Exit Plans: Michiko Ida

Posted by admin on Feb 17, 2009 in News | 0 comments

What she’s doing:
Michiko Ida got a job in Tokyo, Japan at an I.T. company. She will start working there in August as a sales engineer. Ida said, “This company is not that big – yet, but I absolutely felt [there was] a good atmosphere and training system through talking to people who work in this company.”

How it came about:
“I got this job at a Japanese career forum held in Boston, last October,” she said. “It is a very huge event…around 170 Japanese global companies get together, and ten thousand students who want to work at a bilingual company, and are trying to find their job.”
She flew to Boston at the end of October, and had eight interviews with eight different companies in one day. On the last day of the forum she finally got connected with the I.T. company.

How long it took to make it a reality:
“I cannot say how long it exactly took for the process, but I think around a year. When I was in third year, I decided to let myself [look] forward to working and not studying because I realized that I learned… enough as a TWU student. I wanted to put myself into a more [challenging] position working somewhere. So I started studying business English in order to take an exam called TOEIC (which is similar to TOEFL, but it more like business English skills), and for a year I was thinking about myself, things I learned, and things I need to improve. Last summer I started applying [at] companies, and started preparing for the career forum in October.”

Why this is so exciting:
“I am very excited to start new life as a worker not a student, and what I am most excited about this job is to learn new things. Since I was a COMM major, I do not have good knowledge about IT yet. However, I like to challenge new things and put myself in the learning process anytime, so I am looking forward to studying new things.”

What is in store for the future:
“I do not think this is my last opportunity that I can have in my career life. Since this IT company is trying to improve as a bilingual business, I would like to contribute not only with my language skills but more importantly with my experiences that I got through life in Canada. There are so many things that I need to learn more about, but life in Canada gave me a lots of valuable opportunities that I cannot ever have if I had just stayed in Japan, and studied there. Through staying away from my home country, and meeting many people from different countries in Canada, I think I was able to see the world more, care about others more, and had time to think about myself more. These sound very basic but I think that they are the most important and difficult things to get over in our life.”