INTERVIEW10
Consulting Sales
Joined Human Science in 2008. As a consulting sales representative, I excel in proposals to clients and internal coordination, while also showcasing an unexpected talent for piano performance. I started taking piano lessons at the age of 5 and spent my youth in the brass band during my school days, truly surrounded by music throughout my life. I resumed lessons six years ago and recently rented a small hall to hold a recital.
I joined a city bank as a corporate sales representative right after graduating. Immediately after joining, I was involved in counter operations during training, but since I had majored in English literature at university, I began to think that I wanted to work in a job where I could utilize my English skills. After a year, I left the bank and was looking for a company where I could make use of the English I had been studying all along when I came across Human Science. I was impressed by the wide range of services offered and the very pleasant personality of the interviewer, who was my future boss, which naturally allowed me to envision myself working there. I feel that the calm atmosphere within the company suits my personality well.
After joining the company, I learned the job through on-the-job training alongside my seniors. Once I had a grasp of the workflow, my first assignment was with a company that provides corporate training and e-learning. We already had a business relationship with this company through other services, but they were using content from another company for their e-learning. However, I heard that the quality was not good for the price, so I strongly promoted the services we could offer. I was very happy when they liked it and it led to an order. Since then, I have been involved not only in e-learning but also in document and multilingual translation solutions, and I am currently mainly responsible for English to Japanese translation.
Recently, I have been involved in marketing-related translation solutions, such as brochures and websites used by salespeople during proposals, as well as promotional materials for product launches.
There is a reason for this; it all started when I received an inquiry from a data analytics software company in the United States. They mentioned that they were translating their website into multiple languages, but the quality of the Japanese was poor and they wanted suggestions for improvement. There was an opportunity for the website translation team and decision-makers to gather in Japan, and I was able to give a presentation in English there. The evaluation of the quality of the test translations we conducted was very good, and it was decided that they would entrust all Japanese translations to us. I was able to leverage my English skills to secure the order. I was incredibly happy about that.
I believe that being directly involved with clients allows me to feel their reactions firsthand, which is very rewarding. When I was in charge of e-learning, I received projects worth several million yen from clients with whom I had multiple hearings. I have a memorable experience when a client said, "It helps that you always come right away when I need to consult with you."
However, it's not just about making a sale; each client has various challenges, and I find it interesting to think of customized solutions for them.
Additionally, I feel that the essence of this job lies in sincerely facing problems to meet requests and connecting with results through careful communication and proposals.
With the advancement of machine translation and AI translation, I feel that it is becoming increasingly difficult to rely solely on human efforts as we have in the past. Requests from overseas IT companies have already shifted to a mainstream model of 'post-editing,' where humans review machine translations. In the future, proposals for business that leverage machine translation may become key. I believe we need to develop strategies on how to showcase our strength in technology while determining which customers to engage with and what kind of business to pursue.
Furthermore, I aspire to become a presence that can contribute to the overall sales of the company, not only in the department I am currently responsible for but also in other departments, by being able to handle everything from business negotiations and strategic planning to customer support.
Translation Coordinator (IT)
MT Engineer
Multilingual Coordinator
Technical Writer
Manual Consultant
System Engineer (Development)
System Engineer (Operations)
Education Consultant
Consulting Sales
