Why you should read company reviews in Japan
What are company reviews?
Have you ever looked at company reviews before? You may have heard of company review services such as Glassdoor or Comparably. If you have never looked at any company reviews, you might not know what they are?
Basically, a company review is a constructive evaluation of the company by current or former employees. Blatantly lying or cursing the company cannot be called a company review. A company review should be objective and can be helpful to others who are thinking about joining the company. (Or to just learn how the people working at the particular company feels about the company)
Company reviews are great ways to learn about the company before you actually join one and start working for them. You can vicariously feel the culture of the company and imagine whether you will be a good fit. In today’s article, we will explore 4 ways in which reading company reviews can help you.
What services can you use?
In this article, we will specifically focus on company reviews about companies located in Japan. The most common company reviews services out there might be Glassdoor or Comparably. However, these two services lack deep insight into companies located in Japan. Compared to other regions such as the United States or Europe, these services just don’t have enough selection of company reviews for companies located in Japan.
In Japan, the most common company reviews services are Openwork, En-hyoban, and Tenshokukaigi. These services are full of detailed company reviews written in Japanese. If you can read and understand Japanese, I would recommend you to definitely check these websites out. Unfortunately, if you don’t understand Japanese, you are out of luck.
You might ask, “Where can we read reviews about companies located in Japan, written in English?”. Currently, there are no services that claim to specifically do this. Therefore, xkula.com is trying to be the first place English speakers will think of when searching for company reviews in Japan.
If you want to learn more about how xkula.com is different from other company review sites, please have a look at this article.
Glassdoor vs xkula.com: Which is better for job seekers in Japan?
4 reasons why company reviews are important for you
You should know what to expect before working in Japan
If you never worked in Japan or have been working in Japan but thinking of switching companies, you should do enough research about the new company before actually joining them. The most important thing for a job seeker is to know what to expect from the new company. Know their compensation band, support for career advancement, support for language, and more. Everyone has different things they expect from a company, and one of the best ways to see if the company can provide those needs is by looking at company reviews.
Company reviews are great because you can filter and sort reviews by category. This saves a lot of your time and can easily compare with similar companies. You can easily access it because it is web-based, so you can learn about your dream company even if you are currently living overseas. Company review sites are a great first step to knowing if the company matches your needs.
Asking real people about companies may be troublesome
One great way to learn about a company in Japan is to contact someone who actually worked there. If you are able to find someone who has a similar background as you, that person may have tips about choosing your company.
Another good part about asking real people about companies in Japan is that you can ask more customized and personal questions. You can be vague about your questions or ask further about points you want to learn more about. This is hard to do on company review sites.
However, this takes a lot of your time. Contacting someone, and scheduling a time for the meeting, and actually going to meet the person will take a lot of your time. By using all of that time, you can get only an n=1 sample size, and may not be so reliable. (That person review about the company may be biased) Therefore, actually seeing someone in real life and asking them questions may not be the most efficient way to learn about a company.
There are lots of useful functions in company review sites
You may not know but some company reviews site provides functions where you can sort by different attributes. For example, you can sort by the year they left, how long they worked at the company, gender, job role, and more. You can basically cut the slices to however you like and find out how different categories of people experienced work at that company.
This can be helpful especially when you have a specific category you want to look for. If you want to learn about the experience of people with similar backgrounds as you, you can easily do so by sorting the attributes. This way you don’t have to skim through the ocean of company reviews and efficiently find the ones that you are in need of.
xkula is the perfect place for you to get information about Japan
If you are an English speaker who’s looking for company reviews in Japan, xkula.com is the place for you. xkula.com is gathering reviews about companies in Japan. On the site of xkula.com, there is a form submission page where viewers can review companies in Japan. It only takes about 10 minutes or less and is quite easy to submit reviews.
As mentioned above, there are currently no company reviews services specialized for companies located in Japan for English speakers, other than xkula. Therefore, by using xkula.com, you will save a lot of time because it is the most efficient way to search and filter company reviews for companies located in Japan.
