Expat Emire Podcast 5 | Recruiting Talent in Japan with Misha Yurchenko

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Today we will be hearing from Misha Yurchenko. Misha was born in Ukraine, grew up in the United States, and has lived in Japan since graduating from university. In this episode, you will learn:

• How Misha found a job as a recruiter in Japan and how you can, too
• Tips for finding jobs in Japan outside of the typical paths and avoiding common foreign job-seeker pitfalls
• Advice for getting a good deal on an apartment in Tokyo
• How to sponsor your own visa by creating a company in Japan

You can find out more about Misha and what he is up to on his blog at http://mishayurchenko.me/ or on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Misha-Yurchenko. Music on this episode was produced by Eli Hermit, please check him out at elihermit.bandcamp.com/. Learn more about Expat Empire at expatempire.com!

Episode Transcript

Intro

Welcome to the Expat Empire Podcast, the podcast where you can hear from expats around the world and learn how you can join them.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today for the 5th episode of the Expat Empire Podcast. Today we will be hearing from Misha Yurchenko. Misha was born in the Ukraine, grew up in the United States, and has lived in Tokyo since graduating from university. We discuss many topics including what it is like to work as a recruiter in Japan, how to avoid common job-seeker pitfalls when looking for a position in Japan, tips for getting a good deal on an apartment in Tokyo, how to sponsor your own visa by creating a company in Japan, and much more.

Without further ado, let’s start the conversation.

Conversation

David McNeill: Hey! Misha, thanks so much for joining the Expat Empire Podcast today.

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah man, I’m really glad to be on it. I hope I can be of help somehow and share my funky stories with the people listening.

David McNeill: Yeah, definitely. Excited to hear them! So if you can tell us first a little bit about where you’re originally from and where around the world you’ve lived so far, and where you’re currently at right now?

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah, sure, I’ll try and give you kind of the short version. So, I’ve been in Tokyo now for about five years and originally I was actually born in The Ukraine but had moved to the US when I was around three when I grew up, yeah! Most of the time I was in Arizona, Southern Arizona, and then I went to school in Texas, throughout middle school high school and then went to the University of Austin, Texas.

And then I went to Jochi University, which is Sophia University, for those who are not familiar and I did that for a year as a study abroad exchange in Japan. Went back to the US, graduated and then moved directly to Tokyo upon graduation and I’ve been here ever since.

David McNeill: So what was it about maybe that study abroad experience that really piqued your interest in working abroad and working in Japan in particular?

Misha Yurchenko: I think we could probably go back a few years before that. So I was actually… Missed a small part there, so I was actually living in France for about two years when I was around 12 or 13 years old and my mom was actually studying over there, so we were just there for a bit. And it was kind of really random because Japan hadn’t been on my radar at all at that point, it was just, yeah! I just knew about Japan, like everyone else did. Didn’t really read manga or anime or anything and I was taking French classes which were required and then at some point, the French school I was attending needed me to, or required a second language other than French.

So my options were Italian, German and Japanese, and those classes were all taught in French, which was a language I didn’t speak. So it was just kind of a weird situation and I was like, okay, it doesn’t really matter what language I take. So I just kind of took Japanese on a whim because I thought it’d be fun and challenging, maybe it was kind of an active rebelliousness as well, just like hey! I’ll probably fail this class anyways. And then I ended up taking it and just kind of fell in love with the language and there’s actually a really, you know, a really cool Japanese teacher and I made some Japanese friends at the time.

So I guess, probably from that age of 13 I just had this really positive impression of Japan and I, you know, studied the language a little bit, not too seriously and then I think maybe it was, let’s say, I think maybe two or three years after that, I said, hey! Why don’t I just go check out Japan? It seems like a cool place and I speak the language. So that was when I decided to do a three-week homestay program, you know, staying with a Japanese family in Fukuoka. So I went over there for a few weeks and just fell in love with it, that it was like, you know, the first time you go to Japan it’s, you’ve got that kind of gaijin experience where everyone’s staring at you and, you know, wants to talk to you and you go out and, I think I was, you know, I was 16 at the time but I was still able to get into bars and drink which was very bizarre but a lot of fun.

Like, I imagine as a 16 year old it’s like holy shit, like, this is awesome. So I think that was, yeah, a lot of fun at the time and then when I got back to the US after that program it was just kind of like, you know, the ball was rolling from there and I was like, why don’t I just continue studying and one thing led to the next and then I got a bit more serious about studying in university and then that’s when I decided to go to Tokyo for the one-year study abroad program.

