JET

Calling All Aspiring JETs with J.D.s!

Mecha-hisashiburi’s to you all. The past several months have been intensely busy, with graduation, the bar exam, and following a bit of good fortune, the conclusion to a successful job search. Yes, a job. Happy days are here again. What happened, you ask? Well, I became a contented victim of the “companies are now hiring J.D.s” trend in this absolutely topsy-turvy economy thing we have going on.

In short: I’m going to be involved in the land acquisition end of the natural gas industry. Just picture a mix of the “Rich Texan” from The Simpsons, and the Monopoly man.

Or, picture this guy with a monacle.

Okay, enough navel-gazing self-congratulatory blog-spew. There’s a more important point to my posting: the future of this blog.

Here’s the rub: I am a JET alum, and I do have a J.D., but from here on out I am well aware that my free time to blog for the benefits of JETs and the Japan-obsessed will be sparse. Further, I’ve always felt that this blog lacked the breadth it could otherwise have. The JET program and the legal market is a nice niche, but it’s still an intensely broad area that, even when I had time to blog regularly, I couldn’t tackle all by myself.

Lastly, having talked with lawyers (both old and young) during the course of my law school tenure, I am keenly aware that lawyers’ perceptions of the legal market and the opportunities out there are at times vastly different from the perspective a law student has. I strongly feel that JETs with J.D.s would languish without a JET alum/law student involved.

This is a long and winding way of saying that I am looking for someone (or more than one someone) to take the reigns for this site. While another person interested in private-sector legal work is fine, I’d be really interested in seeing someone interested in public sector/public interest legal opportunities step forward. I feel the public service end of the law is an area where I have been less helpful.

A public sector preference is only preferred, though. All that I would require of a new blogger are two things: (1) that you be a JET alum; and (2) that you be in (or about to attend) law school.

Though there’s no money in it (never was for me 😉 ), there are some benefits to helping out. The biggest of which is contributing to this blog may be the best catalyst to do the one thing law students (and human beings in general) hate to do: network. I know more attorneys and other vital contacts than I would know otherwise because I wanted to have material to blog about and, while I would never name my contacts outright, there gems of wisdom are scattered throughout this blog for the benefit of all. I also believe I would not have received the opportunity I am currently undertaking if it had not been for JET alums and attorneys providing me with personal advice, scouring my resume, and guiding my interviewing style.

If you are interested, drop me a line in the comments, or just contact me directly.

I plan to still contribute occasionally, at least enough to keep JETs with J.D.s up and running. Many of the old posts to this blog are a valuable resource and worth keeping around, and I will do what I can to make that possible.

Finally, I plan to write something up about my law school and job search experience generally sometime in the near future, so look for that post coming soon.

Disco’s Career Forum, for JETs with J.D.s

Disco Stu likes DISCO jobs

Every year, Boston welcomes the largest Japanese-English bilingual job fair known to man. The job fair is run by DISCO International, and is otherwise known as the Boston Career Forum. Career forums are also held in Tokyo, London, and Los Angeles throughout the year– but Boston is easily conceded as the largest of these.

This forum is something I wish I had known about earlier as a law student, because a large number of Japanese and multinational employers show up (this year, 132 of them did), and some of them are actually looking to fill vacancies in their legal department, or for whatever other reason are willing to look at J.D. candidates and J.D. holders. The distinct advantage about this career fair, moreover, is that for perhaps the only time in your law school career, you’re not competing with a horde of fellow students en masse, but only those students who have the requisite language skill (not so many), and only those who have been willing to make the journey (even fewer).

While I was skeptical as to whether this large job forum would help me at all (as it seemed largely aimed at undergrads, MBA’s, and engineers) I was able to walk away from Boston having had a number of interviews and a couple positive leads on the job search. Below, I will briefly relay my experience, suggestions, and advice for any JET pursuing a J.D. who might be considering a trip to Boston next fall.

Preliminary Matters

(1) If you want to work for a law firm and a law firm only – the remainder of this post is largely useless to you. Your time would be better spent looking at these vintage (and hilarious) Tokyo subway posters.

(2) If you are below Conversational level Japanese (generally, JLPT 3級 = Conversational), DISCO won’t let you in. So you’ll either have to lie or improve your Japanese ability. I advise the latter.

