I first came to Japan as a student for a year while I was studying at the University of Brazil. My reason for choosing Japan was due to its strength in the mechatronics engineering field, which was my major at university. I was also fascinated by the culture of anime, Japanese music and kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese writing). After living in Japan for a year, I realized that daily life was very convenient and decided that in the future I’d like to start my career in Japan. I returned to Brazil, graduated university and came back to Japan to enroll in a Japanese language school. While at the school, I started the job-hunting process and eventually joined my current company, Techfirm. 

Graduation Research Project

My graduation project during my college days in Brazil was my most memorable college experience. During the project we created a small robot that could balance like a Segway. It was a lot of work, but in the end the project went well and I learned a lot from it. From a technical aspect, I was able to gain more knowledge about hardware and software combinations used in manufacturing, as well as other industry-related things.

Internships

I was an intern in Brazil for about half a year as a software engineer using Java at an IT company. Internships in Brazil are different from ones in Japan. Rather than working like an intern, it's closer to being like a normal job where you are assigned work at the same level of other staff members. Internships are where students get their practical real-world work experience during their school years. In fact, this internship allowed me to gain a ton of experience working as an engineer while still in my schooling years, and I can say that I learned a lot from it.

Improving Your Japanese Skill

I have a few friends who are also working in Japan but can’t really speak Japanese much. In my opinion, having a certain level of Japanese ability provides you with a wider variety of career options when job-hunting here. Especially if your Japanese is good enough to allow you to express your thoughts clearly during interviews, it’ll make job-hunting so much easier.

Job-Hunting Preparations

Job-hunting in Japan requires you to sit for various types of tests, so it’s essential to prepare for such tests beforehand. Besides that, it’s also best to register yourself on various job-hunting websites, and look for career-related events held around you as early as possible. I personally participated in various job-hunting events and went around to every company’s booth to talk to their representatives. I think these events are not only good job-hunting strategies for international students, but they are also good practice to better their Japanese language skills. Other than that, I also conducted mock interviews with my friends as a way to prepare for interviews. Sometimes, I recorded myself and listened to the recordings afterwards when practicing alone.

Soft Skills Over Hard Skills

One thing that surprised me about graduate hiring in Japan is that they don’t require new graduates to have many work-related skills. This is completely different in Brazil, where even new graduates are required to have ample technical skill and work experience, including internship experience. Therefore, in Japan, I think it's more important to have a solid vision of what you want to do for a career and have the level of communication skills required to convey that to the interviewers, rather than spending time improving one’s technical skills. When I was a student, in order to hone these skills, I used flashcards to improve my Japanese and got my friends to help me practice speaking. Thanks to this, I found my language skills to be at a level where I could articulate my words smoothly during interviews. However, I still find grammar and keigo (polite speech) a little difficult at times. I think that ultimately, rather than having perfect Japanese speaking ability, it’s more about how you express your thoughts.  

As an engineer in the systems development division, I’m in charge of various projects and double as a programmer. Recently, more and more of my work is related to framework design, which is closely linked to systems engineering. One of my main tasks is deciding which technological tool or which combination of tools should be used in the early stages of developing the system, building the infrastructure and then configuring it. The hard part of this job is when I am forced to read and write project summaries in Japanese. The language-related aspects are extremely important but at the same time pose a challenge for me. On the other hand, the most rewarding part of this job is the joy of completing a project using my knowledge to find the key combinations of both hardware and software to create new things. 

The best thing about this company is its comfortable work environment. Before I came to Japan, I had a generalisation that every company in Japan had a strict work environment, based on what I saw in the news or in TV dramas. However, after doing research on various companies here I realised that that image didn’t apply to every workplace. Techfirm for one doesn't have strict rules, and it has a very lax environment where it’s easy to interact with other colleagues. For example, using keigo is preferred, but you won’t get scolded here for not being proficient at using formalities. The ease of communication is one of the strengths of this company.

On the other hand, the language barrier remains an ever-present challenge for me. All internal communications and surveys are done in Japanese, so it sometimes takes longer for me to read them than it does for Japanese employees. However, working at such a company presented me with many moments and opportunities for me to grow. One example would be when I was chosen as the main development engineer for a new project that started this year, and when I was able to manage that project by myself. It was a moment when I could feel my personal growth.