[Wahwlsnt]

I believe I made a thread about this inquiring about Fullcast Technology oh so long ago after I made contact with them at a job fair here at Purdue. Well, there is a thread about it on the Japan-Guide.com forums that goes into some discussion about what goes on there.

For the ignant peeps out there, Fullcast Technology is a hiring agency in Japan that gives foreigners a chance to work and live in Japan at various engineering-type jobs. They use that hook to lure in the Japanophiles of the world, but they hide some pretty seedy policies (at least to me) that make it NOT worthwhile.

First of all, the whole interview process was a joke. I just sent them an essay saying why I wanted to work as an engineer in Japan and was promptly accepted. There were some phone interviews, but they only consisted of asking me if I was still interested and what the next step in the process is.

Ok, say you do get accepted. What happens then? You are sent to San Jose (or wherever in your country) and learn engineering skills and Japanese for about three months which, at this point, you are not paid. BUT, you do have to pay a $1000 security deposit before you go.

After the additional schooling in California, then you are sent to Japan. You get paid alright, but it equates to about $100/month while you go through some additional training. You can get a little more through a loan, but I doubt it's enough to even eat while living in Tokyo.

With six more months of training, you are ready to get hired at a company. At this point, you are paid about 200000 yen for just waiting to get hired by someone. The additional 50000 comes after you start working. I think there are opportunities to get raises after the first couple of years, but you are still living with about US$1600 per month in Japan.

I went through the process hoping that I would get the chance to live and work in Japan with my new degree. But as I went through the process and looked online, I found out that this was one of those "too good to be true" moments. So as soon as that contract came in the mail, I threw it in the trash since it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

Just recently, there was an article saying that Fullcast had to stop their operations for a bit because of illegal placement practices. Thank God I decided to not do it though. I'm not sure what other things they might be doing to make living hard based off of that action (the article is on the 4th page by the way). Unless you are into software engineering or something, this really isn't the kind of job a new grad should take as I am certain that he or she will have some bills to pay in the US from the education. That on top of living and transportation expenses (former is half paid by fullcast and the latter is paid in full), there really wouldn't be enough to enjoy yourself on.

I guess this is just more of a rant than anything. But if any of you are considering going that route, I suggest you don't do that based off of what I have seen and the things that people who have gone through this have said. But hey, who hasn't made a pointless thread at some point .