Preparation

I heard of DISCO and the Boston Career Forum from another JET alum who went to law school and found his first post-graduation job in-house, with a Japanese company, through DISCO. When I first heard about DISCO from this alum (in July), I immediately went to their site and found that information about the Boston Career Forum, and prospective employers, was already posted and some employers were already accepting application submissions. Currently, DISCO does not have information up about its 2011 Career Forums, but it is only a matter of time.

Regardless, I would advise setting up a profile on DISCO’s site sooner rather than later. In setting up a profile, you are given the option of setting up an English and a Japanese resume. I suggest you do both– as some employers will accept the Japanese one only, and others the English one only. Depending on your Japanese ability, this can take next to no time at all, or can be quite time consuming, and you’ll want to give yourself plenty of time to proofread both before you start applying for positions.

Applying to Interviews Before the Career Forum

All your applications for the Career Forum will require one of the resumes you set up through DISCO. That’s usually the easy part of applying to an employer. In addition to the resume, employers can also ask supplemental questions – to be filled out in only English, only Japanese, or either. These questions also tend to impose character limitations. Again, you’ll want time to plan ahead and draft well-written, grammatically correct answers to these questions – which is why I advise you start preparation early.

These supplemental questions also allow employers to vet applicants according to their language ability. DISCO requires you to rank your language ability along traditional JLPT categorizations (Elementary, Conversational, Business, Native), but if your answers to the supplemental make you look like you’re struggling at 4級, and you’re posturing yourself as a Native-speaker, don’t expect too much.

Some employers throw additional hurdles into the application process. This is particularly true of the accounting firms and investment banks. Accounting firms will generally require you fill out an application off of their home site in addition to the one you do for the Career Forum. Investment Banks usually request likewise, and may throw a timed mathematical reasoning test into the mix.

As the Career Forum gets closer, more employers will join in. Even up to the last few days before the Career Forum, new employers were appearing on the list, and accepting applications for interviews. So again, if you plan on going, you should check early and often.

By the date of the Career Forum, I had lined up four interviews in advance, with one (1) investment bank, one (1) accounting firm, and two (2) Japanese multinational companies. All of them were interviewing for their Tokyo offices.

EDITED TO ADD (01/24/2011): Acquiring interviews prior to going to Boston provides you two other advantages: (1) Arranging interviews in advance makes you more likely to receive a travel scholarship from CFN; (2) Arranging interviews in advance may allow you to access travel funds from your law school to be used for traveling to interviews.

Applying for Interviews AT the Career Forum

Submitting for interviews while you are at the Career Forum is also a realistic possibility. While I was in Boston, I was able to gain interviews with a few other employers, including another accounting firm.

Resumes

No employer will tell you this, but they are typically open to receiving both English and Japanese resumes. From my experience, I highly advise bringing copies of a Japanese resume with you in tow. Many of my interviewers looked a bit nervous to be interviewing me with the English resume they received from DISCO. When I pulled out the Japanese resume I prepared ahead of time, there was a visible (albeit concealed) sigh of relief and I became a small hero in their eyes – always a good way to start the interview.

Note that Japanese resumes tend to have a different format than Western resumes, and involve a lot less “grandstanding” of your accomplishments. Samples are here. A template is available here.

Interviews

Much like JET, my interview experiences were ESID. One was with a guy who spoke fluent English and ultimately gave an impression of being a bit more high-pressure than most law firm interviews. The remainders were conducted in a mix of Japanese and English. Some were basic resume review, others were more conversational.

For some interviews I had to fill out additional paperwork before going in, for others I did not.

For a good number of my interviews, JET was treated as an overall positive on my resume. Others didn’t mention it. At the very least, I can say it wasn’t greeted with a head tilted to the side and air-sucking through the teeth.

Like any other interview, I highly suggest going in with a game plan to handle the variations the interview process can take. Enlisting the help of a Japanese confidante or teacher would be a good idea as well.

Post-Career Forum Contact

To e-mail thank you notes or not? Assuming your interview was positive, a friend of mine suggests the following:

My short answer is that I would send a thank you e-mail or thank you letter as you would with any other person who would interview you, expressing your great interest in learning more about [the Company]. If you have Japanese writing skills, or thought that the interviewer might have doubts about your ability to function in a written Japanese environment, you might take the opportunity to showcase those skills.

For the good interviews I had, I did likewise. I do not feel they necessarily helped or hindered my application in any sense, but those thank you’s at least indicate you are still open and ready to converse.

