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> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You

by trhoad 4y ago

> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee. I'm absolutely stunned that this works. > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent. Is it? It sounds like a pretty good deterrent to being honest...! Anyway, I can't argue with the figures, if true.

julienfr112 4y ago
in Japan only
jsty 4y ago
Not sure how prevalent LinkedIn or a similar service is in Japan, but I'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to track how many clicks a customer was getting and investigating any that had anomalously high click / hire ratios.
- etdev 4y ago
  Yep this is a major part of my strategy (Hi, I'm the guy who built the site). Like I mention in the post, I have emails, names and URLs for everyone who applies. I also know how many applicants it normally takes to get 1 placement. So I can easily check which jobs are getting a suspiciously high number of applicants with no successful placements. And I can reach out to all those applicants with the gift card offer, or take other measures to gather data about them and cross-check it with the company name etc. This plus the late fee plus the fact that I'm in Japan makes the business model viable.
elktea 4y ago
keep reading, candidates get a little something if they tell the site they used it to get hired
Adrig 4y ago
I heard a similar story from a guy who put in relation brands with professionals of the event industry. According to him, not having to put in place and enforce a strict control gave him a lot of bandwidth to work on more impactful parts of his projects. Surprisingly, he made good bucks with this approach... I guess even businesses can be more honest than expected.
- bfuller 4y ago
  Business can totally be done in a fair and ethical way, that's just not western culture. Here you get promoted for stomping on someones neck with your boot
neilv 4y ago
The other day, a career site offered me some amount of money if I told them when I found a job with a company there. (It might've been angel.co, and $150, not certain.) I guessed that they got paid at least partly as a function of hires, and this incentived disclosure from hirees was a way of keeping its customer companies honest.
lozenge 4y ago
Would you rather - save the expense of the agency fee (3 months salary) but lose access to the job board which has already found you one good candidate, or pay it and stay on the job board? Keeping in mind that the employees are likely staying much longer than 2-3 years, because Japan.
- Varqu 4y ago
  Plus burn the bridge completely in an industry where reputation is one of the key aspects? And on top of that risk a potential legal action?
franciscop 4y ago
I was one of the "Quick aside since I get asked this all the time."[1] Being from Spain I'm 100% a lot of the companies here would try to cheat this, but he made some good points both in the tweet answers and article; it's better to pay early and low, than being caught very late and having to pay a huge amount (don't know how much better though). If a company retires a job without paying, I'd def spend few minutes tracking possible candidates (those who clicked "Apply" and put their data, Linkedin/Twitter/etc, follow up emails to the candidates, as he said Amazon gift card, etc). Some might still fall through the cracks, but seems like if they get enough % of them that's probably good enough. [1] https://twitter.com/_etdev/status/1552529476164419584 https://twitter.com/_etdev/status/1552529476164419584
- themanmaran 4y ago
  Having also run a hiring company, I was worried about companies ghosting us after making a hire. Turns out the vast majority of customers don't balk at recruiting fees. They see it two ways: 1) Easier to pay, than review the legal recourses of not paying 2) If they sourced one good candidate from your site, they may source another. So best not to get booted from the platform for delinquency.
  - krab 4y ago
    It might be different for purely online deals. But for companies working with a local agency, it's definitely not worth the reputation risk.
Aeolun 4y ago
By the time you get anyone to post on your website you've already interacted enough with the people in the company to make them want to pay you. Presumably they charge much less (10% yearly salary) than a normal recruiter would.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
It works if you have an ongoing relationship with your clients
rtpg 4y ago
I think a huge reason this works is that this site is essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based, (mostly) English-heavy IT companies. Everyone knows each other, it’s a high trust environment anyways, and it’s hard to recruit in the first place! And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of insanely expensive, mainly cuz it’s scaled to salary and a big chunk. But I think the fact that this is… I mean it’s a lifestyle business? I don’t believe this is gunning for Indeed… it makes it easier
- stewx 4y ago
  As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities. Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000494405/Mapping_the_world%27s_prices_2019.PDF?undefined&realload=YUHtkU7hmTZK7KhFDlMGbB4ZsaQUqlPQFunQe4GYeGXNWPiMSPJV/OCEnEJktl0E https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...
  - Morgawr 4y ago
    > Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo NOTE: I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data you see online (I can't open your link so I can't verify it) because you simply cannot compare rent prices like that "across cultures". And I don't mean just "Japanese apartments are small" (this is mostly a myth, although they are smaller on average), I simply mean that it's pretty much impossible to define what "city center" is in Tokyo, and having a good public transportation system and multiple city centers (Tokyo is 23 cities, and more) means that it's kinda hard to find a uniform measure that is comparable to most other cities in the world. Tokyo is incredibly cheap for such a massive world capital/megalopolis. I can't stress this enough, as someone who's moved to Tokyo from one of the most expensive (yet incredibly small) capitals of Europe as far as rent goes (Dublin). It was amazing to see the contrast. $1900/mo in Tokyo for 2 bedroom apartment (I assume it'd be a so-called 2LDK) is actually quite overpriced if you know which neighborhoods to look at (and yes, you can still consider them "city center"). I live 20 minutes away from Shinjuku, 30 minutes away from Shibuya, 10 minutes away from Ikebukuro (all three massive city centers) and I pay the equivalent of $1300/mo for a 3LDK apartment (3 bedroom, one living/dining room, one kitchen). Obviously, if you want to be fancy and live in cool or pricy neighborhoods like Ebisu or Daikanyama or most of Setagaya-ku you're gonna pay much more, still... Definitely waaaay less than other places like San Francisco or New York.
thematrixturtle 4y ago
Japan is a high-trust society. I recently made a booking at a rather expensive inn (ryokan), whose T&C says there are high cancellation fees if you don't show up, but was not required to hand over credit card details or anything else than could enforce this.
- unsignedint 4y ago
  You may see the shift in this though. There seems to be increasing cases for no-shows reported time to time in media, and thus, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more place would start requiring credit cards or deposits.
polote 4y ago
That's how any recruiting agency works no ? At least in France it works the same way
j0hnyl 4y ago
I think maybe it works due to cultural reasons - Japanese seem quite honest.
6DM 4y ago
Companies pay recruiters an insane fee to hire us. $300 is a paltry sum and not worth fighting over. I doubt this is a big problem. It's not zero companies doing this, but I'd be surprised if it was 80% of the listings trying to avoid paying.

