Being overqualified for JET

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

As a Japanese tax-payer, I won't tolerate anyone calling the JET program b***s***. It's run entirely by our tax money. It was started many years ago when the Japanese economy was in its best and healthiest shape in the 20th century. People should give a lot of credit to Japan for even maintaining the program into these recent years when it no longer has any money to spare.

What other countries offer anything even close to JET? Certainly not the OP's country! I would have loved to teach Japanese in the U.S. through the same type of a nice government program. Every year, JET gives thousands of people from abroad a chance to live in Japan and experience its culture first-hand while earning a good income for the inexperienced young teachers that they usually are. JET gives you 100% job security when so many workers in Japan, Japanese or foreign, are having to work under much worse circumstances.

JET isn't b***s***. It's really the opposite of that if anything.

Originally Posted by Hatredcopter

If he was that good at Japanese, he should have tried for the CIR position instead. It requires functional Japanese skills, and is more suited for people with a bit more experience in Japan. That's what I did, and I find it a lot more fulfilling than being a run-of-the-mill English teacher (in my humble opinion!). Even if he were dead-set on being an English teacher, there's a lot of other places he could have applied and probably gotten accepted.

JF is lucky to have both of you as members, and two truer comments in a row have never been posted.

Right now in the Japan the image of "teacher" for children of any age is aging. What I mean is, new Japanese teacher are NOT being hired, as there are fewer children to teach. So children see people in their late 30s and up as "teacher age" now. When I taught in Japan in the 90s there were lots of teachers in their 20s. Now the only teachers in their 20s working at public schools in Japan, essentially, are JETs. Nagoyankee is right. The Japanese people pay a lot to have native speakers come and live in Japan to teach their children. It isn't bulls**t.

And Hatredcopter asks the best question. If his Japanese was so good, he would be a more obvious choice for CIR. If he was "overqualified" for ALT, then CIR is the way to go.

[Nyororin]

I was always under the impression that once you had the prerequisites the program didn`t look much further. And also that most people who apply do not get accepted.

Unless they came out and said he was overqualified, chances are he was just not selected via their lottery. It`s life. Deal with it. Not everything goes as plans.

It`s kind of funny because it seems that everyone who doesn`t get accepted into JET decides that they were discriminated against somehow. If they speak Japanese - it`s because of that. If they don`t speak Japanese - it`s because of that. If they`ve been to Japan on vacation, that`s the reason... But yet if they have never visited Japan - that must be why.
I`ve even hear people moan and groan that the reason they weren`t accepted over someone else was because they didn`t drive a Japanese car to the test site while the other person did.

When there are more applicants than positions, some people aren`t going to get in. Are you trying to say your friend should get special treatment because they have skills that aren`t required or considered in the selection process? Seems a bit silly.

[SSJup81]

I applied for the 2009 program, but I, unfortunately, didn't get to the interview portion of it. Who knows why. I have tutoring experience, have worked in a school, unofficial experience with teaching reading to children, going to school for education, and I study Japanese language and culture. I felt that I had a good chance of being chosen for an interview, but seems I wasn't. I wouldn't call the program "BS", though. There are just so many applicants. They can't take everyone. For all I know, maybe my application was fine, but some other applicant did better my like maybe 1% or something.

I know of another applicant who had a lot of good stuff on his application, and he also wasn't chosen for an interview, and I figured he definitely would have. There are just too many people applying, probably. It's like MMM said, the program is getting more attention compared to say five or ten years ago.

[samurai007]

They most definitely look farther than basic qualifications. The basic qualifications + your Statement of Purpose letter (of why you want to join JET) + your required letters of reference + your application are needed just to get to the interview stage, and even if you do all of that right, they still only have so much time to do interviews so they need to cut thousands of applicants without even meeting them unfortunately.

If you do make it to the interview, they look at your attitude, personality, how you answer their questions, your ability to speak in a tense situation, how they think you'd handle life in Japan and the job, etc. And even if you do well on all of that, there are only so many positions to be filled, and that number has been shrinking in recent years (there were once over 6000 JETs per year, it's now down to about 5000).

