Rationalizing Where Specifically to Work in Rakuten

So this blog was started AFTER the end of my college years to rationalize where my life will go now that the days of being a student are completely (well, at least temporarily) over...and perhaps now, that months-long exploration of directions may finally come to something useful in the next week or so as we the new graduates of Rakuten are put to the spot of choosing our career paths within the company.

While the choice does not really determine our lives (people get next assignments in a few years at most after getting into one department), a short conversation with the head of HR department does sort of determine which direction each one of us will head toward, as the first choice will certainly throw at least some limitations on where the individual CAN go based on the skills he or she can learn in that very first assignment.

So, gauging the intents of my colleagues, a few trends are already very clear. First, almost everyone is determined to head somewhere where international work is required. This is surprising considering how every non-Japanese (and even some Japanese) people in my group got in the company in the first place. Every person (I suppose myself is included) is simply keen to use what they perceive as their advanced understanding of foreign languages and cultures.

Second, almost no one is keen on heading toward positions where direct verbal contacts with Japanese clients are involved. Merchant consulting, sales that focus on getting new merchants to set up shops in our online shopping mall, and call centers receiving angry complaints from shoppers and merchants seem like hell to practically everybody. The speculation of people in the group being sent there (a prospect we all kind of had to come to face after meeting non-Japanese employees in sales) have repeatedly sent nervous shivers down our backs.

Third, I am sensing quite a bit of dismay coming out of non-Japanese new employee about the lack of clear directions from the company. By that, we all know now that the company, lacking experience in dealing with foreigners not from a Japanese university, have no idea what to do with or make of us as of yet. We do not know if at some point the company will simply quit their experiment with this initial bunch and stick all of us in a hidden corner of the company to conceal the failure of first try at employee globalization.

With this bleak sentiment and lack of thorough understanding of exactly what is out there in terms of actually feasible choices (apparently the International Department requires too much of sophisticated knowledge base for the new employee to enter directly), I would like to think a bit about where I would actually want to go in this monstrous, gigantic, highly ambiguously organized organization with employees highly scared of the prospect of receiving people who are not Japanese in anyway whatsoever.

But if the Big Boss says globalization will happen, then it better happen. While I still do not understand how this whole "English-nization" project will come into a more proper existence, we better be executing them by first getting the personnel necessary to make full-fledged English communication, both verbal and visual, possible. So I believe that my first task should be helping out with recruiting new foreign employees just like me.

Then, after the recruiting and training programs for foreign employees can be comfortably conducted in English, eh, quite a few years down the line, I hope to see an independent department for foreign expansions come into existence. Pushing for my personal desire for foreign placement aside, if the mission of empowering the world really does mean something in a global scale, then obvious class differences abroad must be somehow resolved.

So, basically, after iterating these vague ideas of work, I have to say that I am not quite sure what to expect anywhere I get into. Recruiting, as well as the entire back office in Rakuten feels like any other Japanese company in terms of the environment. And the fact that each department have their own separate, uncoordinated international projects are quite puzzling for a company so determined to make it abroad. I will think these ideas through a bit more as I await that day of judgment not so far from now....