After having the worst weekend and travel experience of my life — polite reminder to never fly Delta Airlines, proudly delivering 100 years of subpar customer service. I began my time with the Titan Business Innovation team juggling their Genomics event (what even is that?), a 30k-row spreadsheet compiling over 5 years worth of information, and calling up old candidates to get the lowdown on their life all in the first week. Well, I panicked to say the least, maybe even cried a little, who’s to say it’s all a blur now.
☎️ Cold-calling crisis
But I buckled in and decided to do what I do best, “Wing it and see what happens.” Hopping on phones was the thing I was least excited about. Talking to people? Yuck! But I came to Japan to challenge myself and not do the same old same old I was doing back home. So, I tried for a week and then next Monday immediately corner Anthony “Oceans” Huynh, the Head of the Business Innovation team and desperately asked, “Dear god why? You said calling, but why calling?”
Oceans very calmly walked me through my thoughts and hang-ups, gave me space to breathe, and even let me push the calls to the back burner while I recalibrated. What I found really surprising was throughout the week I had been trying to call, I had received a lot of compliments regarding how I was doing on the phone. The whole time I was there thinking I was a train wreck plowing through Kyoto like the final scene of Bullet Train (spoilers!). ‘Unfathomable, these people are without a doubt lying to me,’ and then I proceeded to bury myself in the massive spreadsheet of backlogged data.
Genuinely it was the people that pulled me through that long slog of numbers and data and 7 separate columns of first and last name (why?). No one ever put any pressure on me and everyone was very sympathetic because cold calling sucks. The people that genuinely love it are few and far in between, my dread was natural and it was heartening to hear how many people had gone through something similar.
But even before I once again dredged up the courage to pick up the phone and ring up busy busy strangers, I found myself enjoying the wide variety of tasks I was getting assigned.
Helping with the Genomics event was very interesting. I reached out to several dozen individuals of a variety of backgrounds via LinkedIn. Trying to figure out the best way to connect to people with very impressive something something precision science backgrounds, who had many years of experience in gene-science analytics as well as big science bioprocesses. Then the best people, the lifesciences people, nice simple rolls off the tongue. Truly I learned so much about something I still don’t understand.
It was an interesting challenge, though, to figure out how such a niche field like genomics actually had a lot of different types of roles and disciplines of studies that were attached to it. Of course trying to figure out the best fits for our event as well as notable points to use when reaching out was an interesting task in and of itself.
🎯 Quests, Lists, and Company Deep Dives
There were other quests like:
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- “Just a little Business Development” – Look into The World’s Most Innovative Companies and make a list of who could potentially be entering the Japanese market to connect to. Keeping in mind things like whether those companies match the fields we work. No point in connecting to the WBA, when it’s basketball and we handle Tech, Medical Devices/Pharma, and Green Tech.
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- “Company Seeking Candidate” – Create a list of potential candidates, and then do a deep dive to create a shortlist of people who actually fit the role. Making sure they match the client companies requirements, such as having experience in the medical industry, have little to none leadership since they are looking to cultivate internally, and keeping little things like the head of the team is in the oncology field so while it isn’t a requirement any candidate with experience in that field would be especially appealing.
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- “Assessing Elite Smarties for Elite Lunch Date” – Look through internal and external databases to swipe right on any appealing candidates. This one was a little interesting, because there were many different types of heads of departments, or vice presidents, or Chief Executive blah blah blah. Making sure I didn’t accidentally grab the chief assistant of Executive blah blah blah or associate/deputy head of the department was very important (and if it happened once or twice then at least I caught it before I turned my quest in).
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With many side quests and challenges and hangout events in between. Not to mention being sick for a third of my time here (I am pretty sure Japan is trying to kill me, not cool.)
Eventually I mustered up the courage to start the quest “Cold Calling” and man did I hate every second of it. But like I said before, I came to Japan to challenge myself, because I felt like I was stagnating in the States. Most of the other assignments I had been assigned were not something I had done previously but weren’t that far outside of my comfort zone. But I wanted to challenge myself (I guess), I wanted to build myself up as a person (not really), I like making things difficult for myself (definitely).
First call, not interested? “Ok, thank you for-” Alright, they hung up. Second call, very much not interested in changing jobs but willing to chat a little bit and answer a couple of questions, thank you so much. And then three dozen calls later my feelings are dead and it isn’t that hard anymore. Yay?
It was always a mind over matter thing. I understood that from the very beginning, but trying to conquer that fear was all about taking the time to start. The hardest part was always starting, getting into the swing of things was easy, figuring out the script as I went, a struggle but not the worst. Picking up the phone and calling? Hard hard hard.
🤝 The People Made It Worthwhile
It was painful, awkward, and deeply uncomfortable — but still, a skill worth having. Having interpersonal communication skills would always be worthwhile even if I just ended up as a back office gremlin that never sees the light of day.
I truly enjoyed my time at Titan. The work was interesting and ever-changing, and the people? Genuinely fun. I loved having the chance to chat with everyone — even during the busiest office hours, when the whole place was buzzing, there were still jokes flying around to keep things light. Some teams were drowning in work, others were definitely louder than necessary (no need to name names — you know who you are), but across the board, everyone was doing their best and happy to answer whatever inane questions I threw their way.
To whoever comes next — or to whatever curious stranger has made it to the end of this dumpster fire — know that this is a great place to work. Highly recommended.