David McNeill: Nice. And was that actually what you major at the university? Were you a major in Japanese or did you combine it with something else as well?

Misha Yurchenko: Yea! So I was… I actually started out as a business major I was just awful with numbers, I think I switched after a few months and then I transferred to international relations, which is just like a very broad like liberal arts degree, you know, studied politics, economics and culture and then I actually minored in East Asian studies with a focus on Japan. So that just, there was just a lot more language classes and culture, like Japanese culture.

David McNeill: And did you have a particular plan for after graduation? I guess your main goal was to get to Japan but did you know exactly how that would come about or did you have any, you know, particular ideas to what career you would have in Japan?

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! So I think like most people kind of exploring this question and, you know, people that are, you know, want to get to Japan, you know, they oftentimes, I think it was actually at a career fair but I think often times people will just think of English teaching as the obvious kind of choice to get started and to go to Japan in that route, and so that was obviously something I’d heard about and started exploring but I didn’t actually have a specific goal or plan or career plan. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but it was just like this one goal, like I have to get to Japan somehow.

So I went to the Boston Career Forum the year before I graduated, because that’s kind of, from what I heard at the time, it was a great place to meet companies and even if I couldn’t find a job there, just at least a network. So I went out there for a few days to look for a job and really at that point I honestly, I had no idea what other jobs are out there really other than English teaching, and I just went up to companies, just random companies, went up to their booths and just started talking to them and interviewing. So I interviewed with a few companies, you know, some health tech company.

I interviewed with a couple of recruitment companies there; I had no idea what recruitment was at the time, and I total involved, I think all of those interviews, and I actually was a day late because my flight was delayed, so I think it just kind of screwed everything up. So, for me it wasn’t the most positive experience but I did come out of there with a bit more knowledge of, okay, you know, there are these sorts of companies that are hiring and it is possible to get to Japan, you know, through Rakuten or, you know, various other companies that aren’t necessarily just like eikaiwa or English teaching. So…

David McNeill: And it’s one of the routes that you ended up pursuing or how did you actually get that first job in Japan?

Misha Yurchenko: Yes. So out of… It’s kind of, yeah! I just kind of remembered that because it’s been so many years but I was at the career fair and I interviewed with a company called Rakuten, which is a massive eCommerce player in Japan and, you know, they’re basically the Amazon of Japan. And they had, you know, they had interviewed me a few times and I thought it had went really well and I got back to, you know, Texas a few days later and they, you know, gave me a call and said, “Hey, we really enjoyed the interviews, we would like to give you an offer.”

So there was like this verbal offer over the phone from this company I’d met there and, you know, I was… They didn’t give me any details, they didn’t tell me what position; they just kind of made this verbal offer. So, I was really excited and I was like, Hey, guys, you know, I’m going to… I got an offer from this company and I was telling everyone, I told my parents and then basically it was just crickets, so we’re just silent for two weeks. And I kept… you know, I emailed them, I called them back and then, I don’t really know what happened there to be honest, but basically the HR apologized and they said look, actually we have to rescind the offer and we’re not going to be able to offer you at this time. So, that was kind of a really weird experience, like my first weird experiences with Japanese HR, of which I’ve had many other ones.

David McNeill: Yeah, I’m going to guess that you have!

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! So it was just like, I… I don’t know, I don’t really know what happened there. It’s probably just some hiccups or a mess up on their end. But I, yeah! I was a little bit disappointed after that as you can imagine. So I was kind of scrambling like, you know, I think it was February or March at the time, just a few months before I was about to graduate that summer, so I was kind of freaking out. I was like, you know, what am I going to do? I thought I had this job and, so at that point, I put in my application for the JET Programme, which is the English teaching program here in Japan which is like one of the best of… It wasn’t really my plan A but, again, I just wanted to get to Japan.

