RResidents in Japan

Sharing my experience with job hunting sites as a new grad

  • May 12, 2023

I’m doing shuukatsu right now and just wanted to share some job hunting sites and my experience with them so far, as someone who’s graduating from a 2 year IT 専門学校. Might be useful for people like me.

(Fyi I have N2 and have no problem using the Japanese sites with some google translating help. Plus from just the amount of job postings I see in Eng ver Jp job postings, you will have 10x more options if you know Japanese)

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Japanese sites:

[Infra](https://www.in-fra.jp/long-internship) – Internships! Wish I knew about it sooner.

[Rikunabi](https://job.rikunabi.com/2024/) – New graduate job hunting site. Not many international companies and starting salaries are mostly around 200k. I use this more than mynavi because of the better search function. (Attended 2 seminars, pending interviews).

[Mynavi](https://job.mynavi.jp/2024/) – Same with rikunavi (most companies have profiles on both sites). Has a filter if companies accept international students.

[Paiza](https://paiza.jp/) – IT based e-learning and job search site. New grads and mid-career. Really recommend this for programmers. Complete coding exercises and you get ranks like A,B,C etc. Scouts from companies come/apply to companies easily with your rank and salary is more competitive. I’ve seen most jobs are also international student friendly.(submitted 2 applications, no seminars. pending interviews).

[Wantedly](https://www.wantedly.com/) – IT jobs. Some internships, mostly new graduates to mid career. The job posting are from venture companies? I’m not sure. But there are less postings than other sites so I haven’t had any luck with it yet.

[Findy](https://findy-code.io/) – IT jobs geared towards mid-career and up.

[Indeed](https://jp.indeed.com/m/) – There are some new graduates jobs but you gotta search in Japanese. Have postings from international companies.

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English sites (for English speakers/bilingual):

[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/) – Tons of IT jobs but little to none for new graduates. There are some internships. I applied for internships for big companies like PayPay, Mercari and got rejected. But you’ll probably get in if you are from like University of Tokyo.

[Daijob](https://www.daijob.com/en/) – Site for English speakers/bilingual. Almost no job for new graduates but a ton of other postings.

[CareerCross](https://www.careercross.com/en/) – Same with Daijob.

[TokyoDev](https://www.tokyodev.com/) – IT jobs geared towards mid career and up.

[Japan Dev](https://japan-dev.com/) – Same with TokyoDev.

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Tldr: Tons of jobs for new graduates with shit pay on popular Japanese websites. Not a lot of postings on English websites, still shit pay except for a few big name companies.

Edit: format

8 comments

  1. Thanks for the info, I really appreciate all your hard work.

    I got a question. From your post, the Japanese one definitely has more job ads on it than the English one, but which one has more international company job ads?

    Good luck with your job hunting!

  2. Omg the timing. I’m in 就活 now too and is the most stressful thing ever. I hate it so much. I’m in design and it’s super difficult to find jobs. Someone that’s in this film can help me/recommend me some companies?

  4. Here are some other IT-related job sites you can add to your list:

    [GitTap](https://www.gittap.jp/) – Technically a bilingual listings site, though almost every post I’ve seen has required at least N3.

    [Green](https://www.green-japan.com/) – Japanese only. Seems to be a bit like Wantedly. I didn’t explore it much.

    [GaijinPot](https://jobs.gaijinpot.com/job/index/lang/en) – Mostly a site for English teaching jobs, but occasionally you’ll see a decent IT listing.

    [Jobs in Japan](https://jobsinjapan.com/) – Similar to GaijinPot, though with a greater volume of listings.

    Then there are some recruiting agencies you might want to contact (they are all bilingual, though as always Japanese ability is a plus):

    [Skillhouse](https://skillhouse.co.jp/) – IT-focused recruiting agency.

    [Michael Page](https://www.michaelpage.co.jp/en) – All fields

    [Robert Half](https://www.roberthalf.jp/en) – All fields

    Also, you can try applying directly through the website of the company where you’d like to work. Rakuten, Mercari, Line, PayPay, etc. are the big names.

  5. Japanese rakunavi, mynavi sites were useless for me when I was doing shuukatsu (IT jobs).

    What I do, go to Tokyo dev or japan dev or LinkedIn or wantedly (even if they are mid-career ads), look at the names of all the companies , search those companies if they have a 新卒採用 page, make a spreadsheet of it and start applying.

  6. I had luck in the past actually using a recruiting agency. I used [Recruit Agent](https://www.r-agent.com/), but I’m sure there are others. I was living in Tokyo at the time and looking exclusively in Nagasaki, where my wife is from. First contact after registering on the website was via email, where we scheduled an in person interview. The agent had several offers I didn’t find online ready for me on my first (and only) interview, all for 正社員 or 契約社員 positions.

    It cost me nothing, they got paid a commission by the company when I got hired.

  8. When you say IT jobs, are you mostly talking about just programming? I ask because IT is pretty broad with programming/dev only being a subsection of that.

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