Most applications in Japan don’t fail at the interview. They fail before anyone speaks to you.
In a 2025 survey of 500 people who changed jobs in Japan, the average person applied to 13.6 companies and passed document screening at 5.1 of them — a pass rate of 37.3%. (Mynavi Job Change Activity Survey 2025)
So roughly six out of ten applications end at the paperwork. That’s for candidates applying in Japanese, inside the Japanese system. If you’re applying from overseas, understanding this stage is even more important.
Here’s what actually happens to your documents.
Who reads your resume, and in what order
A typical flow at a Japanese company:
| Order | Who | What they’re deciding |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agency recruiter (if you applied through one) | Is this person worth sending? Agencies protect their relationship with the company, so they filter first. |
| 2 | HR | Do the basics match the posting — experience, skills, visa status, salary range, start date? |
| 3 | The hiring team’s engineers | Can this person do our work? Is anything unclear or worrying? |
Each step takes minutes, not hours. Nobody is studying your document. They’re scanning it for reasons to move you forward — or to stop.
The three documents, and which one matters
| Document | What it is | Who cares about it |
|---|---|---|
| English CV | Your usual resume | International-friendly companies; often all you need |
| Rirekisho (履歴書) | A fixed-format Japanese form: personal details, education, work history by date | HR, at traditional companies |
| Shokumu-keirekisho (職務経歴書) | Free-format career history: projects, your role, results | The engineers. This is the one that decides your technical screening |
If a Japanese company asks for both Japanese documents, put your effort into the shokumu-keirekisho. The rirekisho is a form to fill in correctly; the shokumu-keirekisho is where you make your case.
About the rirekisho form: Japan’s JIS standard dropped its resume template in July 2020, and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare published its own recommended form. In the ministry’s version, the gender field is optional, and fields such as number of dependents and spouse status were removed — part of Japan’s “fair hiring” (公正な採用選考) policy, which says selection should be based on aptitude and ability. (Saitama Labour Bureau)
Use the ministry’s form if you need one. And no, you don’t have to handwrite it.
What the engineers actually check
This is the part I can speak to directly. When my team looks at a candidate’s documents, three things decide the outcome.
1. Can this person deliver results?
Not “do they know the technologies” — will they get things done on our team?
A list of tools tells us nothing. A specific outcome tells us a lot.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| Experienced in AWS, Docker, Kubernetes | Migrated 40 services to ECS; cut monthly infrastructure cost by 30% |
| Worked on CI/CD | Built the deployment pipeline used by 3 teams; reduced release time from 40 minutes to 8 |
| Responsible for monitoring | Redesigned alerting; cut false alarms from ~50/week to under 5 |
For each recent role, give us: what you built, at what scale, and what changed because of it.
2. What kind of person are you?
Character matters, because we have to work with you every day. Documents show this more than people expect:
- Did you write clearly, or dump everything in?
- Is it obvious what you did, versus what the team did?
- Is there any sign you communicate — design docs, incident reviews, mentoring, working across teams?
That last point connects to something non-negotiable in Japanese workplaces: hou-ren-sou (報連相 — report, inform, consult). Engineers who go quiet are not trusted here, however strong their code is. Evidence that you keep people informed is worth real points.
3. Is anything unclear?
Unclear beats unqualified as a reason to reject. If HR can’t tell whether you need visa sponsorship, when you can start, or whether you’re in Japan, the easy decision is to move on to the next application.
Put these where nobody has to hunt for them, at the top of your CV:
- Where you are now, and your visa status (do you need sponsorship?)
- Your Japanese level, honestly stated
- Earliest start date
What this means for how you write
Tailor to the posting. Readers compare your document against the job description almost line by line. Use their words, and put the most relevant experience first. One tailored application beats ten generic ones.
Explain the gaps and the moves. A series of short jobs is read as a risk in Japan. You don’t need to hide anything — give each change a one-line reason.
Keep it short and plain. Your reader may not be a native English speaker. Short sentences, clear headings, two pages at most. Skip the heavy design.
Don’t undersell. Japanese candidates tend to write modestly, and some foreign candidates over-correct in the other direction. Neither extreme helps. Concrete facts, stated plainly, work best in both cultures.
Summary
- About six in ten applications in Japan fail at document screening — before any interview.
- Up to three people read your documents, each for minutes: the agency, HR, then the engineers.
- The shokumu-keirekisho (or your CV) is what engineers actually read. Put your effort there.
- We’re deciding three things: can you deliver results, what kind of person are you, and is anything unclear?
- State your location, visa status, Japanese level and start date at the top.
This article is general information based on my own experience and the sources linked above. Every company differs.
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