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Vol.14 : David Price (Robert Half International)
May 30, 2007
Bank's bottom lines sag; future growth path unclear
Abe unveils bold post-Kyoto initiative
How to deal with the 'other' party
Anti-TOB measures being adopted
Expanded coverage: Tourists catch glimpse of real Tokyo
recruitment services：採用業務
financial deliverables：資産報告書に含まれるレポートのひとつ
SOX：上場企業会計改革および投資家保護法
audit：会計
interim：暫定的な
turnover：売り上げ
joint ventures：合弁事業を興すこと 、共同企業体
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : |
Hello, this is Peter Barakan. Today I am talking to David Price, who is Managing Director of Robert Half Japan. First of all, perhaps you could explain for some of the people listening to this podcast that don't know what your company does, what Robert Half Japan is? |
| D : |
Robert Half is the world's leader in specialized recruitment services. Robert Half International actually consists of Robert Half, which has various recruiting lines of business as well as Protiviti, the world's largest specialist in financial deliverables, SOX, internal audit consulting, management risk, and Robert Half Recruitment Services consists of specialized recruitment for permanent as well as interim management contract positions.
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| P : |
Okay, you are headhunters. |
| D : |
That's another way of saying it Peter. We are recruiters. We are headhunters. |
| P : |
But you are a pretty big company, okay, so obviously you are dealing in fairly large numbers of permanent executives. |
| D : |
We have 13,000 staff globally. Our turnover for 2006 was a bit over 4 billion. We have over 350 offices globally for the recruitment business, and Protiviti has another 50 plus offices. So yes, we are pretty large. Globally, we are pretty much everywhere.
We have offices in North America, Australia, Europe, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong; soon to be several other locations I probably shouldn't mention them yet.
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| P : |
Now, so in your case even now 90 something percent of the company is going to be foreign companies, are they, or... |
| D : |
In our case now, we are dealing...
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| D : |
...we are dealing more, I would say, maybe not 90, a little bit less. We have a little bit more than 10% of Japanese companies we are dealing with because from the beginning, one of the reasons I came here I was able to create a company with a culture that I - the culture and to go after the business that I felt was happening in Japan now or would be happening in the future.
In other words, to face the realities in the market as they are and as they will be because as I said earlier this market is changing and becoming more like us, where if you look at England or Australia or America, the recruiting companies work with the whole market.
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| D : |
And traditionally here some of the Japanese recruiting companies work with the whole market, but they don't do specialized recruiting for various reasons particularly well, if I may say so. And most of the foreign recruiting companies that are here just work primarily, if not entirely, with foreign companies. That's a very small slice of the business pie.
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| P : |
Right. Well, I can remember going back to when I first came here in the mid '70s and most Japanese people had a very negative attitude towards changing jobs, period.
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| P : |
That obviously has changed gradually over the years and I guess the bursting of the bubble, as it were, in the early '90s had a big effect on that. People realized that, you know, the lifetime employment environment changed an aweful lot to the point where you couldn't rely on having a job for 20, 30 years, like you could before.
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| D : |
...one of the ways the market is changing is that specialized skill: finance, sales, technology, legal for some, a few examples.
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| P : |
Really specialized people, yeah.
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| D : |
But such people, if they have the skill set, in some cases they don't need the bilingual ability, in some cases they do but they don't have to be - companies are having to forget about nationality here if there is such a skill. For example, with the SOX, Sarbanes-Oxley, the legislation that all companies listed on the US Stock Exchange have to pass this checklist when they do their financials every year.
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| D : |
These professionals are in such sort supply that if someone can do it and someone is bilingual and if someone has the skill set and the language capabilities...
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| P : |
There are about 100 companies who will want them.
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| D : |
Yeah, they have to bring them in, they have to bring them in on a contract basis from wherever they can get them practically and it's going to be even worse with J-SOX because the Japanese companies are going to have to be and they are going to need - there's going to be all the Japanese companies that are going to have to pass this yearly regulatory sort of audit checklist.
They have to comply and they have to have J-SOX specialists. There's going to be a huge demand for that, all companies listed on the first section...
