What actually makes Japan different
Five structural facts that change the research, not five facts about the economy.
A job title tells you rank, not scope
Japanese organisations run internal labour markets. People are recruited into the company rather than into the job, rotated across functions, and given titles that mark seniority within that company’s own ladder. Two people holding the same title at two firms may have nothing in common in scope, budget or reports.
A map built by filtering titles therefore produces a list that looks right and is wrong. We define the population on what someone has actually run, and we say in the written scope what we counted.
Two hiring channels that barely touch
New-graduate cohort hiring (新卒一括採用) runs on a fixed annual calendar and fills the bottom of the ladder. Mid-career hiring (中途採用) is where experienced people move, and it is the only channel that matters for the roles research is usually commissioned on.
Market commentary routinely blends the two. A cohort-hiring statistic says nothing about whether an experienced specialist is reachable, and we keep them apart.
Supply is published monthly, by prefecture
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare publishes the active job openings-to-applicants ratio (有効求人倍率) every month, nationally and for all 47 prefectures, from public employment office records. The seasonally adjusted national reading was 1.18 in June 2026.
It is a genuine, official, frequently updated supply signal — and it covers the Hello Work channel, not the professional and executive market. We use it to frame direction and pressure, never to size a specialist population.
Pay is three numbers, and the official series keeps them apart
The Basic Survey on Wage Structure reports scheduled cash earnings, overtime and annual special cash earnings — the bonus — as distinct quantities, broken down by occupation, age, tenure, firm size and prefecture.
Quoting a single annual figure for a Japanese role destroys the information that makes an offer land. We reconstruct pay into its components and label each one with its basis and date.
Placement is a licensed activity. Research is not
Under the Employment Security Act, fee-charging employment placement requires a licence from the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, and operating without one carries criminal penalties. The Act also bars fee-charging placement into certain occupations outright.
Audentia does not place candidates in Japan and does not charge a fee contingent on anyone being hired. We deliver research. That distinction is written into every scope document, and it is why our deliverable is a dataset rather than a shortlist with a success fee attached.
What we deliver in Japan
Scoped to the decision rather than sold as a package.
A researched longlist, not a database export
Every name is identified by analysts researching the Japanese market against a written capability definition. The longlist states why each person is on it and what evidence supports the judgement.
You receive the research behind the list, not just the list, so your own team can audit any name back to its source.
Qualification before approach
We establish scope, level, likely motivation, constraint and realistic availability before anyone is contacted. Approaching an unqualified population is how a market gets burned, and a burned market is expensive to come back to.
Where someone is clearly unreachable, they stay on the research record and come off the approach list, with the reason noted.
Individual, role-specific first contact
Each approach is written for the individual and the role. No campaigns, no bulk sequences, no automated follow-up chains. That is partly a quality decision and partly a compliance one in Japan.
Approaches are made in the working language of the market, by someone who can hold the conversation that follows.
Interest, availability and constraint recorded honestly
The deliverable records who engaged, who declined, who was interested but constrained, and what the constraint was — notice, deferred compensation, contractual restriction, visa or pass position, relocation.
A declined approach with a stated reason is a finding. We report it rather than quietly dropping it from the count.
Market feedback you can act on
What the market told us about the role: whether the level is right, whether the package lands, whether the proposition is understood, and what the people you most wanted said when they said no.
This is frequently the most useful part of a sourcing engagement, and it is the part a commission-based supplier has the least incentive to tell you straight.
A pipeline you keep
Everyone researched, approached and engaged is handed over as a structured dataset you own permanently, including the people who said no this time.
The second search into the same population costs a fraction of the first, because you already have it.
Most engagements use three or four of these rather than all of them. The scoping call establishes which questions you actually need answered, and the written scope says what is in and what is deliberately out.