So I applied for that and I also started applying for recruitment companies; this is kind of where recruitment comes in. It’s a mix because I have heard about recruitment when I went to that Boston Career Forum and that piqued my interest, so I did a bit more research on it. I had a friend who was working at LinkedIn in the US and she was also Japanese, so I was like, hey! Melanie, what recruitment companies would you recommend in terms of, you know, reputation and salary, all those things in Japan. Like, were there any good recruitment companies? So she sent me a list of 10 companies and I just applied to all them. And I just started interviewing, you know, for Robert Walters, Michael Page, Hays, all these different, you know, mostly foreign recruitment companies. In parallel, I was also, you know, applying for the JET Programme. So, basically I had these two different career paths that I was exploring at that time. And I really had no concept of what recruitment was and even, you know even when I first got to Japan and actually started working with recruitment later, I still didn’t really understand what it was until a few months on the job. So, it was really like this black box. I was like, you know, whatever; it sounds like a cool job. It’s sales and marketing and, you know, it seems very fast pace. So, I was really just trying to get here and I think that’s maybe how a lot of people approach it. But anyway, so I had gone through a round of interviews and I ended up getting accepted into the JET Programme and I got accepted into a couple of recruitment companies as well; one of them Wahl and Case which is where I ended up joining. It just really felt… I can’t really explain why I joined but I think at the time I really liked all the people there and some of the companies that… Some of the clients that they were working with seemed really interesting, so I was like, hey, this seems like a good fit. And I ended up joining that company and then moving to Tokyo two months later.

David McNeill: Nice. What was that moving process like? What all did you have to get ready, get together and, you know? I’m sure it was a bit of a scramble as it has been my case in the past.

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! Man, it was. Like, I remember that week that I was getting the offer, I had actually… My appendix almost burst, so I had to go to the hospital.

David McNeill: Oh!

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! So, I was like, you know, I was on pain medicine, I was freaking out, I was, you know, trying to get my visa together; it was a bit of a mess but I… If I can, I mean, I don’t think there was anything too complicated about it. I mean, there was this Certificate of Eligibility I had to apply for, had to get out of the embassy. The company, you know, obviously sponsored my visa, which was a five year; I think it was like specialties in humanity visa or something. And, I mean the process is really straightforward, I think the company obviously brought in lots of foreigners before, so that, you know, the process was pretty streamlined, which is, I think, yeah! I guess I was really lucky in that sense.

And they also helped find an apartment for me the first month, so I actually didn’t have to worry about that, at least for the first month when I got to Tokyo. I was living there in this kind of really, you know, dodgy like service apartment, and then that first month I was looking for my own apartment in central Tokyo. So I had to find that and that was a bit of an experience because I remember all the places I was looking at, I was sitting there with a real estate agent and, you know, everyone he would call were just, basically just saying, “No, we don’t allow foreigners to stay in this apartment.” So that was a bit of a shock for me and, but anyways I ended up finding place in Shibuya, which is really nice. I got lucky there and I’ve actually been living there ever since. So…

David McNeill: Do you have any particular advice for people looking to find apartments, maybe the nice areas or how to find those places that allowed for foreigners to live there?

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! I mean… I think there is… One thing to note is all the real estate agencies in Japan share the same database. So I think ultimately everyone has access to the same apartments, it’s just a matter of finding a, just a trustworthy and, you know, a good real estate agent that is willing to, yeah! Be flexible and listen to you and understand, you know, what you’re looking for. But, at the end of the day like, you know, they’re going to have access to the same location, so just keep that in mind.

But I am… One thing I realized later on was that there are certain parts of the real estate, or that it’s just the rents that are actually negotiable. And I think when you’re first coming here, you know, you might not have so much confidence to do that, especially if it’s, you know, your first job, and you just kind of want to find a place but I would just suggest negotiating. And there are a lot of, kind of hidden fees and just extra fees that, you know, you guys will probably find out about, like the shikikin and the reikin, and it adds up to, you know, three, four or five months rent up front which is, you know, a pretty big down payment for a lot of people.

And I found that if you just ask, and I’ve had other friends do this since, if you just ask for an apartment that doesn’t have those down payments, then they will actually, many of the times they’ll find a place for you that is half that price still, you know, in a good location. So, sometimes it’s just a matter of asking those simple questions and, yeah! You might be surprised by what you find.

David McNeill: Sure. Yeah! That’s great advice actually because it can be a significant amount of money upfront. As you were looking at different departments around central Tokyo, as you mentioned you ended up in Shibuya, what’s, you know, interesting about that area to you? What made it a good spot? Are there other areas that you would consider living in if you were to move?

Misha Yurchenko: At the time, I couldn’t really afford the apartment I was living in. And the reason I chose that, you know, Shibuya is a fairly expensive, you know, expensive area in general; it’s very central, a lot of clubs, a lot bars. Google is actually building a new office here just right next to the station, so it’s going to give them, you know, a bigger and a lot of, yeah! A lot of construction now but anyways, I just wanted to be near my office, which was the main thing.

