Skills Relevant to IT JOBS in Japan

There are several skills you should develop if you want to find IT jobs in Japan, and the first thing you should do before you venture into the job market is to assess how attractive of a candidate you are from a Japanese company’s perspective.

1. Japanese language skills

To sum it up, the better your Japanese, the broader your job options will become. Even though there are also a lot of opportunities for people who only speak English, if you cannot speak any Japanese, you are limited to several companies—not to mention that you have to prove to the employers that you have exceptional technical and development skills. Demonstrating an effort to learn Japanese can impress recruiters or employers even if you’re not apt with the language yet. The least you can do is to enroll in Japanese classes and demonstrate your willingness to improve. Japan Switch offers some great affordable lesson plans for beginners to intermediates with a strong focus on improving your conversation and speaking skills.

2. Communication Skills

Some companies prefer to hire purely autonomous engineers who work solo and only collaborate when they need to connect their work. Other companies have much more collaborative cultures encouraging mentoring and the exchange of ideas. They work across many teams and groups or they provide solutions to those people who are not tech-savvy. Moreover, they write a lot of emails, proposals, and design documents for different targets. For this reason, they should have good communication skills, both at the oral and written levels, in either English or business Japanese. Communication also plays a big part in broadening your network. You’d be surprised by how many opportunities (and interested recruiters) are there at IT conferences.

3. Technical Computer Skills

At the core of it all, IT jobs are about your technical ability. The savvier you are at software and programming tools, the less likely you need to have advanced Japanese ability. You must have a deep knowledge of computers and the most common software. Every software—which means every program to be run by a computer or machine—is written in a specific programming language. The programming languages most used in Japan are:

• C/C++;
• JavaScript;
• C#;
• Java;
• Python.

(If you want to know more information about IT jobs in Japan & about the Visa system please feel free to consult with us at tkk-tech@jobtkk.co.jp)