Highly skilled & COE Question

Hello!

Long story short, may I please come to know:
1. what categories of jobs will I be able to apply for the highly skilled professional visa?
2. Do I need a job offer from Japan first, before applying the COE?

Very confused at this stage. Any help would be very much appreciated! Thank you very much in advance.

1. Categories and how the system works:
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/system/index.html

2. Just like any other "work visa", first you need a job and a company willing to emloy you, they apply for a work visa for you etc...This is how it works in most of western countries BTW including mine, this is not a japanese thing....

1) Is for areas which require specialized skils In conjunction with the activities "Highly-Skilled Professional(i)" permitted to engage in almost all of the activities of statuses of residence based on employment
2) Yes you need to have a company who can sponsor you

Thank you so much for the quick replies! One more quick question that I forgot to mention:

Under the technical category of highly skilled professional points chart, what does it mean by �gJapanese/foreign work-related qualification�h?

As a reference, http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/pdf/List_of_foreign_qualific...

In other words, are these (from the reference) the only �gchoices�h/positions, tests/awards to get points? Lots of other professional positions�f formal qualifications are not listed here.

Sorry for this poor description of my question, many thanks again for any help!

The main requirement is high salary - the Japan Government wants your tax yen (dollars).
Basic quals of Masters degree/PhD also help but after that the other point categories are relatively minor.
Awards and speaking Japanese are useful, but minor categories.

End of the day - its about money, and honestly, the Japanese system lags behind many of the other nearby countries for attracting highly skilled professionals. There are also some serious legal "fish-hooks" once you pass five years in Japan and then choose to go somewhere else.

Are you planning to get perm resident quicker? That should be the only reason to go for this type of visa.
If not you should go for the normal visa over highly skilled visa.

Unlike normal visas, highly skilled visas is linked to a specific company, and they end up having total control over you until you can get perm residence, including you getting much less pay than expected.

I experienced this, when I finally escapes the clutches of my previous company due to this issue, the next company offered me ~3 times my previous pay. That shows you how much you can get screwed by the system.

Thanks again for the replies.

Yes, I am trying to obtain the perm resident as soon as possible. If you don�ft mind sharing what did you mean by linked to a company?

Also on the site it says �gPermission for multiple activities�h, and it indicates �gsingle status of residency�h and �gmultiple statuses of residency�h. It would help a lot if anyone is willingly share some ideas of their differences since I�fm not very clear on that...

Perhaps I�fm overthinking but, for this type of visa, do you MUST work at one of those research institutions, or just at any employers who are willingly to sponsor the visa for me, such as English teachers(assumption here)?

Many thanks again in advance for all! They helped a lot.

Linked to a company as in the visa is ONLY valid if you are employed by the company who sponsored your highly skilled visa. You will have a note with the sponsoring company name stapled into your passport.
As long as you hold the job with your sponsor company, you can do the other activities, but it becomes much more difficult to change jobs since you would require a new visa.

Since you are going for perm residence, you should go for it as long as you can have 80+ points.

If 70 points, it means your sponsor company can take advantage of your visa status and not give out your deserved bonus/incentives, raises, and promotion for 4 years (since perm residence can take close to a year to process now) .