So it’s about a 10–15 minute walk from where I was working and the second thing was just because it was in the centre, particularly at the centre of nightlife, I just wanted to be part of that, I was like young and I just got here, so I thought it’d be a lot of fun and it was. So I’m glad I made that choice. But I think the first six months I was really just scraping by. I think at one point I had to borrow money from my manager because I just couldn’t pay rent. I was like, hey! You know I’m sorry, like I, I’m paying all these bills, blah, blah, blah and so like, he was, you know, fortunately he was really nice and then that was the last time I ever asked anyone for money. But…

David McNeill: Right!

Misha Yurchenko: After that, after I made my first bonus on the job, you know, paying the rent wasn’t a big deal anymore but those first few months were definitely really tough and, yeah! I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this area of Shibuya for everyone. It can loud; it can be quite crowded, even more so now with just, you have a lot more people living here. So, yeah! I would say, if you live 30 or 40 minutes west of Tokyo, for example, out towards on the Chuo line, the red line, out towards like Kokubunji or Musashikogane, those are actually really nice quiet areas and you can commute to the centre of Tokyo within 30, 40 minutes max. So, you’ll find that the rent prices are way, way cheaper and I would say, my personal opinion is as long as it’s not more than like 45 minutes or so, it’s not so bad because the trains are obviously quite efficient. But if you’re commuting for more than a couple hours a day then that’s just, that can be a bit depressing.

David McNeill: How did you find living and working in Japan compared to when you were living there as a student?

Misha Yurchenko: So, fortunately I had studied here for a year as I mentioned, and while my Japanese was definitely not fluent, I would just describe it as conversational. The culture, you know, the cultural part of just being here wasn’t really a shock to me; I had actually had a bank account already and I had a couple friends here from school, so it wasn’t like I was just coming in for the first time. And I think that made it a lot easier, just because I had tested the waters and I would really recommend it to anyone, not just to move here without having spent at least a few weeks or months here, because it is a big shift.

So, I think when I joined, I was really able to just kind of hit the ground running and, you know, just do the job. So, my first few weeks, my first few months really were kind of a haze and I was staying in the office, you know, very late just trying to understand how the industry worked, and doing all the nomikai and just going out and drinking with colleagues, getting to know everyone and it was a very intense kind of initiation process, I guess you could call it.

David McNeill: So now that you’ve seen the other side, do you have any advice for people looking to work as an English language recruiter in Japan? What’s the best route to actually getting that job? And what’s the interview process like?

Misha Yurchenko: Sure. So there are literally thousands of recruitment companies in Japan. I think in Tokyo alone there are over 3,000 registered recruitment agencies. So, not all of those, of course, are large. I mean, some of those are just one man shows and they just have maybe a few employees but my point is there are a lot of options, and I think it’s definitely wise to kind of come in and assess the different types of recruitment firms, the different industries they are working in.

For example, you could join a company, let’s say, let’s take one recruitment company for example, like enWorld and, you know, get put into their team that focuses on automotive clients. And you are dealing with, you know, very traditional domestic suit-and-tie type salaryman and business people, and that is a very different world than going in and joining a recruitment company that works with startups, where everyone’s international and speak English. So I think it’s… Yeah, I guess the first point is just to really make sure you can know what team you’re going to be in, make sure you are interested in that industry because you, you know, you will become deeply, deeply familiar with that and spend most of your time kind of studying and meeting those sorts people.

And I guess the second thing is just, maybe this applies to a lot of companies but your manager, your direct boss plays a huge, huge role in how you develop and, you know, your success in the company. Because I think they’re the person that’s going to be there to, you know, teach you the ropes and give you feedback. And if you don’t have someone, especially in, you know, a high pressured sales environment, if you don’t have someone there to support you, it can be really, really tough and, you know, you can burn out quite quickly, so. I had a few times, I think the first year or so, where I got pretty close to burning out just working late basically, where I just, not knowing how to separate, you know, work and life. And I had my, computer, so they gave us a MacBook and, you know, we could just work from home and that was great but then I didn’t really know how to turn it off, so fortunately I had a really good manager who’s like, you know, basically forced me to take a vacation. It’s not just about the team, it’s not just about the company or the industry, but it’s really who are you working with every day, who is going to be supporting you and if you don’t really get along with that person, if you’re not inspired by them, then, you know, I would really look at other options and, you know, weigh all those options out because it is going to make, I think a big difference.