Again, like the interviews, the process in discussing employment with companies after Boston was very ESID. For some employers, I heard responses quite quickly. For others, I am still in ongoing conversations with them, and this is three months after the initial interview. For legal departments in Japanese companies, a colleague of mine offers the following amount of lead time before you get a response:

I’d give [them] 4 weeks to get back to you. From my experience with Japanese companies, the guy you talked to would report in writing/orally through his chain in the HR department, then the HR department would report in writing to the other departments. The other department might take a week or so to respond to HR. (I can imagine that the legal department might not have expected to receive an application from someone like you. It might take a little bit of time for the legal department to warm up to you.)

Again, while four weeks might be a good standard to have, ESID. It takes one guy sitting around not-hankoing things to gum up the process.

Post-Career Forum Surprises

Finally, a couple of months after the Boston Career Forum, I received an email from a Company interested in knowing whether they would still like me to talk to their legal and compliance departments, respectively, about the possibility of joining them in Tokyo. So, even for those companies you apply to and never hear from, possibilities exist that they may contact you long after the fact.

A Final Note

DISCO also posts general job postings for bilinguals throughout the year. I have had some luck with these as well, though they are generally not aimed at J.D.s.

In short, if you’re looking to navigate the Apocalyptic War-Zone that is legal employment in a post-financial crisis world – DISCO offers you a welcome platform from which to market your legal and language abilities – in a much less crowded field of competitors.

Personal Statements: Don’t be a Law-o-phile

It’s law school application season, and there are plenty of applicants out there anal-retentively tending to their personal statements in attempts to make themselves sound like the beacon of light that law schools are searching for to join their class, maintain their ranks, and get all those fancy entry-level BigLaw jobs that haven’t been shifted to India.

So what makes for a good personal statement, anyway? Well, for applying to law school, you would think it would be saying how much you love the law, dream about the law, sleep with the law under you pillow, live, breathe, eat, drink, and piss law. All the time. Everyday.

As JETs, you should already know better, but if you don’t Yale Law School’s associate dean has kindly stated the obvious for you.

Reflect back on that moment when you first applied to JET. You had to write a personal statement, right? What did you write about?

I would like to imagine that after a little bit of internet research (or a few moments thought), you came to the conclusion that writing about your deep and profound knowledge and interest in everything Japan might be a red flag to recruiters. If the rosy expectations you expound on in your personal statements are going to clearly clash with reality, what’s going to happen when your expectations don’t match with reality? For example, if you spend half of your personal statement expounding about how you adore Japanese technological innovations, and ignoring (or not realizing) that you might have to live in a small apartment with no central heat and keep your toothpaste in the fridge to keep it from freezing, I might be nervous as a recruiter to how you might react when you find your placement doesn’t have flying cars and robots all over the place. Linch-pinning your personal statment to anime and manga interest has been a known red flag for years. Talking about your lengthy research project on the existential questions raised by Super Mario Bros. 2 being a near duplicate of Doki-doki Panikku would similarly be ill-advised.

So, too, with the law.

Lawyers don’t want to work around people who live and breathe the law anymore than your JTE would want to constantly hear about your opinions on DBZ or the anything else Japan-obsessive. Much like a Japan interest is almost implied in your application to JET, so too an interest in the law is implied merely by the fact your applying to law school.

Why waste a whole page gushing about your interest in the law, when you can cover the genesis of your interest in a short paragraph, and then spend time actually explaining your background, adaptability, work ethic, and academic strength: things that will actually help you succeed in law school, and help make the law school you go to end up looking good?

The entirety of the article from Yale’s associate dean is here, and is well worth reading. While I would love to pretend the advice is nothing more than Yale elitism, which some of the commenters have done, I cannot do so in the face of what I consider to be legitimately helpful advice.

Oddly enough, the one consistent piece of advice I have heard from law professors is this: if you want to stand out on your personal statement, say you’re coming to law school for the money. Almost every other applicant out there is so busy trying to sound like a resurrection of Atticus Finch that no one ever brings up the desire to come to law school to actually increase their earnings potential.

Other advice for personal statements can be found here.

And here.

And sample statements here.

JLPT Registration Starts TODAY

Registration for the December 2010 US-based Japanese Language Proficiency Test begins today.  Head over here to get your registration complete.

Information describing the substantive changes to the new test is available here.

