Employment

As I believe I have mentioned on this blog before, a bit of a snafu occurred with my employment situation while I was away in Chiba, vastly improving my market value by studying why some Japanese people don't like some other Japanese people. I had left behind a lovely job as a software developer, with the agreement that I would resume my duties full time upon my return. Actually, I was already working full time in the sense of "40 hours a week," but according to the plan I was going to start working full time in the sense of "earning a normal salary." And then, as near as I can tell, some dudes named Lehman sold everyone a house, bankrupting Merryl Lynch. The government responded by taking over Washington Mutual, which led to the revelation that Bernie Madoff, responsible for an investement fund the size of a small nation's GDP, had instead blown the money on cocaine and party hats. The resulting crashes in cocaine and party-hat futures was a terrible double blow to my employer, who decided to fire someone to save some money. I, having no actual employment contract, was a terribly convenient target.

Unfortunately, the economic slump seems to have spilled out of the narcotics and pointy hat industries. In the best of times, finding work as a Japanese speaking computer programmer isn't the easiest thing. I mean, the jobs exist, it's not like we gather in the parking lot at Home Depot hoping to get picked up for a day of work translating technical manuals. Not that we would; Japanese technical manuals are translated by monkeys equipped with buckets of magnetic poetry.

Anyway. Not having the easiest time finding employment. I've sent my CV to tons of positions on Monster and StepStone (who are themselves hiring, interestingly enough), but my biggest hope has been with recruiters. Japanese companies in Germany are frequently looking for very specific skill sets. For example, sales people with experience in textiles and fluent Japanese, business analysts who know the German car market and speak fluent Japanese, window washers with a background in the theoretical applications of Windex and a solid command of Japanese. Since these people tend to be hard to find (almost all the grad students are doing practical Windex app. these days), they seem to rely almost exclusively on recruiters who specialize in Japanese companies operating in Europe.

One of these recruiters called me this morning, and it sounds like a job I was really, really hoping to get is going to come through some time this week. So there is hope that I shall be employed before the month is out. Go me!