Pathways Japan is expanding its support for job hunting so that refugee and displaced students admitted to Japan can realize their career goals in Japan. As part of this effort, a Japanese language course and seminar for job hunting was held in October 2024.
This event, planned based on last year’s “ Job Hunting Seminar ” and other events, consisted of researching information on the companies that participated in the seminar, learning Japanese for self-promotion tailored to those companies, and actually practicing for interviews with companies.
In this second issue, we will introduce the “Japanese for Job Hunting Seminar.
In the first half of the event, students from Syria and Ukraine shared their stories（Please click here for stories of senior students.）
In the second half, the participants were divided into two groups to learn Japanese. With the cooperation of an instructor from the Association for Japanese-Language Teaching (AJALT), a public interest incorporated association with extensive experience in Japanese language education for refugees, participants were taught Japanese expressions used in interview exchanges and keigo (honorific expressions) to be used in such situations, keeping in mind the interviews with companies at the job hunting seminar.
In order to make the most of the limited time in the course, the students had been working on a “self-analysis” of their strengths and what they would like to do in the future as a preliminary assignment. On the day of the course, Japanese university students participated as volunteers, working in small groups to deepen their self-analysis and improve their Japanese expressions for self-introduction and self-promotion. At the end of the session, each participant prepared a self-introduction in front of the other participants as a result of their practice. Each participant earnestly tried to convey their experiences in their home country, their understanding of Japanese society and culture after coming to Japan, and their efforts in various areas, including Japanese language study, in an easy-to-understand manner within the limited time of one minute.
Another pre-assignment involved researching the companies participating in the job hunting seminar and thinking of questions to ask. During the second half of the event, we checked on the progress of each student as they prepared for their interviews with the companies.
The participating students were able to learn practical content during the two-day course and prepared for the job hunting seminar that followed.