Neal Walters | Managing Director, ChapmanCG |

“We only hire recruiters that have six to 10 years of experience so our model is to have seasoned people instead of inexperienced people. I used to be in a firm where we were hiring people en masse, and they came in with no experience to 2 to 3 years of experience in the industry. During a time like this, I think a company with a longer-experienced consultant and client base likely has a more resilient model as the client engagements will have a stronger foundation of trust.

For younger consultants entering and developing within in the industry, a lot of their success will come from their ability/efforts to build loyalty by getting in front of their clients and prospective clients. This is especially so in Japan where true customer loyalty can take many years to earn. Becoming a resilient consultant means investing in client relations over years. Now is an especially difficult time to build credibility and loyalty in these relationships, especially over Zoom, but I believe creative, determined younger consultants are always going to find ways to differentiate themselves regardless of the circumstances.”

Victor Nwakanma | Senior VP, Boyd & Moore Executive Search |

“I would expect that the best-practice for companies moving forward would be to meld internal direct sourcing models with agency partnership in a more synergistic manner. The current paradigm of the relationships between clients and their agency partners can sometimes be adversarial, as internal talent teams are under pressure to reduce recruitment costs and agency exposure. What is a sometimes grudging relationship, can, and should, be more symbiotic.

With our best clients, we work in a truly symbiotic way, across a range of talent needs. They see us allies in the #war for talent” and an extension of their own internal teams. This ties in very strongly with the way I like to structure my business- moving away from being a pure bred recruitment provider into one who offers more of a talent advisory consultant model, which I think is actually the future of most of the industry at the executive level.

There will be a space for contingency, but contingency tends to be a very transactional model. It isn’t particularly strategic to do so, and often highlights that the client can’t find a solution and they have no choice but to go to the market and accept whichever agency is first past the post; or create a highest-bidder-wins sort of scenario.

For executive search or executive advisory firms, the key is offering services beyond “search”, to separate your business from the transactional model. To assess client’ needs in terms of both hiring and strategy, identify what they can’t address themselves, and offer both advisory and specifically tailored solutions, on everything from employer branding to talent engagement to succession planning. Not everything can be done by a client in-house. Where a partner can be of use to them, I see that as being a very, very powerful set of tools for those clients to engage with. That’s where I see, and hope, the market is going- at least from my perspective.”

Robin Doenicke | Founder & CEO, Zensho Agency |  

“By nature, recruiters are quite resilient but they’re still human. In our business there can often be a great deal of pressure to present yourself as being bulletproof and always on top of things. The recruitment business is continually up and down with uncertainty being embedded in our everyday work. When situations like Covid suddenly appear on the scene, this can create a level of anxiety, stress and fear that goes beyond the level few are accustomed to.

To deal with this it’s hugely important for companies of all kinds to put a priority on the mental health and physical wellbeing of their people. Recruiters should rest assured knowing management has their backs and cares about them and their families more than from where, or when, the next deal is coming in. This builds loyalty and trust to a significant degree. Increased focus on collaboration also plays a big part in ensuring everyone has something to work on, regardless of whether it is within their area of focus or not. This enhances their ability to develop deeper, value added relationships with clients and candidates while at the same time providing them with a clear vision that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Rocco Trapanese | Managing Director & Founder, CareerScout | 

“Before the coronavirus, working from home was considered the exception to the rule. Now it’s become the norm and working from the office five days a week has become the exception. I think you’ll see greater flexibility from companies trying to hire candidates that require work life balance. Working mothers or workers who need to look after elderly parents will benefit the most.

We’ll see some reduced pressure stemming from limited talent pools and hopefully more placements. Companies will have more options to find solutions to labor shortages.

However, the fundamentals of the Japan labor market won’t change that much. Despite the greater flexibility on the part of clients, we’ll still have a relatively low supply of qualified candidates against huge demand. I believe recruiting companies are still poised to be successful and profitable.”

