The Fruits from Seeding New Ideas

Recruitment of an Underwriter, Financial Services Conglomerate

Again and again we have landed "surprise candidates" in positions the client had not considered our services for. Here is an example of a mid-level placement that would not have happened without proactive probing on our part. We had arranged to meet with the client, a major financial services and insurance company, to discuss IT positions. After understanding those positions, we steered the conversation in other directions and quickly learnt that their most pressing need was not in IT but in Underwriting. As it happened, we had extensive experience in that area and thought we could help.

In the detailed follow-up consultation we mapped out the core skill-sets and experiences that a successful candidate would require. Indeed, during a prior search, we had come across a few professionals who looked close. One stood out in our memory as a particularly promising candidate.

When we had first contacted him a year before, he was not interested in changing jobs and met us solely for the novelty value of talking to a foreign headhunter who was completely fluent in Japanese. His employment at a solid Japanese company seemed impossible to beat in terms of life-time employment, stability and development prospects. So when we contacted him again he was at first hesitant. But the seed of "change" that we had planted in our first encounter had begun to grow. He was at least ready to meet with the client. After only two meetings it was decided that they wanted to hire him.

The candidate was in a quandary. He knew the opportunity was very attractive. Yet loyalty to his employer, a trait so often encountered in Japan, was a serious obstacle. Emphasizing the changes in the market, with lifetime employment rapidly fading and innovative foreign companies grabbing more and more market share, we managed to create a different mind-set that focused on his own needs rather than those of the old company. A rational discussion of the pluses and minuses of each company showed that his personal growth potential and challenges at our client would be far superior to those at the current employer. This led to his acceptance of the offer.

Our job wasn't finished there - changing jobs for the first time is never easy in Japan. Drawing on years of experience with similar cases, we navigated him through one of the most difficult times he had ever faced, including pressure from his employer and peers, and an uncertain future ahead. At the end of the saga stood a happy client and a happy candidate.

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