Japan Talent Intelligence 2027
How companies in Japan hire at Director level and above: how many, through which channels, at what fee, with what team, on what terms. Asked of the employers themselves, every year, under the same 33 questions.
About fifteen minutes; some answers need your HR data, and your progress is saved so you can come back. Open to any employer in Japan with 101 or more employees.
What you get
- Your benchmark, at once. Your answers beside the figures already filed about your company (annual securities report or the MHLW database) and their industry medians.
- Peer medians after the survey closes. Companies of the same ownership and size, for every group of 20 or more, added to your result page in early 2027. They are not shown while the survey is open, so that no one can work out another company's answers.
- The 2027 report, free. The Japan Talent Intelligence 2027 report, free, to every participating company in early 2027.
- Your trajectory, from 2028. The same questions each year, so your own trend appears beside the market's.
What is asked
- Your company5 questions
- Hiring and promotion in 20267 questions
- How senior hires are made5 questions
- Your talent-acquisition function4 questions
- Offers and pay at Director level and above5 questions
- Difficulty and retention4 questions
- Technology2 questions
- Permissions1 question
Every question produces a number or a category that feeds a published index; nothing is asked that is not reported. The wording will not change from year to year. Methodology
Confidentiality
Individual answers are confidential and are never published or sold. Published figures are aggregates of at least 20 companies. Your company is named only with your explicit permission, which the survey asks for separately and which defaults to no.
Kept apart from executive search. The survey is run by an executive search firm, so we hold ourselves to a stricter rule: survey answers are never entered into Makana Partners' client or candidate records and are never used for business development, sourcing or any search assignment. Only the survey's editor can export them, and every export is logged. Purpose of use and privacy
Who runs it
The Hardest Market is written by Yan Sen Lu, managing director of Makana Partners K.K., an executive search firm in Yokohama, after eighteen years placing senior people in Japan. The benchmark sits beside the Japan Human Capital Data (3,789 listed companies' filings) and the Labour Law Tracker. Questions: editor@hardestmarket.com.