Pay and labour cost in Japan
A benchmark that does not state its basis is not a benchmark.
| Component | What it is | Where the evidence comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Base pay (基本給) | The contractual monthly figure. Historically linked to age and tenure as much as to role, which is loosening but has not disappeared. | Basic Survey on Wage Structure, reported as scheduled cash earnings by occupation, age band, tenure and firm size. |
| Allowances (諸手当) | Position, family, housing, commuting and regional allowances. Material, and structurally different between employers. | Employer disclosure and primary research. Partly visible in the official series inside contractual cash earnings; the composition is not. |
| Bonus (賞与) | Paid in instalments across the year and a substantial share of annual cash. Varies by company performance and by individual grade. | Reported separately as annual special cash earnings in the Basic Survey on Wage Structure. Treating it as part of base pay misstates both. |
| Overtime | Statutorily premium-rated and genuinely significant in some functions. Often the reason a reported total diverges from an expected one. | Reported separately as non-scheduled cash earnings in the official series. |
| Equity and long-term incentive | Still uncommon in domestic groups by international standards, and concentrated in listed companies, foreign affiliates and technology firms. | Company filings and primary research. Not captured in the national wage series at all. |
| Employer social insurance | Health, pension, employment and long-term care insurance. Part of the real cost of a hire and routinely left out of a comparison. | Published statutory rates. We state the rate and its date whenever we quote a fully-loaded cost. |
A benchmark that does not state its basis is not a benchmark. The commonest error in Japanese compensation work is to take an annual figure from a recruitment firm’s salary guide, compare it to a base salary from a different market, and conclude that Japanese pay is low. The two numbers are not measuring the same thing.
Every pay figure we deliver carries four labels: what it measures, where it came from, how many observations it rests on, and the date it was collected. Where we have a small sample we say so rather than smoothing it into a range that looks more confident than the evidence.
Regional and city markets in Japan
We report by market, not by national average.
| Market | What concentrates there | What a researcher has to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo & Greater Kanto | Headquarters of most listed groups, financial services, the trading houses, technology, media, and the Japanese arms of almost every multinational. | The deepest pool and the most competition for it. The MHLW ratio for Tokyo ran well above the national figure on March 2026 data, so assume the shortest patience and the highest counter-offer risk in the country. |
| Osaka & Kansai | Pharmaceuticals, chemicals, industrial machinery, electronics, retail and a distinct set of regional banks and corporate headquarters. | A genuinely separate labour market with its own loyalty patterns, not a Tokyo satellite. People who have built a career in Kansai often will not move to Tokyo at any premium, and the published ratio for Osaka sits below Tokyo’s. |
| Nagoya & Chubu | Automotive and the supplier tiers beneath it, precision machinery, machine tools, aerospace components and materials. | The most tightly interlinked supplier network in Japan. Mapping a competitor here means mapping its tier-one and tier-two suppliers too, because the engineering capability is distributed across them rather than held in one company. |
| Yokohama & Kanagawa | Corporate R&D centres, electronics, chemicals, shipping and logistics. | Commutable to central Tokyo, so it competes for the same people. Treating it as a separate catchment overstates local supply; treating it as Tokyo understates the number who will not give up the commute. |
| Fukuoka & Kyushu | Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment, a growing software and startup base, logistics and a strong regional services economy. | The clearest example in Japan of a government-backed cluster changing a local labour market. Supply here is being built rather than redistributed, so a map taken a year ago is not a map of today. |
| Sapporo, Sendai and the regional cities | Shared service centres, regional operations, agriculture and food, and a cost-advantaged back-office base. | Relevant for location and footprint work far more often than for executive search. Wage levels and retention behave differently enough that a national average is actively misleading. |
Sectors we cover in Japan
Deepest where the research is hardest and the stakes are highest.
- Automotive and mobility — vehicle manufacturers, the tier-one and tier-two supplier base, electrification, software-defined vehicle and ADAS engineering.
- Precision machinery, robotics and machine tools — where Japan holds genuine global capability depth, and where the engineering population is small, old and poorly represented online.
- Electronics, semiconductors and materials — device makers, equipment makers and the chemicals and materials firms that supply the global industry.
- Pharmaceuticals and life sciences — domestic groups, the Japanese affiliates of global pharma, clinical development and regulatory affairs.
- Financial services — the megabanks, regional banks, insurance, asset management and the Tokyo arms of global institutions.
- Trading houses (総合商社) — a corporate form with no clean equivalent elsewhere, spanning energy, resources, infrastructure and consumer in one organisation.
- Technology and software — domestic platforms, systems integrators, and the engineering functions that sit inside non-technology companies.
- Consumer, retail and food — domestic brands with deep regional structures, and global brands running Japan as a distinct market.
- Energy, chemicals and infrastructure — utilities, engineering contractors and the materials sector.
What may lawfully be recorded about a person in Japan
Japanese research sits under the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, overseen by the Personal Information Protection Commission. The practical constraints for talent research are about provision to third parties and about special-care personal information, not about whether a professional profile may be read.