by trhoad 4y ago

julienfr112 4y ago

in Japan only

jsty 4y ago

Not sure how prevalent LinkedIn or a similar service is in Japan, but I'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to track how many clicks a customer was getting and investigating any that had anomalously high click / hire ratios.

etdev 4y ago
Yep this is a major part of my strategy (Hi, I'm the guy who built the site). Like I mention in the post, I have emails, names and URLs for everyone who applies. I also know how many applicants it normally takes to get 1 placement. So I can easily check which jobs are getting a suspiciously high number of applicants with no successful placements. And I can reach out to all those applicants with the gift card offer, or take other measures to gather data about them and cross-check it with the company name etc. This plus the late fee plus the fact that I'm in Japan makes the business model viable.

elktea 4y ago

keep reading, candidates get a little something if they tell the site they used it to get hired

Adrig 4y ago

I heard a similar story from a guy who put in relation brands with professionals of the event industry. According to him, not having to put in place and enforce a strict control gave him a lot of bandwidth to work on more impactful parts of his projects. Surprisingly, he made good bucks with this approach... I guess even businesses can be more honest than expected.

bfuller 4y ago
Business can totally be done in a fair and ethical way, that's just not western culture. Here you get promoted for stomping on someones neck with your boot

neilv 4y ago

The other day, a career site offered me some amount of money if I told them when I found a job with a company there. (It might've been angel.co, and $150, not certain.) I guessed that they got paid at least partly as a function of hires, and this incentived disclosure from hirees was a way of keeping its customer companies honest.

lozenge 4y ago

Would you rather - save the expense of the agency fee (3 months salary) but lose access to the job board which has already found you one good candidate, or pay it and stay on the job board? Keeping in mind that the employees are likely staying much longer than 2-3 years, because Japan.