David McNeill: Could you take a step back, just if you could explain in your own words what the, what your job was in recruiting and what it entailed day to day, and also maybe what kind of people you think best fit into that environment? That would be great.

Misha Yurchenko: When I started recruitment, it was really a black box and I remember getting to work on the first day and, you know, I had a few days of training; one of the training modules was to head on people or essentially call people that I didn’t know. And, you know, I got a phone book and some phone numbers, and then my instructions were, you know, start dialing. And I really had no idea what to do, it was, you know, kind of beyond me.

So, basically what recruitment is in a nutshell is, you’re helping companies, let’s say Amazon for example, you’re helping a company like Amazon find talent, find employees to fill certain positions. So, if Amazon is looking for a marketing manager then, you know, my job would be to go out and to go on LinkedIn, to go through our database that we built and to locate someone that has the skills that Amazon is looking for, and then essentially convince them to apply for the job, and then help them through the interview process, negotiate their salary, negotiate their offer and, you know, place them, essentially what you call “placing”; place them into the company. And we’re being paid by the client, in this case it was Amazon, and they’re paying you a fee that’s usually equivalent to anywhere from three to six months of that person’s yearly salary. So that’s the basic business model but there’s several different variations of, you know, recruitment. You know, there’s permanent position, there’s contract positions, there’s… yeah! There’s a few different kinds, but essentially the model is quite similar, and my day to day was pretty much different every day.

So the great thing was I was able to, after some time, I was able to kind of make my own schedule, where I knew that, you know, on any given day I had to basically do two things. The first thing was, I had to go find people that were qualified for a job. So let’s take the Amazon example again. So I have to go and meet a bunch of people that are potentially good candidates and might be interested in what I have to say, and that would, you know, that would require me going out all the way across town to have a coffee with someone or have dinner, that might be a phone call. I… You know, it really just depending on the situation. And then the other part of the job would be going out to meet new clients or existing clients, and so there is really just the two sides; the candidate side and the client side.

So you’re constantly kind of managing and juggling on both sides; always communicating with people, always managing expectations, in the sense that, you know, you don’t really know when someone’s going to change your mind. So, you know, if you have, let’s say, Tanaka-san; you’re helping Tanaka-san interview for a position at Amazon, you know, maybe tomorrow he decides he doesn’t like Amazon anymore, maybe his wife comes back and says, she doesn’t want him to work for a foreign company. You know, you have to kind of expect and manage all these different situations.

And then you also have to manage it from the client’s perspective and explain to them what’s going on. So you’re juggling both of those and then, of course there’s the internal situation of, you know, actually working at the company I was working at and meeting certain targets and KPIs — key performance indicators. For example, you know, many people might not know this but while the goal is to help people find jobs, you know, we have certain targets that we have to meet on a weekly basis, like the number of resumes that we send. So at any given week, I’ll have to send 15 resumes to my client and if I didn’t, I would get negative feedback.

Some companies are a lot more strict than others, you know, some will really base your bonus on those targets and if you don’t meet that, it’s just… yeah, everyone can kind of see what you’re doing in the company. There’s usually a dashboard or like, you know, a blackboard or something where those stats are written.

David McNeill: Right!

Misha Yurchenko: It’s very emotional at times, because you’re essentially dealing with people’s careers and at the time you’re managing these internal targets, which can be a bit of a contradiction in some ways because you’re kind of assigning a metric to a person. So there were times where it was certainly, yeah! It was certainly stressful. Like, personally I chose to at times ignore those metrics and just kind of do my own thing and I think ultimately that works for me.

Because I spent time getting to know people, building a network and finding them good jobs that they actually wanted to do, and while I didn’t necessarily meet every target on a weekly basis, over the midterm and the long-term my results were very good. Yeah! Maybe going back to another, a question you add is just, short-term versus long-term, how… If you’re looking at a recruitment company, you know, what are they actually measuring? What is the… What are the inputs and outputs that they’re looking at?

That’s a great question to ask if you’re interviewing for a recruitment firm, just to know what you’re being measured on.

David McNeill: For people that are interested in this type of work, I mean, what do you think makes a great recruiter? Do you have any specific advice for people that are looking into this and also maybe the required Japanese level?

