IBM Japan Digital Service (IJDS) rejected me. I have no clue why. I initially applied for application specialist which the location would be in most major cities like Tokyo, Yokohama, Oosaka and Kyoto. They first rejected for that but they offered a second chance for application programmer with locations in less popular cities. For Kanto area, I had Sapporo, Sendai and Nagano to choose from, which are not bad at all. I chose Sapporo because I love the weather there and its cooler temperature (I hate nasty summer).
I had to write a short motivation message. I followed the guidelines and I wrote about my admiration for IBM’s technologies and my passion to contribute to making the world a better place, etc. You know how it goes. But they just rejected me after one month and a half. Like ??? Was my motivation not convincing enough? I don’t think so. I really don’t know what did I miss. If they weren’t interested they could have just not offered me the second position. No interviews at all? That’s really strange.
Time for conspiracy, because I don’t see any major skill issues on my end. I know I’m not going to a top-tier university in Japan but at least it’s respected enough of not getting automatically rejected by big companies. They only have my score sheets from my university so they don’t know what exactly I am capable of, but rejecting me because of my academic skill doesn’t seem reasonable.
I may have messed up with my web test, which is Japnaese + Stats test. It was really basic but I’m not very good at it. I’m a slow reader and I make a lot of mistakes even for elementary school level calculations. But was that THAT bad? As I remember it wasn’t terrible.
Besides, I took the test when I was applying for application specialist, they would not offer me a second position if the test result was that bad right?
So what could be the reason? They never intereviewed me so the only probable reason would be because I’m Chinese (congrats to who gussed it). Customers (especially legacy companies) probably would not prefer a programmer/consultant with a Chinese background. I still speak like a foreigner (was able to cover it if I pay attention) and I hate that fact. Many Japanese friends of mine tell me I already speak very good but I sometimes think Chinese staff at Starbucks speak better Japanese than me.
Tomorrow (November 7) is the day that I will know if I passed for another graduate school. I guess I will fail that too because I can’t even get into interview rounds. FML.
To be honest, I think I set my goals too high perhaps. I’m just not good enough. But at the same time, lower levels seem unbearble to me. I get stressed out for this and I would think: “WTF am I doing with my life?” sort of stuff.