Although job hunting is one of the most important activities of our lives, itﾕs amazing how little "smarts" people put into making sure that they get the right job. The procedure usually is to go to a job Web site, or read the Monday edition of the Japan Times, and after seeing an ad that looks interesting, go to the company's Web site. If all the available literature looks good, then there's a frantic rush to create the world's best resume and send it in by registered mail. And then what?...

This week's article is targeted at employers. Running a job site, I see a lot of ads coming through the company every week. The difference between a well-written ad and a poorly written one is like night and day, with the best ads pulling up to 50 times as many resumes. The business model for online job boards such as DaiJob.com originated in the USA. The idea was to replace newspapers with the Internet, and thus much of the same process has been retained - particularly the fact that employers write their own ads. But this model is...

Getting a job that you really want in a foreign multinational company requires a lot of thought and planning. In a tight labor market in particular, you want to make sure that the quality of your resume gets you into the first round of interviews. And I can tell you that for some of the really attractive jobs, companies are getting up to a thousand candidates. So, how do you make yourself stand out and be noticed -yet not overstep the bounds? Since most multinationals in Japan are...

I often get asked if DaiJob.com can help non-bilingual people find a job in a multinational. While it is true that we have a number of positions for monolinguals - typically Japanese speakers with a little English reading skill, or highly skilled English-only speakers - there is no doubt that being bilingual completely opens up your vista of job opportunities. As you can imagine...

In today's troubled economy, one type of employee that has borne the brunt of all the head-cutting at most major Japanese corporations over the last 3 months is those people over 50 years old. Here at DaiJob.com, we are being inundated with resumes from highly skilled and highly experienced people who are on the wrong side of 50 and have already been fired or soon will be...

Often people ask me whether the headhunting industry is well suited for the social structure of Japan. People here are not used to switching jobs (although that is changing) and even less used to confiding in a stranger about their ambitions, hopes, problems, and shortcomings ...