INSIGHTS / FOR CLIENTS & TALENT LEADERS
Make the right leadership hire.
Practical guidance for hiring country managers and building teams in Japan. Define the mandate, understand the market and run a process that earns trust.
Discuss your hiring plans →MURRAY CLARKE / FOUNDING PARTNER
Experience, applied with AI.
I’m Murray Clarke, founding partner of Aspiring Partners. I’ve spent more than 20 years in executive search in Japan, helping build four search firms. That includes years helping VMware hire its leadership team, two years internally during hypergrowth, and the executive-search joint venture I built with ManpowerGroup before selling my interest to the group.
I’ve worked as an agency recruiter, an internal recruiter and a search-firm owner. These articles draw on those perspectives to help clients define the right mandate and make sound hiring decisions.
This time, we’ve built our own platform and use AI extensively in the work. It helps me apply that experience more broadly in support of candidates, clients and the recruiters working with us. The technology supports the research and preparation; I remain accountable for the judgment and relationships.
More about Murray and Aspiring Partners →Country Manager equity: is your offer realistic and fair?
Why I regard an eight- or ten-year equity vest as unfair and unrealistic for a Japan Country Manager, and what employers and candidates should consider.
SaaSpocalypse 2026: Which Software Firms Hire and Which Supply Talent
Of 24 listed software firms we tracked, half are up in 2026 and half are down. What that split means for who is hiring senior leaders in Japan, and who is open to moving.
What Two Japan Business Leaders Taught Me About Trust
Meetings with Naoki Iwamitsu and Morimoto Kazunari taught Murray Clarke why honesty, continuity and personal trust matter when building a technology business in Japan.
Is your leader enterprise or channel?
The question comes up in almost every brief I take. The honest answer is that it depends on the stage the business is at, and the middle stage is the hard one.
Women in Leadership in Japan 2026
Why a balanced shortlist for a Japan leadership role is hard to build, with the public data and our count of 62 new heads of Japan at global tech companies since July 2025.
Choosing the title for your Japan leader
A passive candidate gives your posting a few seconds and takes the title at face value. Post the Japan country job as Vice President and it reads as a step down.
Japan IT Executive Search Has an Age Problem
Foreign companies often ask for a younger Japan President. In enterprise IT the better test is who owns the accounts and whose calls the C-suite already takes.
Succession Planning: The bench nobody builds
We looked at every Japan president transition at twelve global technology companies since 2010. Only four have ever promoted a successor from inside Japan.
The Japan Country Manager pay gap and what it costs.
What a Japan country manager costs in 2026, where the range comes from, and why the number you should be arguing about is the business you want built.
The Japan President Search: Why Procurement Logic is a Strategic Risk
Run as a procurement exercise, a Japan President search selects for the wrong things. This is the case for APAC leadership owning it rather than delegating it.
Japan’s Enterprise AI Buyer in 2026: From “If” to “How”
A survey of 443 Japanese companies shows the market has moved past pilots. What buyers now ask about governance, rollout and who owns the outcome.
First-Mover Advantage in Japan: When to Build Slow, and When to Invest to Win
Build slowly from a beachhead, or commit capital and leadership from day one. How to work out which of the two Japan entries your company is actually in.
Who Is Actually Selling AI In Japan: The Integrator Map
In Japan, distribution is part of the entry decision itself. A map of the integrators who determine whether enterprise AI actually reaches deployment.
Japan Is Ready for AI; But Readiness Isn’t Deployment
Japan has plenty of appetite for AI. What is missing is the operating pathway that turns that interest into governed deployment at enterprise scale.
What Your Japan Country Manager Candidate Is Worried About, and How They Grade You
Strong candidates grade the mandate, the sponsorship and the runway before they think about money. What they are working out while you are selling to them.
The ¥70M Question: What Japan People Costs Really Look Like for Foreign Tech Companies
What a Japan team really costs a foreign technology company: base, bonus, statutory burden and the all-in number that sits behind the headline figure.
Japan Country Manager Hiring Profile: Builder, Translator, or Caretaker?
The first Japan country manager usually is the market-entry strategy. Three profiles, builder, translator and caretaker, and the conditions each one fits.
The Search Was Fine. The Process Killed It.
Four client-side behaviours that lose Japan's best leaders, and why a search closing in six weeks or dying over six months has little to do with the candidate.
EOR vs GK vs KK: What Foreign Tech Companies Should Know When Setting Up In Japan
Japan entity choice is a signal to candidates, customers, partners and banks. What EOR, GK and KK each let you offer, what they cost, and when to move.