Varqu 4y ago
Plus burn the bridge completely in an industry where reputation is one of the key aspects? And on top of that risk a potential legal action?

franciscop 4y ago

I was one of the "Quick aside since I get asked this all the time."[1] Being from Spain I'm 100% a lot of the companies here would try to cheat this, but he made some good points both in the tweet answers and article; it's better to pay early and low, than being caught very late and having to pay a huge amount (don't know how much better though). If a company retires a job without paying, I'd def spend few minutes tracking possible candidates (those who clicked "Apply" and put their data, Linkedin/Twitter/etc, follow up emails to the candidates, as he said Amazon gift card, etc). Some might still fall through the cracks, but seems like if they get enough % of them that's probably good enough. [1] https://twitter.com/_etdev/status/1552529476164419584 https://twitter.com/_etdev/status/1552529476164419584

themanmaran 4y ago
Having also run a hiring company, I was worried about companies ghosting us after making a hire. Turns out the vast majority of customers don't balk at recruiting fees. They see it two ways: 1) Easier to pay, than review the legal recourses of not paying 2) If they sourced one good candidate from your site, they may source another. So best not to get booted from the platform for delinquency.
- krab 4y ago
  It might be different for purely online deals. But for companies working with a local agency, it's definitely not worth the reputation risk.

Aeolun 4y ago

By the time you get anyone to post on your website you've already interacted enough with the people in the company to make them want to pay you. Presumably they charge much less (10% yearly salary) than a normal recruiter would.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

It works if you have an ongoing relationship with your clients

rtpg 4y ago

I think a huge reason this works is that this site is essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based, (mostly) English-heavy IT companies. Everyone knows each other, it’s a high trust environment anyways, and it’s hard to recruit in the first place! And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of insanely expensive, mainly cuz it’s scaled to salary and a big chunk. But I think the fact that this is… I mean it’s a lifestyle business? I don’t believe this is gunning for Indeed… it makes it easier

stewx 4y ago
As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities. Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000494405/Mapping_the_world%27s_prices_2019.PDF?undefined&realload=YUHtkU7hmTZK7KhFDlMGbB4ZsaQUqlPQFunQe4GYeGXNWPiMSPJV/OCEnEJktl0E https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...
- Morgawr 4y ago
  > Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo NOTE: I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data you see online (I can't open your link so I can't verify it) because you simply cannot compare rent prices like that "across cultures". And I don't mean just "Japanese apartments are small" (this is mostly a myth, although they are smaller on average), I simply mean that it's pretty much impossible to define what "city center" is in Tokyo, and having a good public transportation system and multiple city centers (Tokyo is 23 cities, and more) means that it's kinda hard to find a uniform measure that is comparable to most other cities in the world. Tokyo is incredibly cheap for such a massive world capital/megalopolis. I can't stress this enough, as someone who's moved to Tokyo from one of the most expensive (yet incredibly small) capitals of Europe as far as rent goes (Dublin). It was amazing to see the contrast. $1900/mo in Tokyo for 2 bedroom apartment (I assume it'd be a so-called 2LDK) is actually quite overpriced if you know which neighborhoods to look at (and yes, you can still consider them "city center"). I live 20 minutes away from Shinjuku, 30 minutes away from Shibuya, 10 minutes away from Ikebukuro (all three massive city centers) and I pay the equivalent of $1300/mo for a 3LDK apartment (3 bedroom, one living/dining room, one kitchen). Obviously, if you want to be fancy and live in cool or pricy neighborhoods like Ebisu or Daikanyama or most of Setagaya-ku you're gonna pay much more, still... Definitely waaaay less than other places like San Francisco or New York.

thematrixturtle 4y ago

Japan is a high-trust society. I recently made a booking at a rather expensive inn (ryokan), whose T&C says there are high cancellation fees if you don't show up, but was not required to hand over credit card details or anything else than could enforce this.

unsignedint 4y ago
You may see the shift in this though. There seems to be increasing cases for no-shows reported time to time in media, and thus, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more place would start requiring credit cards or deposits.

polote 4y ago

That's how any recruiting agency works no ? At least in France it works the same way

j0hnyl 4y ago

I think maybe it works due to cultural reasons - Japanese seem quite honest.

6DM 4y ago

Companies pay recruiters an insane fee to hire us. $300 is a paltry sum and not worth fighting over. I doubt this is a big problem. It's not zero companies doing this, but I'd be surprised if it was 80% of the listings trying to avoid paying.