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 →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.
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.
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.
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.