Day 193 of writing every day.
Going to work for 8 hours a day might take some getting used to, but studying for the same amount of time a day feels much harder. I’ll be logging my study progress for the time being instead of writing my thoughts as much for the time being
Morning:
I woke up pretty groggy today and tried to squeeze in some study time after breakfast but only managed thirty minutes or so before I caved in and tried to keep myself feeling alert with a bit of gaming. Coffee didn’t really help and I know that I should keep my eye on the ball, but there seems to be a lot of balls right now in the form of job interviews.
The need to study might help me focus on interviews, but at the same time I want my brain in a happy and positive mood to perform my best in interviews. Feeling groggy and forcing myself to study might be a good use of time for acquiring as much knowledge as I can in the time I have left while enrolled for lessons, but it’s not good for interviews if I’m feeling less than attentive and irritable.
It’s important to appear likeable in these interviews as that’s basically what hiring managers are looking for when an applicant has enough experience to seem reliable as a worker who knows how to follow orders and will show up to work on time. The no experience required part is a bet on the potential of the applicant where they’ll be able to make enough learning progress to succeed.
Afternoon:
I bought pastries at a local bakery on my way back from breakfast, so I had stuff to eat in place of lunch. It was mostly empty calories though and wasn’t really helping with grogginess and may worsen things, if anything. However I didn’t get too much sleep last night either, so an afternoon nap was unavoidable.
After the nap I went for a walk around a nearby park and just walked without thinking. The sun started to peek through the clouds and I was hoping it would help clear out the haze in my head. It did help, and I recommend walks when schedules permit for one.
I got emailed by a hiring manager for an English skill job that asked me to send an English resume, so I was pleased to see positive results from a job referred through Hello Work.
I went back and started working on making an English resume with the basic information I already had on my Japanese resume and CV. But there was an informal interview with another company I applied to that was happening in the afternoon, so I put that on hold and went ahead with the Zoom interview. There are informal interviews that aren’t there to grill you on your work history and reduce the nervousness of applicants. While they’re supposedly not going to affect your application, I think they do in all honesty.
The company seemed alright in terms of the president of the company I talked to. He seemed very forthcoming with info and made no effort to hide that employees are basically thrown into a project from the get go with no set training curriculum. That makes it a risky place to work in my opinion after applying for quite a few jobs and reading through the details.
I was okay with the session ending in 30 minutes or so as was expected according to the interviewer. I had a prep session with my career advisor afterwards and having a little more time to catch a break before that was appreciated as well.
Night:
The meeting with my career advisor went well. I was told that an interview scheduled for next week had been called off because the company checked my resume again and found my age too old for their position. I wasn’t upset since the job description and compensation didn’t seem like it interested me at all.
After an apology about the issue, we went ahead to discuss the other company I have an interview lined up with on Monday. I read the job description and compensation and wasn’t too drawn by it the other day, but when we went through it together, I thought it to be maybe the best opportunity so far.
Many jobs say you can become an engineer with no experience and what happens is they give you maybe a month or two of paid training if they’re generous, but some just throw you into a project they can find someone to hire you for. This job offers 5 full months of paid training and makes getting officially certified a requirement to get started. I find that to be quite generous, especially if it’s something that could be usable elsewhere should the need to change jobs in the future arise again.
I put in some study time after dinner and that’s it for today.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 