I’m an Argentinian developer with serious intentions to find a visa sponsorship in Japan.
5 years of backend developer experience(Java, spring framework, hibernate, other stuff),28 years old.
In my schedule to get my dreamed visa I have to finish my last 3 university courses to get my degree( University Computer Analyst, even if the name sounds weird it’ s a computer science degree, 3 years long) and prepare for technical interviews.
This will be over by december. The thing is, I’ve been checking some work opportunities here and there which are quite fitting for my experience, and I’m tempted to do a try, even if I still don’ t really have a degree to show.
Should I? Or should I wait to have the degree so I can have a better chance while trying? With the querantine situation it seems sort of feasible to start working from here and move by the start of 2022.
I don’t know if taking a risk could backlash so I prefer to ask people more into the topic.
As a plus, my country is eligible for working visa, could that be useful while searching for a job? I think if I don’t remember wrong you cannot work as a full time employee with that visa, so I’m not sure if any programming job will want that.
Thanks a lot for reading the long wall of text, I think most is needed to understand my situation but I could have overdone it.
It’s hard to say what you should do in your situation, but here’s some general points of advice:
It’s quite rare for companies to relocate overseas developers from Japan unless they have professional experience. The one exception is companies that are explicitly hiring “fresh” university graduates. These positions are targeted at university students who haven’t graduated yet, and are not typically advertised at job boards. Only the largest of Japanese tech companies will hire students from abroad this way, so you could look at their career pages.
Being in Japan greatly increases your chances of getting hired, even if you have little to no professional experience (but doesn’t guarantee a job of course). With a working holiday visa, you can’t “intend” to work full time, but if you happen to get a full time job while you’re on it, that’s fine. To convert it to a normal working visa, you may need to leave the country once, but I don’t see that as a big deal, as it only becomes relevant once the working holiday is ending and a company wants to keep you.
I menctioned that I worked 5 years and you menctioned I should have professional experience, does this mean that experience does not count as professional experience if I don’t graduate from university first? If that’s common perception I guess it’s better to finish university first, since my experience does not weight much and I don’t want to have a rejection from a company if I didn’t have a chance anyways.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll do what I can to improve my chances meanwhile.
Sorry, I skipped over the five years of professional experience part. Any experience as a software developer you’ve had from before your degree should be relevant, and there may be some companies that theoretically want to hire you already; however, without finishing the degree, obtaining a normal working visa becomes much harder, so having the degree should help going forward.
While it’d be theoretically possible for you to get a job offer for half a year from now, it’s going to be more challenging then when you’re closer to being able to make the move. It’s not uncommon for it to take two months from initial application to job offer. Processing a visa will typically take a month or so (in non-COVID times). So from that perspective, I think when you’re about three months from completing your degree, you’d have better chances.