Job Discussion Forums

[Gordon]

Sorry, a she. And you made it past your first post, some don't.

[guest of Japan]

It looks like the kids are having a good time.

I'll let everyone know life after EFL in Japan in 2 more months. Actually I may take an extra month just to play frisbee in an honest to goodness park (though I can't have a beer there).

[fingerpanit]

LEARN JAPANESE

Fluency in written & spoken Japanese (coupled with your native English ability) is and will be a VERY marketable skill in both Japan and in the United States (moreso in New York, California, Texas as you can imagine).

I will be heading to Okazaki, Japan in early March to teach at a small private English school. I have recently graduated from university and have intermediate skills in Spanish and Japanese. I intend to be fluent in Japanese (and have greater reading/writing Spanish proficieny) before my stint in Japan comes to a close.

After picking up a foreign language or two, stateside you could look into working for the government (State Department - Foreign Service, Department of Defense, NSA., etc.), go to grad school/ business school /law school (foreign language skills complementing your law degree, reseach in anthropology/psychology/literature/philosophy, business ventures!), translation, interpretation, teach Japanese at a high school (if worse comes to worse. j/k.), tutor, get into the hospitality industy...


I cannot imagine that having "I taught English in Japan for two years" in and of itself on your resume would do much for you in the U.S. job market. However, the foreign language skills you pick up while living in the county, that's money right there.

After Japan, I am even considering teaching in Korea or the Middle East insofar as Korean & Arabic are on the State Department's list of most desired language skills (look below the dotted line for some info on Foreign Service). Fluency in any of those two languages, a university degree, U.S. citizenship, no criminal record, and you can get a gig with the government like that.

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The Foreign Service Written Exam (FSWE) is the first step in becoming an FSO (Foreign Service Officer).


5. Foreign Languages

There is no foreign language requirement to join the Foreign Service. However, the U.S. Department of State welcomes applicants who are proficient in one or more foreign languages. Those who pass the Oral Assessment can raise their ranking on the Conditional Offer List (see Section 11 below) by passing a language test in any foreign language used by the U.S. Department of State. Additional credit is given to candidates who pass a test "critical needs languages" as defined in section 11 below. The U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute conducts the test over the telephone.



11. Conditional Offer List and Register

The names of candidates who are successful at the Oral Assessment are placed on a conditional offer list, based on the career track they choose and the scores they received during the oral assessment. A candidate's rank may be raised by claiming veteran's preference and/or a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language (see #5), as determined by the Department through a telephonic assessment. Extra points are given to candidates who pass language tests in Critical Needs languages, currently defined as: Arabic; Chinese (Cantonese and Standard/Mandarin); Indic languages (e.g.,Urdu, Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, Punjabi); Iranian languages (e.g. Farsi/Persian, Dari, Tajiki, Pashto); Korean; Russian; and Turkic Languages (e.g. Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Turkmen, Uzbek).

[abufletcher]

Note: Japanese is NOT on that list. I wouldn't count on language skills alone bagging ANY job. In fact, I'd recommend to EVERY SINGLE foreign language major not specifically planning to teach that language, that they do a double major in some field unrelated to language.

The days where an American with a BA in Japanese could nab a big bucks job are gone forever (or perhaps never really existed at all).

[Jizzo T. Clown]

From what I understand, you wouldn't want a translating job anyway.

It's true that your time in Japan will not be an asset of any kind unless you plan to get into ESL back home.

However, if you're young and have a year (or possibly two) to kill, then go for it. Just keep in mind that goals can and do change, especially once you've lived outside your own country for awhile.

[shuize]

[fingerpanit]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

People start over all the time. During my TESL programme at a university, a lot of people had just completed their BA (or BSc or MusBac or BFA etc) and were doing the year long certificate as an initial career certificate (In Ontario, Canada, it seems most people wind up doing at leaxt one of these, to the point where you can be almost unhireable for non-retail type work without one).

There were a couple who were doing it concurrently with their undergraduate degree.

There were many, many people who had finished university a few to many years ago.

The general rule of thumb in North America (I think) is still that peoople will have an everage of three careers in their life. For some of those people, that actually means going to university or college and getting retrained three different times (for the lcky ones, they can get away without having to go this route). What people don't talk about as often are sort of false-start careers: you spend a couple of years doing it and then leave (either because you don't want to do that for the rest of your career- in the case of TEFL, or because the jobs have just totally dried up and after a series of stop-gap jobs you discover that you can't even remember why you really wanted to do it in the first place).

Besides, look at this way: you could spend a year or two teaching EFL to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life (if you decide that teaching EFL isn't it) or you could see what entry level jobs are available in your home area (which if you lived in Ontario without a graduate certificate often means retail related, and even part time retail related) until you figure out a plan.

[rvsensei]

After 4 years in Japan I came back to LA and got a teaching credential and Masters concurently. I know that some don't plan to teach after ESL, but for me I knew that I was going back to the states to be a teacher. I taught a couple of years before Japan.

I think learning Japanese can only help in some job searches. However, as Abu said "dont count on it". At least I think he said that.

Have definite plan if you plan to go back, save money, and market your skills to future employers. For me getting a job as a teacher here was only based on getting my teaching credential and doing the internship.

I am sure for others who plan to get into sales or some kind of job related to shipping or translating, learning Japanese would help. There are plenty of jobs offered in the LA area for those that are bilingual, however many require certain degrees or experience in that field. The key is to research and plan. IMHO

[Nick5]

I've often wondered about this myself.

My plan is a little different. After graduating college, I'm going to move to Japan to teach english. I'm going to take my online business there (unofficially) and try to set up a Japanese branch. Hopefully, after a few years, I'll have enough cashflow to support support a few employees and gain an investor visa.

Then again, I still wonder, what if everything doesn't work out as I plan. I certainly don't want to teach english for any more than 4 years. I may get my MBA after 2 or 3 years of teaching, then try to enter the Japanese job market at an international finance firm.

Eitherway, I'm going to make my time in Japan as fruitful as possible. I spent one year abroad there after highschool, and one year as an "intern" last year teaching enlgish, so I know the game pretty well. I'm going to get my level 1 JLPT, and try for J1 in the Jetro business japanese test. All the while, I'll try to do my best a networking.

I disagree with most of these posts saying that Japanese isn't going to help you get a job. If you are fluent in Japanese and English, a whole slew of new careers will be open to you. It really depends what you want to do though. There are a lot of jobs that have Japanese language ability as a requirement.

[wintersweet]

In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a number of jobs that require Japanese. Try going to indeed.com and entering "Japanese" and "San Francisco, CA." Of course, most of them require some other skill too, but that could be said for a lot of abilities.

[Nick5]

I will say this though, most of the teachers I met had crap Japanese skills.

In my post above, by fluent I ment fluent. Not good or pretty good, but fluent as in able to read a newspaper without a hitch and able to carry on an indepth business conversation over the phone fluent.

[lalalateda]

[Gordon]

[quote="lalalateda"]

[earthmonkey]

Hi.
Your teaching experience here will mean little or nothing to an employer in your home country regardless of your field. But, it certainly won't harm you.
Come! Have a good time for a year, go home, get a job. Perhaps you can learn Japanese while you are here. That is a potentially marketable skill.

Good luck!