Personal data may in defined circumstances be provided to a third party under the opt-out scheme, which requires prior notification to the Commission and a route for the individual to object. That route is not available for special-care personal information. A bill amending the Act was approved by Cabinet on 7 April 2026 and tightens the obligations attaching to opt-out transfers; the commencement date is set by Cabinet Order, so anyone building a long-running Japanese dataset should confirm the position against the Commission directly rather than against a summary like this one.
What we do in practice: we record professional facts — employer, function, scope, tenure, publicly stated qualifications — from lawful sources, and we record where each fact came from. We do not record special-care categories, we do not infer them, and we do not approach a competitor’s staff under a pretext in order to extract information about their colleagues.
On the service line itself: fee-charging employment placement in Japan requires a licence under the Employment Security Act, and the Act carries criminal penalties for unlicensed operation as well as an outright bar on fee-charging placement into certain occupations. Administrative guidance treats Japanese law as reaching cross-border placement where part of the activity is carried out in Japan. Audentia does not place, does not introduce candidates for a placement fee, and does not charge anything contingent on a hire. We sell research, and the engagement letter says so in terms.
How a Japanese talent sourcing project actually runs
A written scope before any fieldwork begins.
Agree the role and the realistic market for it
- What we establish
- What the role actually requires, what it pays, and whether a population matching that combination exists at the level you expect.
- Why it matters
- Half of failed searches are briefs that no market would fill at that package. We would rather say so in week one than bill you for week eight.
Define and build the target population
- What we establish
- The capability definition, employer set, level band and geography for Japan, and the people who meet it.
- Why it matters
- A longlist is only as good as the definition behind it, and the definition has to be yours, agreed in writing.
Qualify before contacting anyone
- What we establish
- Scope, level, likely motivation, constraints and availability, from research rather than from asking.
- Why it matters
- Approaching people who were never going to be suitable damages your name in a market you will have to return to.
Approach individually and lawfully
- What we establish
- Contact made in the working language of Japan, through channels appropriate to the market and consistent with its outreach rules.
- Why it matters
- The rules on unsolicited contact differ sharply across our markets, and Japan is not the most permissive of them.
Screen against the agreed criteria
- What we establish
- A structured conversation against your criteria, with the answers recorded in the same shape for every candidate.
- Why it matters
- Comparable records make a selection decision defensible. Free-text impressions do not.
Deliver the longlist and the research behind it
- What we establish
- The screened longlist, the full researched population, the approach log and the market feedback.
- Why it matters
- You own all of it. The people who said no are an asset for the next search, not a sunk cost.
Talent Sourcing, and what it is not
These get bought as if they were interchangeable. They are not.
| Talent sourcing (this page) | Contingency agency | Retained search | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid for | The research work, as a fixed fee | A placement, as a percentage of salary | A search process, in instalments |
| Incentive | Deliver the agreed research | Get someone hired | Complete the search |
| You receive the research | Yes, in full | No | Usually not |
| Candidates who declined | Reported, with reasons | Not reported | Rarely reported |
| Re-usable next time | Yes, you own the dataset | No | No |
| Who runs selection and offer | You | The agency | The search firm |
| Honest about a bad brief | It costs us nothing to say so | It costs them the fee | It costs them the renewal |
Language is the other thing worth being explicit about. Japanese talent research is done in Japanese or it is not done. The public record — company disclosure, academic and professional registers, conference and patent material, trade press — is overwhelmingly Japanese-language, and the English-language layer on top of it is thin, late and selective.
Two specific traps. First, a Japanese personal name written in kanji can carry several legitimate readings, so the same individual appears under more than one romanisation across sources; matching on a romanised string silently splits one person into two or merges two into one. Second, corporate names differ between their Japanese form, their registered English form and their trading name, and subsidiary structures are reported inconsistently between the three.
Our Japanese work is done against Japanese-language sources and reconciled on the Japanese form of the name, then delivered in English with the original retained in the dataset so you can audit any record back to its source.