Finally, remember that JET is run by 3 separate govt agencies, only 1 of which has anything to do with teaching. The other 2 deal with foreign relations, and they seem want a variety of people who may (or may not) have at least some interest in Japan, teaching, or foreign relations, but not necessarily a rabid Japanophile. Such a person may not be a living breathing piece of foreignness transplanted into Japan to serve as a local level ambassador and teaching assistant, but might instead go completely native in Japan, practicing Japanese instead of speaking English, becoming indistinguishable from a Japanese person except maybe for his race. And that ISN'T what the JET program wants... it's 1 reason they set a limit on the number of years you can be on the program. (Used to be 3, recently increased to 5). They don't want the JETs to become "too Japanese" in language, customs, etc. Sure, it might make it easier for them to do their day to day job, but in the larger picture, their "island of foreignness" will have been eroded to a small barren atoll over the years there, and they want to keep refreshing that island, bringing in new blood to revitalize things, etc. Perhaps they felt his friend was "not foreign enough", as crazy as that may sound, but instead was out to just improve his Japanese ability and assimilate into Japanese society... ?

[jasonbvr]

My theory:

When the application forms come in, they have the interns draw either a square for paper, circle for rock, or x for scissors. Next they have to shuffle them. Now there are only a certain number they want to interview so picking two at a time they get a winning pile made.

During the interview process, they try to determine who has the essence of a rock, paper or scissors. After they come to a consensus, your name and mark is written down on a slip of paper. Now this round of janken is best out of three. Each win a person tallies when their name is matched to another drawn from the hat is marked on their slip. This round continues until they have their picks.

ps~With a shrinking economy, I would wager that you will see more cities like mine where only 3 JETs are among the total 21 ALTs.

[Naoko]

Originally Posted by biginjapan

My buddy was just refused from JET. I studied with him in Japan and he speaks fluent Japanese. He also already has experience teaching students there because it was part of his volunteer work for one of the classes he attended.

I think its major bullshit that JET would rather get people who know little about the country and speak zero Japanese. Does anyone know the reason for this? And is it just JET that is like this or do other companies prefer to hire less qualified applicants?

Unless you're leaving out information, I don't see anything that shows he is qualified at all actually.

10. Not have lived in Japan for three or more years in total since 2000.
14. Hold at least a Bachelor’s degree or obtain one by the departure date (See Note 2), or be qualified to teach at primary/elementary or secondary schools or obtain such qualifications by the departure date.

Two of the big ones right there. You said he's already been there. Do you know how long? He also has lots of knowledge already according to you..you do know the program is designed to give the rest of the world a taste of Japan? To learn about it, and come to appreciate it and its language. If your friend went off sounding like he already knew everything he wouldn't be OVERqualified...but simply not qualified at all.

Be interested in Japan, and be willing to deepen their knowledge and appreciation of that interest after arrival.

I'm not ragging on your friend at all. I think it's great he knows Japanese and wants to teach over there, but sometimes the answers you are looking for are right in front of you.

[Tsuwabuki]

JET turned me down three years ago.

But you know what? I didn't whine and moan. I went on with my life. If your friend is really qualified to be here, he'll find a way to get here. It may be harder, it may be more expensive, but if he does the work, he can get here.

So either he needs to be quiet, realise it isn't personal, and work harder on an alternate route to Japan, or he needs to recgonise that this isn't where he wanted to be anyhow, and then he needs to be quiet MORE.

[burkhartdesu]

Well I've been wondering about being over-qualified.


Do you think 4 years of High School Japanese and 4 years of college Japanese would lessen my chances?

I certainly hope not-- but I think I'm going to make it clear I'm going there to speak English, not necessarily Japanese... and I clearly have a lot to learn.

[MMM]

Knowledge of Japanese does not HURT your chances of getting into JET. Naturally a LOT of the applicants are going to be interested in Japan and are going to have taken Japanese. Hell, half of my interview for JET was IN Japanese.

As a translator I have taken a lot of translation tests. These are tests publishers and translation companies design to test and see if you are really qualified. They tend to be tricky and time-consuming.

At least a half-dozen times I have taken the test and I get a response "Congratulations, you passed our test. You scored XX/100 points, which makes you qualified to translate our materials."

Then I never hear from them again.

It's the same thing as JET hiring.

[alanX]

In my opinion, I think JET is so difficult and unrewarding. It's not worth all of the trouble that you have to go through, just to be a English teacher's assistant for a few semesters. I think there's much easier ways of getting a job in Japan.