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downturn：沈滞
recession：景気後退
business acumen：商才
cold calling：売り込み電話
CPA：公認会計士
sought after skill：求められているスキル
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : |
You were talking about some of the differences in the recruiting business here and in other countries; you mentioned places like Europe and Australia. I remember going to Australia once actually and being amazed that somebody I had only met five minutes before offered me a job.
And again, this was about 30 years ago, maybe the Australian market has changed somewhat since then; perhaps they are not quite so adventurous. But what do you think are the unique challenges that you find here in the Japanese market?
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| D : |
Well, getting enough good candidates, to me I hate to keep coming back to the same thing but it's just such a candidate-short market and it has been even before this current boom and it will be afterwards in some areas.
In some areas, not as much; if you look financial services front office, when there is a downturn that slackens quite a bit, but if you look at finance and accounting, financial control for manufacturing and service companies, they need better people.
Even when there is a recession, they need people who can help them cut costs. They need - they meaning manufacturing service companies in Japan, need professionals that can work cross departmentally and better operational, very good business acumen, critical thinking skills, and increasingly as the market internationalizes and then the different industries here open up and the trade barriers drop.
It's happened, you know, in the tech world, it's happening, in medicine, it will happen in construction more in the future. They are going to need these type of professionals. And likewise, sales here is not so much relationship-based as it used to be, so they need people who have, dare I say, western sales abilities; cold calling, business development, not just taking all the relationships and carrying them forward.
So, I would think if I could say two broad areas where need is the greatest is finance and sales; having said that because of all the changes in business, legal.
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| D : |
And the challenge is just as there are only 20,000 CPAs, compared to 300 and plus 1000 in America, country a little over twice the size of Japan. There are I believe I read there are only 21,000 Bengoshis here and there are hundreds and thousands of them in the States...
And because of this great demand and just various things pulling businesses in different directions, there is more and more of a need for contract positions now not just in tech but also in finance, we are seeing some in marketing, sales and marketing, creative positions. Once again, like you will see in other parts of the world, marketing and creative positions or advertising companies are being contracted out increasingly. I think we will see it in HR, legal...
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| P : |
When you say contract positions, you are talking about short term or...
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| D : |
Paid either by the hour...
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| D : |
Essentially by the hour, day, week or month, you know... |
| D : |
...depending upon the role and...
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| P : |
You were saying that a lot of these people are going to be bilingual and what's crossing my mind is that a lot of Japanese people who are going to be bilingual and have these special skills are people who have studied at universities in other countries, a lot of them in the US I would imagine.
And if they have these skills, if they have the bilingual ability, they are going to be much better paid working in the US probably. Are they are going to be coming, I mean do you find a lot of the people you are looking for are not coming back to Japan to work? And if so, do you find out wherever they are and bring them back?
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| D : |
Well, we are betting a lot on - another reason I came to this company is because, for example, we have over 275 offices in the States and some of them have been there for decades, so I know we are in touch with a lot of bilingual people who are or will be coming back and that's one of the things we are working to do is networking with those offices so we can have a good connection.
Networking with universities, networking with associations, so we can have - because it's all about the candidates. I mean don't get me wrong, I value our clients and we work for them, they pay the bills, but in order to serve them we have to get the candidates...
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| D : |
So we definitely - I would say other than the East Coast, New York, DC, maybe Chicago and of course the West Coast with LA and San Francisco, the salaries are definitely higher here, among the highest in the world.
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| D : |
So they soon should be coming back and a lot of Japanese nationals eventually want to come back. Some of them are like me and they like living outside of their country, maybe better; but a lot of them end up coming back.
So we definitely want to keep a good line and they are so valuable here and that's why it's all about value and they are so much in demand here that you will see the wages continue to go up for, once again, people and especially people with highly sought after skill set such as SOX. |
| P : |
Okay finally, Nikkei Weekly, are you a reader? |
| D : |
Occasionally, yes I am. I like the - I love the articles, the local and global articles and in fact we'll have to start bringing it in the office to subscribe.
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| P : |
Will you find as a magazine it's of use to people like yourself and other people? |
| P : |
English natives, English-language natives working here. |
| D : |
Absolutely. It's got really a - I have enjoyed when I have read it. You know, a lot of the articles let me know what's going on in the business and social world here.
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 Paul Sands / General Manager
Virgin Atlantic Japan 
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