Misha Yurchenko: Just to answer this second question first. So the Japanese level really varies, I used Japanese my first six months on the job, and I was negotiating contracts and, you know, meeting candidates and clients in Japanese and that was really challenging, because my Japanese was pretty bad. So I’m actually not sure why they let me do that but… And, yeah! But I realized at one point I was like, hey, you know, maybe if I use English, I’ll do a lot better.

And I… Yeah! I basically just, you know, made that decision at that point; I could do 10x better, 10x faster if I was using my native tongue. And, you know, for some people that really want to improve their Japanese and stick with it, you know, they may not make that choice, they may prefer to use Japanese. And, honestly I think that’s a choice that that you make because most companies that you deal with here in Japan, they’re going to speak Japanese.

And there are very few clients that you’ll meet who don’t speak any Japanese at all, like they will be an HR person or they will be someone that speaks Japanese, so you will have that choice but it’s very easy to, just to default into English if you know everyone speaks English. So if your goal is a way to maintain and improve your Japanese then, you know, working with purely foreign clients or foreign improvement firm the deals with foreign clients, you know, that can be a setting yourself up a little bit there, right? Because it’ll be easy just to default into your language.

So just keep that in mind, I guess. And there are also, you know, there are lots of companies where, you know, they don’t speak any English at all and that can also be tough in its own right. There are people that will do really well in one recruitment firm, but fail miserably in another recruitment firm. So I think it’s important to keep in mind that, that yeah, like you may be a really good recruiter, you might have the sales ability or you know just the passion and that drive to do well in like, let’s say a really small recruitment firm where there’s maybe 10 or 11 people, but you might struggle in a more corporate environment.

So I think that’s something to keep in mind but in general, they say and it’s one of the clichés sayings, it’s like, “recruitment is the business of rejection.” And the reason they say that is because you’re constantly either being rejected or you are rejecting someone. So let’s say someone fails a job interview, you have to break the news and you have to tell them that, hey, you failed the interview for this reason, and obviously people can be quite emotional. So you have to handle that as kind of a customer service.

David McNeill: Right!

Misha Yurchenko: Or you’re being rejected by someone, like a client that says, “hey, no, I don’t want to work with you” or a candidate says, “hey, you know, I don’t want to apply for this job.” So, I would say just the resilience is most important. Like, you don’t have to be an extrovert by any means, but I think just the ability to kind of bounce back and say, okay, I understand like that I was rejected a 100 times today but that means I’m one step closer to getting a yes and that’s fine. If you don’t have that positive attitude, like you will get burned out very quickly and it’s very easy to kind of get into a negative spiral on a new job.

David McNeill: So if folks are interested in maybe not working necessarily in recruiting or an English translating or English teaching, from your perspective as a recruiter, what advice would you give to others looking to work in Japan? You know, what made some candidates more successful that you’ve worked with and what are some common pitfalls that people can try to avoid as they try to get employment in Japan?

Misha Yurchenko: Sure. So I think a lot of that depends on the skills the person has obviously. Like if you’re a developer, you know, if you’ve got a strong mobile development skills, there are a lot of mobile ad agencies, a lot of development companies, a lot of, you know, in-house positions as well now that are, I think available for foreigners with good depth skills that don’t necessarily need the language ability. So I think that something to keep in mind is what, you know, what your expertise is and is the language really required, but I think generally speaking, Japanese is still pretty important for many jobs.

And I wouldn’t say that you have to be a fluent a Japanese speaker but what I found is a lot of people will move here with maybe a little bit of Japanese, maybe they’ve studied a bit, maybe they’ve been here for a few weeks, then they do some Skype interviews, they get a job and then they, they’re just quite surprised by what they were told in the interview versus what the actual company is like. I have a good friend who worked at a… Actually a large cosmetics brand, obviously it’s a foreign company but it’s actually very, very traditional, very Japanese inside because it’s, they’ve been around for a while.

So I think she was quite surprised when she got there with her limited Japanese, and like all the meetings were in Japanese and, you know, the bosses expected her to speak Japanese, even though it was clear before she got hired that it was quite limited. So that was kind of unfortunately… It happens a lot, you know.

David McNeill: That’s an unfortunate expectation set by the boss, which I assume was the person who also hired her. That seems a little challenging.

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! So just on that note, I mean, it’s very important. I think, if I can give a little bit of advice is that it’s really important just to go actually meet the company, meet the managers, spend a day at the office if you can, you know, before you get hired though. Like, it’s just absolutely necessary just to come to Tokyo or whatever city you’re planning on living in and just network, and be here. Because I think being here versus getting a job overseas, while you’re overseas, it’s just completely different.