Doug Wilson | Managing Partner, Adept Group |

“I`ve been in Japan 23-24 years now and just about all of it in recruitment. It takes time to change in Japan, but this kind of global pandemic has expedited some necessary changes. Like, people are more open minded to looking at jobs and less concerned about the process, about things being overly formalized. People are less concerned about do I need to meet this recruiter or do I need to do this or that? They’re more focused on the opportunity and getting through the process and not too concerned about how that happens so I think that creates more opportunity.

Changes are also happening in the way candidates are sourced. In the past it was mostly networking, cold calling, etc., but the new generation of consultants also needs to be proficient in leveraging social media. I believe adoption by Japanese professionals of social media like LI will accelerate as employees are forced to deal with online tools to work virtually. So older recruitment firms in this market with an understanding of both old and new ways are the ones that I think will thrive. The people running these firms need to be flexible and close enough to the business that they understand how to let the younger generation do what they do while helping them understand what`s worked and what hasn`t over time in an evolving market.”

Jeremy Sanderson | CEO, Icon Partners |

“Looking at the wider view on opportunities for Tokyo, from a more macro perspective Hong Kong is losing its position as the Asian financial hub because of Chinese security laws and the fact that talented people are less likely to want to live and work in Hong Kong when they could be censored or arrested or whatever. If you think about where the alternatives are, I mean, you have Singapore which has got a banking system one-seventh of the size of Hong Kong, or you have got Tokyo.

So Tokyo has an opportunity to now reposition itself as an alternative financial hub or financial center, but there are three major issues that Tokyo faces, one is high taxation, two is the language barrier, and the other is the lack of a talent pool here. Now If you start attracting more highly talented multilingual players from Singapore, from Bangkok, and from other parts of Asia, finance markets from the UK from the US wherever, then you’ll have less of a language barrier because there’ll be more English speakers, then you could overcome those challenges and then all you have to do really is lower taxes. Actually, the position of Tokyo compared to Hong Kong as a global financial hub looks very viable.

Darwin was misquoted, it wasn’t the survival of the fittest or the survival of the strongest. The species which are set to survive and prosper are the ones that are the most adaptable to change. So you have to be flexible and adapt otherwise you are going to go under.”

Casey Abel | Global Head of BD & Strategic Accounts, HCCR |

“Given the downturn and uncertainty in the economy due to COVID-19, clients are scrutinizing the value add that recruiting / executive search firms provide much more. There is a strong perception in the market amongst clients that the actual value add many recruiting companies provide is quite commoditized, so the industry in general really needs to be conscious of how they engage clients and the fees they charge vs. the actual value add they provide beyond just sending CVs to a client.

As a follow up to this, many clients are looking to in-house the TA function, including executive search, so finding ways to generate a value proposition that supports them to achieve their business goals beyond just cultivating candidates for them to talk to seems to be a major topic of discussion in many organizations.

That said, fundamental dynamics in the market are still consistent with before the COVID-19 in terms of supply / demand imbalances of talent in many markets. I believe that there will absolutely be a continued need in the market from companies to support them in identifying and courting the talent they need to fuel their growth, however, as mentioned above, the actual mechanisms that companies use to do this may evolve over time. The firms and consultants that evolve to match the clients’ needs will be the ones most well-positioned over time.”

Lawrence Kieffer | COO, Fidel Consulting KK |

My first job in recruiting started when my boss gave me an employee directory from Yamaichi Securities, which I guess the company was sending out to companies to encourage job offers, and asked me to contact people to arrange interviews and get resumes. I think they had already all gotten jobs by that time, but it was an unusual time for so many people be out on the job market. That was a milestone which people in the industry remember as a turning point for candidates. That was a point when many people realized that a company’s promise of lifetime employment could change, and that a person’s career depended on their own actions. So from that point to now, I have seen Japanese candidates take more control of their careers.

Since then, Japanese candidates have become more sophisticated about their careers and developing their skills in order to advance their career opportunities, and I am seeing that during this time. Covid 19 has accelerated that as one of the challenges for employed people looking for new jobs was to get guarantees for working from home or to allow for that as an option from employers. Even when layoffs occurred in the early part of the pandemic’s impact, and candidates were very flexible in negotiations for new positions, companies became more willing to accommodate work from home. These trends should have a strong impact on recruitment going forward.