What talent sourcing costs in Japan
Fixed project fees, scoped on the research rather than on the salary of a role.
| Engagement | What it covers | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping and feasibility | An honest read on whether the question is researchable in Japan, what the sources will support and what the limits are. Written, before you commit to anything. | Days, at no charge |
| Single-decision project | One function or one defined population in Japan, scoped to a named business decision. | Four to six weeks |
| Multi-function or multi-city project | Several functions, or several Japanese markets held to one definition so the comparison is like for like. | Six to ten weeks |
| Multi-market programme | Japan alongside our other eleven markets, with the population definition held constant across all of them. | Scoped per programme |
| Refresh of an existing dataset | Re-verification of a population we built previously, with decay reported against the original. | One to three weeks |
Every engagement is a fixed fee agreed in writing before work begins. There is no commission, no percentage of salary and no success fee on any service we sell — which in Japan is a regulatory position as well as a commercial one, because fee-charging placement is a licensed activity there and research is not.
Fees are quoted as a fixed project fee and can be contracted in pounds sterling, US dollars or Japanese yen. Our published fee bands sit on the talent sourcing cost page; the band that applies depends on the population size, the number of fields to be verified and the language coverage required, and the scoping call establishes all three before anything is quoted.
What drives the fee in Japan is verification depth, not headcount. A population of 200 names corroborated on six fields costs more than 600 names corroborated on two, and the scope document says which you are buying. The fee comparison calculator shows what a fixed research fee comes to against a contingency or retained model.
Talent Sourcing in Japan — FAQs
How do you approach candidates in Japan without damaging our name?
Individually, in Japanese, with a specific reason why this person and this role. Japanese professionals read a generic approach as evidence that the employer is not serious, and the reputational cost of a bulk campaign is higher here than in almost any market we work in.
We do not run sequences or automated follow-ups. Every approach is written by the person who would hold the conversation that follows it.
What response rate should we expect?
We will not quote one before we know the role, the employer and the population. Response in Japan varies more by the credibility of the approaching party and the specificity of the role than by anything we control, and published figures in this market are almost all recruiter marketing.
What we will do is report the actual rate on your engagement, with the reasons people gave, so you have a real benchmark for the next one.
Can you source people who do not speak English?
Yes, and for most Japanese roles that is the larger and more relevant population. We approach, screen and report in Japanese, and deliver in English with the original retained.
If the role genuinely needs business English we screen for it explicitly rather than assuming it from a CV, because self-reported language level is the least reliable field on a Japanese CV.
Is this an employment agency service?
No. Fee-charging employment placement in Japan requires a licence from the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare under the Employment Security Act, and unlicensed operation carries criminal penalties.
We do not place, do not introduce candidates for a placement fee, and charge nothing contingent on a hire. You run selection, offer and close. If you need a licensed placement agency, we are not it.
What do you do about counter-offers?
We surface the risk during screening rather than at offer stage. In Japan the retention response to a resignation is frequently structural — a rotation, a grade change, a bonus timing argument — rather than simply more money.
We record what we learn about it on the candidate record so you can plan the timing of an offer around it.
Will you tell us if the brief is unfillable?
Yes, and early. We are paid for research, not for a placement, so saying the market will not supply this role at this package costs us nothing and saves you a quarter.
That conversation usually ends with a changed level, a changed location or a changed package rather than an abandoned search.
What we will not tell you about Japan
Because a research supplier that never says "we do not know" is not worth buying from.
- There is no published official statistic for the size of a specialist professional population in Japan — the MHLW ratio covers the public employment office channel, not the executive or specialist market. Where we size a population we size it by primary research against a written definition, and we show the definition.
- METI’s widely quoted estimate of the 2030 shortfall in IT professionals is a scenario range, not a single forecast, and secondary sources routinely repeat the high-growth figure without the scenario attached. We quote the range and name the scenario, or we do not quote it.
- Executive-level job mobility in Japan is not measured in any official series. Claims about it circulate widely in recruitment marketing. We do not repeat them.
Primary sources and how we check
- Employment Referrals for General Workers (job openings-to-applicants ratio)Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
- Basic Survey on Wage StructureMinistry of Health, Labour and Welfare
- Labour Force SurveyStatistics Bureau of Japan
- Main Labour Economic IndicatorsJapan Institute for Labour Policy and Training
- e-Stat, the portal for official Japanese statisticsStatistics Bureau of Japan
- Employment Security Act (Act No. 141 of 1947), English translationJapanese Law Translation, Ministry of Justice
- Act on the Protection of Personal Information and Commission guidancePersonal Information Protection Commission, Japan
- Laws and regulations on setting up business in JapanJETRO
Figures quoted on this page were checked against the sources above on 30 October 2026. Statutory rates, thresholds, licence conditions and quotas change, and several of these series are revised after first publication: where a number drives a budget or a legal obligation, confirm it against the primary source before you rely on it.