Resources, including kanji and vocabulary lists for the new tests, are available here.

JLPT Test Prep Advice

If you have yet to take the JLPT (or haven’t taken it for a long time), the test has seen a dramatic overhaul in the last year as well as a step up in difficulty in recent years.

The resources here and here are highly advised reading to guide you in understanding preparing for the new test.  Even the wiki has a pretty detailed breakdown of the new sections and their time allotments.

Networking: Creative Approaches

JET is a rewarding experience for a number of reasons– it exposes you to culture and language beyond your own.  It teaches you adaptability.  It teaches you how to deal with being completely unaware of the nuances of the situation around you and yet still able to navigate around it.  What it doesn’t do however, is help your personal network.  And, the longer you’re on JET, the more damage it potentially does.  In the meantime, your future law school classmates are networking and meeting with the people who will be vital in helping them find legal employment.  I was on JET for three years  — and by the time I left Japan many of my U.S. contacts had gone cold and my network consisted almost exclusively of fellow JETs, rice farmers, and ramen chefs.

This wasn’t the strongest foundation upon which to build a legal career or mount a legal job search in economically tough times.  If you’re going to be doing law school right after JET, I am confident you will have the adaptability and the thick skin to handle the rigors of law school.  Where you’ll need to play catch up with the rest of your class is in expanding your network.

You’ll also have to do most of this work on your own.  Law school does little to develop your personal networking skills, especially if you’re looking to play yourself into the Japanese market.  It offers some opportunities, but aside from Career Counselors telling you: “Go out and network,” the actual advising you can take from them is near nil.  I remember sitting down with Career Services to discuss local Japanese businesses that might take interns in-house.  I got names of two major companies in the area, and that was all.  No contact information, no names, addresses, or alumni.  All I got from the CSO was just a cursory “Try here, and here.”  Better than nothing, but certainly not enough to even have a starting place to really expand my network, let alone seek some kind of employment.

But then I saw something that gave me an idea.  Back in February I came across this interesting article, that documented the blatant networking failure of a job-searching third year law student.  Not only was his cover letter over the top, but the law firm he thought he had contacted turned out not to be a law firm at all, but an IT consulting firm.  A chain of bitter, snarky emails later, the third year walks away with nothing, embarrassed by the experience.  The whole thing is worth a read, but this language from the consulting firm from the tail end of their interaction is particularly pertinent:

So now, stop and think: what if, instead of the reply you wrote below, you had said, “Sorry for the misunderstanding—but since you clearly work with lawyers, can you think of any who might be interested in hiring me?” That could have led to a few exchanges between us as to what areas of law interest you the most, and that would have probably led to me either giving you some specific contacts at specific law firms (probably pre-vetted by me) or, better yet, having me forward your e-mail on to those specific contacts.

There are three lessons I took away from this episode:

(1) Make sure you know where your cover letters and resumes are going;

(2) If you get an email back that is not the glowing response you expected, don’t get snarky even if you want to and they deserve it; and

(3) Most importantly, think about networking outside of just contacting lawyers.

It took me awhile to come up with #3, but once it hit me that if that third year student had handled his mistake differently, he could have walked away with names, contact information, and maybe job prospects, I thought I’d give it a try. I did a Google search of: accounting, Japanese business, and the area I live in, and came up with a number of hits.  Amongst the hits included an accounting firm that claimed to do quite a lot of accounting business with Japanese companies in the area. I sent out a short, inquisitive email expecting nothing, or at most an “I’m not a lawyer, go away.”

moe-595957

Creative networking looks just like this.

I got much more than that. After a short email exchange, an accountant and I agreed to meet after he finished tax season and I finished final exams. After meeting last week for lunch, I walked away with a new great contact and a master list of the literally 180 Japanese businesses in the area, complete with addresses and contact information.

Long story short: Networking outside of attorney channels can work for you, if you do it right.

Japan系 Legal Associations

Below are two Legal Associations related to those with Japanese interests one might consider looking into:

The Japan Law Society has free membership, and they have a group on LinkedIn, and often post quite a bit about CLEs taking place Japan-side, which may be of little interest to a law student, but can at least let you know what’s going on issue-wise amongst attorneys in Japan.

The second group is for those students who have access to furikomi – The Roppongi Bar Association.

