fit into the company:

I recommend BD Japan to those who are assertive in asking questions and saying your own opinion. If you are interning for the Data Analyst (IDS position), we are looking for students who are willing to study and grow, give interesting insights, and quantify the problem. If you have basic knowledge in mathematics, numbers, data analyst, and economy; you will be a good fit for this position. The English level of the whole company is not very high, but this position is mainly in English since you will be working with me! For Japanese, it is not necessary but you should learn partly to show your will to study and grow.

Those who do not fit the company:

For the IDS department I am working in, you need to be able to recognize patterns and figures. Thus, I do not recommend students who are majoring in liberal arts or humanities. It would be a risk for your time as well.