David McNeill: What would you say are some good skill sets for people to be able to bring to Japan and be successful there?

Misha Yurchenko: First part is just having a little bit of sensitivity, even in the example of the great developer, right? The great developer that comes to Tokyo and gets hired at, you know, some mobile app company or something, even Facebook or Google like, whatever. They’re not necessarily going to do well in the Japanese setting, because maybe back in the US if you’re the loudest person in the room then, you know, you kind of get heard but if you’re the loudest person in the room in Japan, then that’s seen as a little crass and not very humble.

So I think just, in any industry or in any career you’re in, just kind of being cautious of… kind of what cultural norms that you have, and just kind of making sure that you adapt a little bit. I would say industries to potentially look at now in the tech space, which is what I’m most familiar with; there are obviously a lot of verticals there. A lot of travel companies, which maybe is an obvious one, just because of the… You know, we have the Olympics coming up and everything, and the government’s putting in quite a lot of effort. There’s so much going on, you know.

Anything in and around travel tech, you know, Expedia, there’s a company called Deltra which was like a Japanese travel site. We have a lot of media, travel media sites, like there’s like all about Japan; there’s, you know discount sites like Tokyo Cheapo. I mean, there’s a lot of basically foreign travel business, inbound business related companies and I think if you look in that area, you can find jobs in sales, marketing, tech, and it’s a really exciting area right now. So…

David McNeill: Cool. Yeah! It’s a great piece of advice. Just getting back to your career a bit, so you kind of mentioned how the first months and maybe even the first year went and, you know, there were a lot of challenges but you were able to overcome those. How did your career progress from that point? And, you know, how does that bring me to maybe where you are today?

Misha Yurchenko: So when I was working in the recruitment firm, I was there for four years, I quit about a year ago. So I’ve been in Japan five years now. And the reason I decided to quit was because, essentially I had achieved the goals that I had set out to meet. And that was around maybe year three, three and half, you know.

Some of my big goals were: 1) to gain management experience; 2) build a network in Japan, and 3) save some money. When I felt I had done those things, even though, you know, I really enjoyed the company, I still am friends with the CEO and a lot of people there, I just felt like it was time to move on. So I put in my good three months notice and then after that, I just decided, you know, I’d stay in Japan and I, I was essentially procrastinating and travelling and writing and reading and, just kind of enjoying life after a full-time corporate job.

David McNeill: So now that you’ve left your job, how have you actually managed to make your visa situation work?

Misha Yurchenko: I applied for a permanent residency in Japan and that was several months ago. So that essentially just means that I don’t have to worry about the visa, right? And there’s not many, too many other benefits, I’m not sure. But that was the main one, and I applied for that maybe about six, seven months ago. I spoke with my lawyer who was helping me and, you know, like we called the immigration office and basically, she said that there’s so many, there are so many people applying for permanent residency that there’s like an eight to nine month wait for a response, which is…

David McNeill: Wow!

Misha Yurchenko: You know, pretty surprising. So, I still haven’t got a response. Yeah! So in the meantime, you know, obviously my visa was expiring; I applied to sponsor my own visa. And the way I did that was actually… Sorry there is a point that I forgot to mention, but during, in the past year, a year and a half… Actually, when I was still working at the recruitment company, I had started a company on the side.

That side business came out of just a personal interest of drones, drones in Japan, and I didn’t really see anyone, any English speaking website that catered towards foreigners who are interested in kind of travelling with drones, flying drones, learning how to fly drones, so I basically just made this website, catered towards that segment. It’s very niche but, you know, there are people who would like to fly drones and…

David McNeill: Sure.

Misha Yurchenko: So I was able to reach them and kind of provided a kind of video service and rented drones as well. So, anyways that was officially a company I’d set up as a go to goutougaisha or a GK, which is basically like a limited liability corporation, LLC. And the upfront capital for that is actually compared to a kabushikigaisha, which is a lot more expensive and we can basically put down like a 100 yen for the upfront capital and you can still register the company.

So the biggest saver, lifesaver for me was just, or time saver I should say, was finding a capable lawyer that could just kind of handle everything for me. And that has just been… Yeah! Like, this is really great to have someone that can also just give me advice on immigration and on… Started a company and all that, and not that expensive, if you think about how much time it would take for me to do it myself.

David McNeill: Absolutely.

