Come to think of my first job hunting when I was a senior student

When I was writing about the recruitment of new graduates here a few days ago (click here), I thought of the old days when I was struggling with job hunting as a senior student.

First, ridiculous interview questions asked by companies such as "do you want to get married and have a child in your 20s?" came to my mind. These were not just questions to break the ice. Companies seriously asked these questions; in fact, a board member of a major corporation spent some time asking me in the final interview whether or not my parents would mind if I were transferred since I'm a only child. I had a hard time convincing him that my parents wouldn't.

When I was a senior in university, companies offered positions with career paths to male university graduates, expecting them to work many years; in contrast, companies still tended to offer traditional assistant positions without career paths to female university graduates, expecting them to support the male workers. Thus, when female university graduates applied for the male-dominated positions, they were always forced to deal with such questions since companies tried to make sure that their female candidates were suitable to the positions in every aspect.

Next, these tough circumstances reminded me of a male friend with whom I studied economics in my university. During a conversation with him, when I blurted out that I felt like I wanted to give up pursuing the male-dominated positions since I had great difficulty obtaining a job offer for the positions, he asserted that I should work on the same level as men, saying that taking an assistant job was meaningless to me. His strong words got rid of my wavering mind, making me feel like I was qualified, and encouraged me to keep struggling to obtain an offer.

After that, I imagined what my life would be like if I had accepted an offer from a company at the time. The company liked me and gave me an offer, expecting me to work in Europe five years later after joining the company. When I was a senior, I neither had an interest in English nor working abroad, and my TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) score was not good. Despite that, people of the company insisted that I was cut out for working abroad and tried to convince me that I would be able to improve my English if I took the English courses provided by the company. Although I didn't join the company, now come to think of it, the people judged me well.