I met Rakuten reps at a job fair in Tokyo. Rakuten really goes out of its way to present itself as the coolest company in Japan to work for. Imagine spontaneous young guys and girls (gaijin) in their mid-twenties telling you how awesome everything in this company is. Hey, they even have funny hat days. It certainly is true that Rakuten has built up a modern image in Japanese society and most of this is thanks to its flamboyant CEO who wants his company to become the new Amazon, Ebay, Google..all in one. So far for what's on the outside. My interaction with Rakuten's recruitment process was very short, but gave me a peek under the hood. What you should know is that this awesome, super modern company still resorts to the old-fashioned web aptitude test. This test will establish how much of an Einstein you are, whether your have any lingering Freudian issues and finally which Japanese idol would be your most suitable marriage partner. (That last one is a joke) This is done by submitting you to a personality test of about 40 mins, followed by another lengthy Wonderlic test. If you have applied with other companies in the Tokyo area before, you will have done this very same aptitude test a million times over. It's the one designed by ef-1g and you can find the answers online. I knew all the answers by hard and I did the same test for another company only 2 hours ealier. This tells you a lot about the relevance and the validity of these kind of tests. Companies might as well ask you to fill out a test they found in Cosmopolitan. The software's real purpose is to 'objectively' reduce the number of applicants to a manageable number. At least in this case, I can say that Rakuten HR is no different than other large Japanese companies. You're a number from the start. Heck, you might even start to feel these Divergent novels were on to something. My aptitude test was technically bugged from the start. My troubleshooting remained unanswered and only got a fix almost a month later. The day after my test I got an automatic email telling me how capable I am but how sad and difficult it is not to proceed with my application. So without fully disclosing to me why my candidacy was rejected, I stranded with the aptitude test. I'm pretty confident I got a good score on the reasoning test. So either I must have a borderline personality or these aptitude tests are indeed roulette. After all, thousands of young Japanese want to work with Rakuten. Even going through the pack with a rough comb, Rakuten is bound to interview some good candidates. So don't blame yourself if you don't get in. It's a numbers game. At least you didn't have to go to the next stage and write an essay about the CEOs book.