Misha Yurchenko: So anyway, so she helped me set up the company. It costs like a $1,000 for her time to do that. I had to make a stamp; I think that was like the main thing. I had to make a stamp for the company and that cost like 20 bucks and then, it’s just a big old stamp I don’t know why they still use them but, yeah!

David McNeill: Is it difficult to have this company incorporated in Japan where you have to deal with so much physical paperwork as opposed to doing things online?

Misha Yurchenko: It’s definitely annoying. I mean, I get all sorts of papers in the mail that I, you know, I still read them, like they’re, sometimes there are important things but oftentimes, you know, Japanese banks and, you know, the government… They just like send you garbage that you don’t need. So, or just like receipts or… So, okay, I just throw them in the pile and then, again, like having an accountant, having a lawyer just like makes things so much easier. So I just gave everything to them and I’m like, hey guys, here’s the stuff, help me figure it out.

But, yeah! It wasn’t that much of a pain, to be honest it’s like, the first month it was just, I had to go to the bank, transfer some money, had to get the stamp, had to fill out some papers, all in all it probably took me like two or three hours and then my lawyer did the rest of the work. And then afterwards, you know, fast forward a year til today and, you know, I’m able to sponsor my own visa through that company that I’ve set up. And the basic requirements for that are, you know, you’ve just shown that you’re actually making some sort of revenue, I think that’s the main thing they look at. You don’t necessarily… You don’t have to be making a profit if the company is like, under five years old or something like that.

David McNeill: Should everyone just try to take advantage of that opportunity? Because then you don’t actually have to worry about getting someone to sponsor you. I mean, of course it takes some amount of upfront capital and if you’re not making much money or certainly if you’re not making a profit, you know, that would be challenging, if you don’t have savings in place, but if it’s really such a minimum amount of money that you have to put down upfront and relatively low cost to actually get it started, you know, why aren’t more people doing this?

Misha Yurchenko: I don’t think there’s any big cash. I know a few people that have done this but I think the main thing is that if you, especially if you’ve never been to Japan or you’ve only been here for maybe a few weeks or a few months, like the type of visa that you’re going to get to sponsor yourself, it’s probably only going to be like a one-year visa. So that’s just one thing to keep in mind.

Like, if you want to sponsor yourself, start the company sponsor yourself… If you have no track record in Japan, if you haven’t been here at all, then they might question that. I mean, it’s very possible that they might go, okay, well, you know, what are you doing here? We’re just going to give you a six-month or a one-year visa. But if you, you know, if you’ve come here already and you’ve had a job or you have employees at your company or a Japanese co-founder, and that’s another good way to do it, then you’re more likely to get a one, two or three-year visa with that sponsorship.

So I think maybe, not so many people are aware of that, and they’re not doing it or people that have moved here already kind of figured out after a while and then do that, but I don’t see too many people come in here right off the bat and taking that approach. So, it’s definitely possible.

David McNeill: So I know that you’ve shared a lot of really fantastic advice for people that want to work and live in Japan and I’m curious, do you have any other final pieces of advice?

Misha Yurchenko: Well, I think that something we didn’t really talk about too much is, I was involved in kind of the startup community here in Japan. I think one of the biggest kept secrets of Japan is like; it’s a great place to have a start-up. Once you get past, you know, the kind of the language and the cultural barriers, I think there is, there are actually more people and more companies here that support start-ups than there are start-ups.

I think, if anyone out there… You know, don’t just come to Japan and start a company without an idea, I think, you know, you have to have some understanding of what you’re doing and, you know, solve an actual problem. But, you know, Japan or Tokyo is never on the top 10 or 15 lists of, you know, start-up tech hubs and I think it should be. So, yeah, that would probably be my last thing I would like to say.

David McNeill: Awesome! Is there any other way that our listeners can find out more about you and what you’re doing, and just keep up to date with your travels and fun stuff that you’re up to in Japan?

Misha Yurchenko: Yeah! Sure. So I write a lot on Quora, sort of a blogging site, so you can just, you know, type my name in and find me there.

Outro

Thanks to Misha for sharing his story with us. You can find the full transcript for this episode at expatempire.com.

If you are interested in sharing your story on Expat Empire, please consider submitting a user post about your expat experiences on expatempire.com or email us at podcast@expatempire.com and let us know more about your international background.

Music on this episode was produced by Eli Hermit, please check him out on Bandcamp and Spotify.

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Originally published at expatempire.com on February 4, 2019.