What is it like to work in London as a Japanese and English bilingual.
Would you like to work in the UK if possible?
My answer was “yes” 2 years ago where covid situation was sitll severe in Tokyo.
The reason I went to the UK was that I got a working holiday visa called YMS visa which allows Japanese people to work in the UK up to 2 years.
This visa was a lottery till last year and it was allocated to 1500 Japanese nationals per year. It was told that it is difficult to get the visa for Japanese people.
Also the visa requirement is that the applicant has to be under 30 years old to be qualified. I was 27 at the time and I was not sure when I can get the visa next time. So I decided to get the visa.
Since I was qulified for the visa, I searched for a job in the UK by using LinkedIn which is commonly used to find a job abroad.
I was luckly that I got a job before leaving Japan and I could start working in the UK one week after my arrival. Also I got my new apartment immediately close to the office.
I was hired as a Japanese speaking customer support for Crypto exchange platform. Since there was a regulation for cryoto in Japan and there was no customers from Japan, there was nothing much I could do in the office and all my collegues were from Hong Kong and I could not join the conversation at all, which made me want to find a new job.
After thoudands of job interviews during my lunch time, I got headhunted by a Japanese company based in London for a sales position. Since I wanted to leave the company so bad, I accepted the offer ASAP.
My role in the company was inside sales as a Japanese speaker. Basically I was handling small deal size orders from Japanese companies and local companies and I provided quotes for them. My boss did not like me that I do not save all emails on CRM systems and I did not understand why I have to save all emails on the CRM system. In the end, I had to leave the company since my boss did not like me much 😭
At the time I did not like the UK much because of the cold weather and my house was attacked by a stranger who was subletted by one of my flatmates in the house. But I made a close friend on Bumble and I decided to stay longer by applying for 6000 jobs and conducted 200–300 job interviews.
I ended up getting a tele-sales job for events. My role was calling managing director or any senior role person for business networking events. I was managing events in Germany, the UK and the US. I could invite some guests for European events but it was really hard to invite guests for the US market because of the time difference and so on. I was calling Nvidia, Sumsong, Sony and so on to invite guests for a semicondocor event based in San Diego. Since I could not invite guests for the event, my senior manager could not keep me in the company.
Since the pay was bad at the event company, I was looking for another role in London and I got an offer for a bank transfer payment solution company immediately. The job was fully-office based role and I had to commute every day. My collegues were from Latvia, Albenia, Hong Kong, Ireland and Turkey. Everyone was young and very diverse in the team. Luckly the comapany took us to some exhibitions like Malta, Cyprus as a marketing activity. Since the comapny did not have a good strategy for the product or something, the business did not go well and they have decided to minimize the team. I was not physicall well since I had a surgery and I had a mental issue from the health issue. In the end, I was let go from the company and I have decided to go back to Japan due to my health condition and I could not find any job with my short time visa which is around 3 months.
As you see, my job experience was not stable and not fun in the UK. But I think working abroad as a foreigner is difficult without any strong technical skills(programming, accounting, finance).
Now I am back to Tokyo for a while around a month and I am eager to continue a sales career since it is challenging and rewarding.
Do you like my career story in the UK?
If so, send me a DM on my twitter haha.
https://twitter.com/YusukeNishijima
