Thread by @LilithAlive

My experience applying to work at Sega, as an average-looking foreign woman in Japan, a thread:

First, some background. Applying for jobs here has always been an extremely depressing experience. The job offers I get are always things like "Full time English-speaking babysitter! 100,000 yen a month!" "Part-time Kindergarten teacher! No pay, frequent overtime!"

Employers see my resume and photo (resumes have the applicant's photo attached, here in Japan). They see this foreign woman with dark hair and dark eyes and think "This is someone who loves children so much she'll spend time with them for free!"

Which is not true. I actually strongly dislike children. And yet, almost every job I've had since moving to Japan has been teaching children. It is literally the only job that gets offered to me. Of course, I've applied to plenty of other positions!

What would generally end up happening is: I get called in to an interviewed based on my resume. On the walk to the meeting room the interview will be held in, I note that if there are any foreign women working in that office, they're all blonde. Every one.

I enter the meeting room. The interviewer sees me for the first time. I'm well-groomed, I'm wearing my best suit, I have my resume and CV copies. Instead of shaking my hand, the interviewer blurts, "Oh, but wouldn't you rather be working with children?" No, no "hello."

I wish I could say I was exaggerating when I say this happens almost every time I interview for anything that isn't teaching. I've even had an interviewer walk out on me, only to return with a page of printed info for his daughter's English school, to say I should apply there.

I don't know why this happens. They have my resume. They have my photo, but seeing me in person always sets off this attempt to force me to teach children. Male and female interviewers have done this to me. Maybe I look better in my photo and they only want attractive woman?

I don't know. In any case, I finally found a non-teaching position. It was English-language customer support for a mobile game, all text-based, so I didn't even have to talk on the phone. Plus, some localization of game material. Utter bliss. I loved that job.

Unfortunately, they were only hiring part-time, which is not enough to live on in Tokyo. So when I was offered a full-time position (as, you guessed it, an elementary school English teacher), I was forced to quit and accept the new offer.

However, I now had work experience in the games industry. I kept pressing on, applying for full-time work in anything that wasn't teaching. Through an agency, I found a listing for, TA-DAH! Mobile game support in English and game localization. I applied right away.

The agency was the go-between for this game company and the applicants, so I didn't know what company it was at the time. But they did get back to me with a localization test. Game text, campaign banners, gameplay guides, etc. to turn from Japanese into English.

I finished the test and sent it back. The next day I heard: The company wanted me to come in for an interview. I was very excited!
At the same time, I didn't expect anything. All my job application experience so far had taught me never to get my hopes up.

I was right. The day of the interview, the agent I'd been in contact with wanted to meet a bit before the interview to go over some things. I got there and discovered that -despite not being told- this was a double interview. Another applicant as was there, too.

A white, blond man. That was the moment I knew I wasn't getting this job. But I decided to do my best anyway and hope for a miracle.

This mobile game we wanted to work on was some kind of fantasy soccer game. The agent sat as down and explained why we'd been chosen for the interview. She said my resume was impressive, I had experience in this exact position, I played mobile games and knew the culture

And the other applicant? "And you're from England, so I think you know a lot about soccer."
The other applicant said that he'd actually never been interested and didn't know much.
That was all it took for us to be considered equal. My experience, and "maybe he knows about soccer"

The agent and both of us all went into the interview together. Yes, both applicants at the same time. And, surprise! The company we were interviewing with was Sega. Yes, that Sega. Cool!
There were two young men interviewing us. They wouldn't look at me.

They wouldn't meet my eyes when they shook my hand. They wouldn't ask me any questions, though they talked happily enough to my male counterpart. They'd ask the agent questions to ask to me, as though they thought I couldn't speak Japanese, though they knew I could.

They asked about games we played (I played several mobile games, the male applicant played none). They asked about experience in localization and customer support (I had both, he had none). They asked if we'd had experience working for Japanese companies. We both said yes.

They said whoever got the job would start on December 25th. I said that was fine with my schedule. The male applicant began to splutter. Work? He asked. On Christmas?

The agent and I both quickly explained (to someone who said he worked for a Japanese company) that Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan. He said he wasn't sure he could do that
The interview ended and we both politely thanked the interviewers, who hadn't once looked at me

The agent stayed to talk to the interviewers, but both us applicants started heading out. We chatted for a bit in the elevator and in the lobby of the building. Before we could leave, the agent caught up to us. The interviewers had made a decision.

The male applicant -who had no experience, no interest in the subject of this game or games in general, and who wasn't even sure he could start on time because he wanted Christmas off- was hired. I was given a polite goodbye and a promise of more job offers, which never came.

Why was he chosen? The agent said the interviewers thought he had more professional experience. A blatant lie, since he didn't know something as basic as "You don't get Christmas off"
The interviewers thought "I wouldn't be comfortable in a professional environment"

They thought I wouldn't be comfortable. When they'd spent the whole interview carefully avoiding even looking at me, purposefully not even speaking to me once.

What had I done to offend them so badly before I'd even entered the room?

The same thing I'd done wrong at every job interview. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of being an American woman who doesn't look like an American woman "should" look. I'm short, with dark hair and dark eyes.

At every office interview I've ever been to in Tokyo, if I happened to see western women working there already (and this is already rare), they've all been tall and blond. Every single one. No exceptions.

Even in game part-time game job, there was one other western woman working there, and she could have been a classic supermodel. Long blond hair, blue eyes, long legs.

Even at one teaching interview, the ad for the school featured a lovely blond lady. And the interviewer went out of his way to tell me, "Oh, she doesn't work here. She's a model. The real teachers look more like you!"

What do I look like to Japanese people?

I've been told I "must like kids! You look like you love kids!"

I look like a babysitter. No matter what my resume is like, no matter how well I perform, I'll never be as good as the world's least qualified man, or someone exactly like me who happened to have been born blond.

With the Sega interview, I think it was a combination of this mindset, combined with the idea of what a real gamer or game company employee looks like. I don't fit any professional image here in Japan. I walk the walk and talk the talk, but I don't look like a salaryman or OL

But I ALSO don't look like an American "should" look.
That, mixed with what I suspect to be a standard male gamer attitude towards women in general, led to that interview at Sega where two grown men were afraid to look at me, and took a man who couldn't meet their start date.

I'm still teaching now, but with a British company that at least lets me work at high schools some of the time (no more of this preschool bullshit) and might someday allow me to advance to writing class material. It's not what I want to do, but I have to pay my rent somehow.

Wow, I wasn't expecting this to get so much attention. Thank you all for your interest, your replies, and your kind words. I don't have anything cool to plug here, but I do have a Ko-Fi (ko-fi.com/lilithalive).

(Also, I'm sorry if I don't reply to you! I didn't expect this to get so much attention, so I've muted the thread so I can still see when my friends talk to me)

And a very big thank you to everyone who supported my Ko-fi!

One final comment: while teaching is still not what I want to do with my life, my current company is a huge step up from where I’ve worked in the past. As I said, they’re letting me work with older students, I’m paid extremely fairly, and I was able to negotiate my schedule.

It’s not what I want to do. I’m not happy while I’m working, but this company itself is good, and I can’t and won’t blame them for being willing to hire me (though I will continue to be frustrated with the opportunities I lost in other industries).