I'm probably not the best person to ask about actually *landing* a job in Japan, but I took some interviews over the summer and researched quite a bit. I won't be graduating until next fall semester so it's all a bit early, but it's at least nice to know what I'm getting into and prepare myself for next year.
Are you looking to work at a foreign company in Japan or a Japanese company? Japanese companies seem to follow a pretty specific pattern for new graduates and have two times a year where they bring in a lot of new recruits: April and November-ish (I think it was, sometime later in the year). You've already graduated and have work experience so you wouldn't *need* to apply as a new graduate. Plenty of companies have applications for mid-career professionals. You can use the search term "中途採用" or "中途入社" and it should bring up companies that are accepting mid-career professionals. This is highly dependent on the company I think, but when I was researching jobs, I found that there were generally less mid-career positions available, but I think that's probably natural. Worse comes to worst, you can apply as 新卒 if you can't find anything else (but expect crappy pay).
Take a look at http://www.careerforum.net/ if you haven't already. They do career forum events around the world multiple times a year, and there's also an online component where you can build a resume in English and Japanese and apply to companies online and for the career fairs. Since you may not have a Japanese work visa in hand already, it might be more difficult, but there are also Japanese-specific websites like リクナビ, or you could do the good ol' Google search. Also, brush up on your Kanji writing skills if you plan on doing any in-person interviews because a lot of companies expect handwritten resumes like this.
For what it's worth, when I applied to a fairly competitive tech company through careerforum.net this summer, they got back to me fairly quickly and made me take an online test and then gave me a Skype video interview. This was toward of the end of summer which is when I believe interviews start kicking into full gear. The process took about a month in total from start until rejection.
The western companies I saw seemed a little more relaxed about scheduling I think. Especially for mid-career professionals, I think you could probably apply at any time, even at normal Japanese companies.
Are you looking to work at a foreign company in Japan or a Japanese company? Japanese companies seem to follow a pretty specific pattern for new graduates and have two times a year where they bring in a lot of new recruits: April and November-ish (I think it was, sometime later in the year). You've already graduated and have work experience so you wouldn't *need* to apply as a new graduate. Plenty of companies have applications for mid-career professionals. You can use the search term "中途採用" or "中途入社" and it should bring up companies that are accepting mid-career professionals. This is highly dependent on the company I think, but when I was researching jobs, I found that there were generally less mid-career positions available, but I think that's probably natural. Worse comes to worst, you can apply as 新卒 if you can't find anything else (but expect crappy pay).
Take a look at http://www.careerforum.net/ if you haven't already. They do career forum events around the world multiple times a year, and there's also an online component where you can build a resume in English and Japanese and apply to companies online and for the career fairs. Since you may not have a Japanese work visa in hand already, it might be more difficult, but there are also Japanese-specific websites like リクナビ, or you could do the good ol' Google search. Also, brush up on your Kanji writing skills if you plan on doing any in-person interviews because a lot of companies expect handwritten resumes like this.
For what it's worth, when I applied to a fairly competitive tech company through careerforum.net this summer, they got back to me fairly quickly and made me take an online test and then gave me a Skype video interview. This was toward of the end of summer which is when I believe interviews start kicking into full gear. The process took about a month in total from start until rejection.
The western companies I saw seemed a little more relaxed about scheduling I think. Especially for mid-career professionals, I think you could probably apply at any time, even at normal Japanese companies.
Edited: 2015-11-28, 10:38 pm