Yan Sen Lu came to Japan in 2006 and never left. He moved into executive search because it was the most human work he could find at the intersection of business and culture, and has spent the years since doing it at the senior end of the market.
He is the Founder and Managing Director of Makana Partners, a boutique executive search and talent advisory firm specialising in senior and executive leadership placements across Japan and Asia. He has partnered with Fortune 500 companies, high-growth startups and PE-backed firms to build leadership teams across sales, marketing, HR and general management. His approach combines cultural fluency with a rigorous, AI-augmented search methodology.
He holds a BSc in Psychology from McMaster University, and works in English and Japanese.
The book
The Hardest Market in the World is his guide to executive recruitment in Japan: why hiring leaders here breaks the global playbook, and the frameworks that actually close. It runs from Japan's talent crisis and the labour law that shapes every offer, through decoding the Japanese interview, to what AI is changing about search and what it cannot. Read more about the book.
The newsletter
The Hardest Market goes out every other week on executive search, HR and the talent landscape across Japan — from hiring trends to labour law. Every issue is published in full on this site; 9 are live so far. Read the archive, or subscribe on LinkedIn.
Getting in touch
The quickest route is LinkedIn. If you are building a leadership team in Japan and the obvious playbook keeps failing you, that is usually a sign you are solving for the average — tell him the seat you cannot fill.