See also numerous other LinkedIn groups that are ancillary to the legal profession, namely groups for Bilingual Japanese, Business in Japan, and Jobs in Japan, not to mention JETAA and any chapter affiliations you might have.

 

NALP Conference: Resume Advice

It’s finals time now, so things are going to be slow here for the next couple of weeks. Last week, however, was the NALP Conference in Puerto Rico– and Above the Law produced the following summary of legal resume advice that’s worth reading through.

Of particular concern to former JETs should be the tidbits about overall resume length and the weight your language ability will ultimately have on your resume. At the end of the day, it may make aiming for that 1kyuu (or N1, as it’s called now) or JETRO exam certification worth it.

Presentation to Returnees : Taking the JET Experience into the Legal Field

Certainly this site isn’t the only one looking to help JETs take their time in Japan and segue into the legal marketplace.  Last month, there was a presentation at the Tokyo Returnee’s Conference specifically aimed at JETs considering legal careers.

The slides are posted here, and have some great information, including:

  • A list of foreign law firms that employ in Tokyo;
  • A list of possible legal careers, and;
  • A list of the qualifications necessary for a legal career in the various JET participating countries.

Happy reading!

JET on Your Resume

The nagging question to most folks concluding their JET experience is: how the hell do I utilize JET on my resume?

HEARN(1895)_Glimpses_of_unfamiliar_Japan

Maybe tone it down a little.

The short answer is that JET can be sold as a positive experience, but compared to the opportunity costs of other things you could have been doing instead of JET, JET won’t necessarily be a golden ticket into law school or a legal career.  Perhaps the first threshold question is: Should I even put JET on my resume?  What may seem like a no-brainer (yes!  of course! JET’s great!) may actually not be so — there are certainly no dearth of web forum arguments out there over this very issue.

Technically The JET Program[me] was not your employer, your contracting organization was.  JET, then, is more like your placement agency, and your BOE your placement.  Additionally, with a name that ends in “Program[me],” JET doesn’t sound really like an employer, but, well, like something that’s simply experiential – like study/work abroad.  There’s the rub – if JET is your only post-undergrad experience, you’d prefer to characterize it as close to actual work as possible.  It seems odd, then, to try and fit JET at the top line of your resume in your employment slot.

However, JET also has a pretty vast and active alumni community, and as such, you might want to find a way to highlight the fact that you’re a former JET to get the attention of possible JET alums that can help you find employment.  It that sense, it would be understandable to put “The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program[me] somewhere visible on your resume.  Also worth noting, as of April 10, 2010 – LinkedIn now recognizes “The JET Program[me]” as an employer on its drop down menus when putting your work experience into that site.  This should assist former JETs search for other JET alumni with which to network.

The good news on this is, since there’s no significant consensus on this issue, you can likely list it however you like.  If you’re going to list JET as your employer, it would make more sense to list the whole name as opposed to the acronym (i.e. The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program[me], instead of just “JET” or “The JET Program[me],”) to give non-JET employers some idea of what you were doing.

Alternative approaches would include listing your Board of Education as your employer, and then including “Placement by the JET Program, one of Japan’s largest cultural exchange programs, run by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with local governments.”  Or some other such thing.  If, for some reason, you don’t want to highlight that your background was on JET, you can always just list your JETAA affiliation near the bottom of your resume, or omit JET altogether.

From personal experience, I can say at interviews I’ve never had my time on JET come up in a negative light.  In the interest of full disclosure, my JET resume entry is below:

Naninani City Board of Education Dokoka Pref., Japan

Assistant Language Teacher, August 2005-August 2008

  • Ÿ  Instructed English as a Foreign Language and led internationalization activities for a city of 35,000 at 14 different schools
  • Ÿ  Instructed English at community college, coached winning speech competition contestants
  • Ÿ  Co-developed and presented a curriculum for use in nineteen area elementary schools.
  • Ÿ  Advised youth table tennis players for five junior high schools

While I do not mention JET explicitly, I do mention my JETAA affiliation in a separate area.  I have friends, however, who have included JET prominently in their resume, and who have found employment.  How, where, and whether you choose to make JET a visible part on your resume is up to you.  It is something to think about, though.

Now that we have that out of the way, onto something more significant: How should I explain JET on my resume?

The answer to that question depends upon whether: (a) You’re using your JET experience to get into law school, or (b) You’re using your JET experience as part of your search for legal employment.  Oddly enough, law schools and legal employers are not looking for the same things on your resume.  What you know is that neither really cares about your amazing Fruit Basket ‘skillz’ – but what is it they are looking for?

