CV questions

A friend and I are visiting Tokyo in October and a few Japanese industries in our field of study (pharma) have their headquarters there. My friend thinks it's a great idea to go to these places and personally give our CVs to someone there (whom, I'm not sure), but I find it to be bad form. Is it a viable idea?

Assuming it is and my friend is right, would it be more appropriate for our CVs to be in English or in Japanese? The latter would require professional translation and might give the companies the impression we are fluent in Japanese, which we aren't.

Generally speaking, casually dropping in to hand in CVs at HR of companies, without appointment, without knowing if they are looking for people at all, sounds somewhat... dubious.

If your friend has his mind set on it, at least please go in proper business attire (I don't know if you are coming to Japan on business or for pleasure), and hire an interpreter to accompany you so that you can present yourself well. Or does your friend know that they want people from your country for certain positions that require English rather than Japanese language skills?

We are visiting for pleasure, so packing formal attire just for that occasion is another deterrent for me.

The aforementioned companies have very small offices/representations in our country (a team of 3-4 people at most), and even these employees are basically sent in from Spain (where they have bigger offices). My friend's train of thought is that both he and I could capitalise on this liaison because we know some Japanese (nowhere near fluency though), thus bypassing the need for foreign employees to be sent over. Applying for these jobs directly in our country just earns us a polite 'sorry, not interested', so my guess is that he thinks it'd be somehow easier to be hired by going to the companies' original HQs.

I'm not really comfortable with this gimmick, and walking in unannounced, in a T-shirt and jeans, to hand in a CV to a random person screams of self-entitlement even to me. I guess the best thing to do is try to talk my friend out of it, or tell him to go alone.

If you want to work in Portugal, it is better to go to Portugal branch. I think the main office may send your CV to that branch. That's all.
if you want to have a job in Japan, you need to have a fluent Japanese speaking, in addition to English. also you need to have a good carrier.

As suggested, I'm not sure why your friend wants hand in a CV during a casual trip without presenting yourselves properly when you can send the same CV on-line from home without even presenting yourself.

But students or any persons are free to see if companies do tours for visitors. A lot of factories give you regular educational tours, and any company can hand you a brocher while letting you take a look at their lobby.

Again though, if you're doing this to present yourself, you need to wear a tie. But you can always try to do this just as an ordinary tourist. That kind of an experience would be worthwhile no matter where you finally plan to work.

Thank you for the feedback, it's just as I had expected. I'll pass the info along to him and hope it's discouraging enough to make him change his mind.

A tour could be interesting, will look into that.

Thanks again!