The Newsletter

The Hardest Market

Executive search, HR and the talent landscape across Japan โ€” from hiring trends to labour law. Written from inside the market, every other week.

13 issues ยท Key takeaways free on every issue ยท Full issues on Substack ยท ๆ—ฅๆœฌ่ชž

  1. SP ยท Full issue on Substack Your Global Sourcing Stack, Meet Japan LinkedIn's Japan audience looks like 6 million. Search its own recruiter tool for professionals with 8 to 28 years' experience and you find 760,000. Here's what works, what doesn't, and what Japan uses instead.
  2. SP ยท Full issue on Substack The Brewers Won the World Series on the 19th-Biggest Payroll. Here's What HR Can Borrow. Milwaukee didn't outspend anyone. It out-built them, and the playbook works for hiring in Japan.
  3. 11 ยท Full issue on Substack Put AI in the Middle of the Search. Keep It Away From the Ends. The 10-80-10 model is the right split of time. It's the wrong split of risk. Almost all of the outcome depends on the 20% that stays human.
  4. 10 ยท Full issue on Substack Fractional Executives Aren't New in Japan. Fractional Execution Is. Japan has rented senior judgement for decades under the title of senior adviser. What's new is renting senior execution, and that needs a different contract, a different price and a different search.
  5. 09 ยท 16 min read A Third of Japanese Hires Come From Job Boards. The Share Falls Off a Cliff at the Top. Ten boards, what each is actually for, and why the one-in-three headline collapses the moment you hire senior or bilingual.
  6. 08 ยท 7 min read AI Will Ease Japan's Labour Shortage โ€” Just Not Where You're Hiring Demographics drive four-fifths of the employment decline to 2040. AI relieves the sectors that were never your bottleneck.
  7. 07 ยท 17 min read The Takaichi Pivot: Why Japan Is Trading the Chrysanthemum for the Sword Japan ended seven decades of constitutional pacifism in ten months. What actually changed โ€” and what it does to the talent market.
  8. 06 ยท 4 min read We've Spent 40 Years Studying Leadership. Almost No One Studies the People Leaders Depend On. Followership isn't a compliance skill. It's the one most organizations forgot to teach.
  9. 05 ยท 12 min read Death by a Thousand Levies: Japan's Tax Trap How Japan raised the cost of being middle class without ever picking a fight it would lose at the ballot box.
  10. 04 ยท 5 min read Japan's Labor Shortage Is Real. It's Also Wildly Asymmetrical. The numbers everyone quotes are hiding the number that actually matters.
  11. 03 ยท 9 min read The 7 Bs of Talent and Why None of Them Work Alone in Japan Ulrich's Buy/Build/Borrow/Bounce/Bind framework has stretched to seven levers. In Japan, no single one of them is enough.
  12. 02 ยท 10 min read Everyone's Using AI. So Why Is Everyone Still So Busy? AI is making our tasks faster and yet our weeks don't feel any lighter. Here's what's actually going on and what it means if you're trying to run a team in Japan.
  13. 01 ยท 9 min read 115 Years of Japanese Labor Law: What the History Means for Employers Today Japan's labor code was built in layers, each a response to a crisis, and each still load-bearing. What 115 years of employment law means for how you hire, manage and let people go.