The Law School Resume

Law schools care about nothing more than your LSAT score having a diverse student body that can bring different perspectives and ideas into the law school classroom.  The good news is that a former JET can bring a lot of diversity into the classroom, and having a resume that screams both to your JET-related accomplishments as well as this diversity/uniqueness element will likely help you.

If you take some time to think about it, you do bring a pretty unique background with you.  If you were in a small town (like I was) chances are you were the only person – or only one of a very few select people – of your nationality to live there.  You’ve lived the life of an outsider – trying to adapt, fit in, and get along in a place very different from your home.  You’ve taken on challenges from such mundane things as sorting your garbage to seven different categories to having to plan a lesson on the fly because your JTE decided it would be fun not to tell you forgot to tell you about the class you are going to teach five minutes from now.  You’ve been asked to make impromptu speeches and you’ve been made a spectacle of at town events.  In other words, you’ve had a unique and rare experience that not many of your fellow law students bring to the table.  Capitalize on that.

Of course JET probably won’t offset a poor LSAT or undergrad performance – JET will be a ‘soft factor’ on your law school application, but you can utilize it in a way that makes it a very strong soft factor, if you want to do so.

The Legal Employer Resume

The legal employer doesn’t care so much about your diverse background, your interesting perspective on life, or your opinions on onsen etiquette.  A legal employer wants to know two things: (1) Can you produce a good work product for me?, and (2) Are you going to be impossible to work with?

Keep in mind, moreover, that if you were born between 1979-2000 and coming off of JET, going to law school, and looking for legal employment, you may also have to overcome the image employers currently have about the Millennial Generation.  While employers recognize our generation as tech-savvy and confident, we’re not so beloved for having an ‘entitled’ attitude, short attention span, an inability to do anything without the approval of a superior, and a dislike for consulting resources that were, at one point, trees.  For additional information regarding hiring and millenials, see Jim Kennedy’s 2008 Article on the subject.

Also, JET will not be at the top of your legal resume.  Legal resumes naturally bifurcate the ‘Work Experience’ section into two areas, with Legal Experience (at the top) and Other Experience (after Legal Experience).

Your resume to a legal employer needs to (1) convince them of your competence, (2) do something to demonstrate that you’re not like the other Millennials applying for the position (i.e., you can make decisions – Millennials are often lauded for their ability to find information, but severely disliked when it comes to not knowing how to process or act on it), and (3) show them something, some skill or ability you can bring to their work place.  All of this needs to be designed to get you to the next step of finding employment: an interview.

But, while JET didn’t provide you the legal training to necessarily help you accomplish (3), it definitely gives you a good angle to attack (1) and (2).  For (1), show some quantifiable results– how big a town or city did you work for?  At how many schools?  What other accomplishments did you have in the workplace?  Did you design a curriculum?  Coach students for the speech contest?  Numbers, data, and achievements are the best way to show you did something with your time on the Program[me].  For (2), show you took some leadership, or were put in a situation where you had to make decisions.  If you had to teach at elementary school, chances are quite high you had to do a lot of the grunt work yourself – in terms of class preparation and class leadership.  If you were a one-shot with a ton of schools, you probably had to walk into a classroom full of kids you saw, maybe, once a month, read the tone of the room, and with only that limited amount of information figure out how you were going to conduct class.

This doesn’t mean that legal employers don’t want to hear about your adventures, however.  Your employers may want to know you are human in some way, and your JET entry may be a good place to add a little of that ‘human’ touch to your resume.

As your law school career progresses, you may want to consider how much space JET takes on your resume, and how you want to adapt JET to polish weaker parts of your resume.

As to what specifically to put on your resume, there is fortunately tons of advice out there on that.  I’ve amassed as much of it as I can, and put it below.

Additional Materials:

Transferable Skills JETs Have.pdf: Contains a listing of various transferable skills JETs tend to gain on the Program[me]

JETAA Portland offers a little bit of resume advice

Careers After JET 2005.pdf: Contains various job hunting tips as well as CV/Resume tips.

2003 JET Alumni Assoc Resume Writing Workshop.doc: Doc file with resume writing tips

Temple University Japan Campus Post-JET: Slides from a What to Do After JET for Job Searching