Candidate Newsletter – May 2019

  • Candidate Newsletter – May 2019

    Candidate Newsletter – May 2019

     


     

    RECRUITMENT MARKET UPDATE

    May 2019 sees the beginning of a new era in Japan and was celebrated across the country with an extended Golden Week. We would like to give credit to awoisoak.com Travel Photography for their image of the world-famous Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa, which is Tokyo’s largest and attracts up to 2 million visitors over three days in the third weekend of May. What the new era will bring for Japan remains to be seen, but certainly, the country will be on the world stage for the next couple of years at least. We are looking forward to supporting you all as Japan gets ready to welcome visitors for the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.

     

    The Legal market continues to show a strong interest from major corporations in compliance and regulatory hiring, particularly in industries such as healthcare, food and consumer goods. We are continuing to see the importance of IT legal experience – many clients now have an extensive technology focus and software interaction with their customers, and there are a lot of legal issues involved – it seems every company is an IT company now! Candidates with solid technology industry experience are in high demand.

     

    Coming back for the long Golden Week holidays, the number of jobs available in Accounting and Finance has increased. In particular our clients in retail, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are keen to hire candidates at mid-level, with about 10-15 years’ work experience. Our clients are adapting to needs from this group of candidates and are offering flexible working conditions and curbing excessive overtime. They hope to attract candidates with improvements in their working situation, not only through increased salary.

     

    In Human Resources, there is currently a large number of roles available covering payroll, social insurance and compensation and benefits – and for our Japanese and foreign capitalized clients. There are also several new Senior / HR Business Partner searches we are supporting, and there is still a strong need in training and development, especially in the retail sector.

     

    The following are some examples of offers out this month:

     

    Legal

    • US Medical Devices – Compliance Director – 16M
    • European Healthcare – Legal Manager – 14M
    • European Automotive – Legal Counsel – 9M

     

    Accounting & Finance

    • European Retail company – CFO – 16M
    • US FMCG  – Senior Finance Manager – 12M
    • European Chemical Company – Senior Accountant ­– 8M

     

    Human Resources/General Affairs

    • Foreign Furniture Company – HR Assistant Manager – 8M
    • Fashion Brand – Payroll Specialist – 5.7M
    • Major Pharmaceutical Company – HR & Communications Director – 16M

     


    Recruitment Focus

    STAR Power!

    For those of you who have been going for interviews lately, you will have noticed that companies are increasingly relying on behavioural questions to analyse the skills necessary for their job. Behavioural questions ask specific examples of what you have done in the past, to give some idea of how you may handle a similar situation in future. Typically, they may sound something like ‘Tell me about a time when you were under a lot of pressure, how did you manage the stress?’ or ‘Give me an example of when you had to deal with a conflict at work’.

     

    Particularly for Japanese interviewees, it can be difficult to provide a concise answer which shows your skills but is not too long and keeps the interviewer interested. One method which can help is the STAR method. This stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result and is very helpful in breaking down your answer into the following parts:

     

    Situation – simply and concisely describe the situation or event you were involved in

    Task – outline what you had to e.g. complete a project, fix a problem

    Action – talk about what you did to solve the issue (make sure to talk about your contributions, not what your team or colleagues did)

    Result – tell them how it ended and what you have learned from the experience

     

    Unfortunately, we will never know exactly what questions will come up in the interview so the best way to prepare is to check your experience for notable situations and events you have dealt with which show skills relevant to the job for which you are interviewing. Check the job description for clues about what skills they are looking for, and then apply the STAR method to demonstrate your experience.

     


    We provide a free consultation and training session to help clients improve recruitment activity and perfect their agency relations.
    For further information on this topic or any other recruitment-related questions, please contact ken@alberto-recruitment.com 

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