I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at FiNC (Tokyo) in Sep 2019
Interview
A very friendly recruiter contacted me and arranged an interview. I went to FiNC's office. It was the usual chaotic flurry of a traditional j-office. There were two young people hanging out at the reception counter who ignored me as I signed in on the tablet computer. A cleaning person wandered around aimlessly, wiping the furniture as I waited while the couple at the counter chatted amongst themselves. Some groups arrived and were escorted while I waited. They loudly asked if this was indeed a Japanese (nikkei) company. Perhaps they were investors. My interviewer eventually came and took me to an "event hall" they have on the 7th floor. There was a tiny meeting room attached to it. We entered, sat, and chatted for about 15 minutes. During conversation I gathered that it is an open office with tiny desks.
Make sure you look up the company online and understand all their products. In addition to the fitness tracking app, they have gym facilities throughout Tokyo/Japan where they hold classes. They also have an online catalog where they sell things like "super foods" and home testing kits that you can use to see if you have the "fat gene". It smells very strongly of the pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing scams in America, like Amway and Herbalife.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Do you have experience working in the healthcare/wellness industry?
3 interviews: with an Engineer, CTO and with HR.
The interviews were not too difficult, and interviewers were friendly.
The company doesn't accept smokers since it's a health company or if you are a former smoker you need to commit to quitting smoking.
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Application
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at FiNC (Tokyo) in Mar 2019
Interview
Who decided the interview process? The technical screening test should come first, also the internal company discussion about expected salary. After three interviews, they sent word that "Your skills for your salary do not match our expectations".
Here are a few tips for improvement:
1) We could have known the result in one interview and one internal discussion about expected salary; this reflects poorly on the company and should be improved. Lots of process low efficiency.
Here is how many companies do this: #1 phone call to screen -> #2 Technical Interview -> internal conversation about expected salary -> If they pass then whatever other interview you may need.
2) It also reflects they have lower than market salary for someone with my skillset. This is because I was doing other interviews here in Japan at the same time, for similar, smaller and larger companies. They all match or exceeded my expected salary, and had less subjective technical screenings. (Bilingual + Product planner + Software Engineer (8 years))
3) My first technical interviewer was silent in interview #2. So I made conversation. It was a reverse interview and fairly awkward.. This step can be removed. No reason to have someone come all the way to your office and sit in a room with a silent manager, Right?
4) There are some non-Japanese people in the company which is great! However, I was told there were only Japanese in the Engineer division. When planning on expanding to other countries having a few people who are engineers + product people is very important.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Show how you would design a MySQL table for ***** situation.
