Khatz has a good ol' fashioned rant about the JLPT in which I think he makes some great points (learn japanese to be fluent not to pass tests) and a few not so great (like saying it's useless to get the JLPT for your resume - sooo many people here and everywhere only look for the pieces of paper they don't want to spend time actually assessing you lol!)
Who Soc'd It?
"The thing is, whether it’s good motiviation or not is not the point at this stage - the point is what do you NEED it for? I absolutely agree that these tests do not prove that you are proficient in communicating and that companies who rely on JLPT to “prove” anything are being lazy by not testing people themselves nevertheless the fact is most HR departments ARE lazy these days and won’t consider anyone without the right pieces of paper.
The TOEFL/TOEIC comparison is I think an erroneous as these are not just about learning a language by wrote but provide some, if minimal, instruction on how to teach - which is a very different thing from being able to communicate colloquially in a language. Frankly, if I were an employer I’d be insisting on seeing these - not because of their quality, or lack thereof, but because it shows that the person in question has at least some level of commitment and respect for teaching a language. I have met some fantastic teachers of English here but many more who simply have no business even claiming to be able to do so and are committing fraud by accepting their paychecks."