The Chapman Consulting Group

GUEST EXPERT - Kerry O'Shea: Your role is quite unique in that is a regional role sitting out of Japan. What is it like working as a Talent Acquisition Lead from Tokyo in the life sciences sector?

Answer:

Kerry O'Shea
Head of APAC Talent Acquisition
Life Technologies
Based in Tokyo

It is unusual to have a regional role here, despite Japan being the 2nd largest economy in the world, and for most companies (including us) the largest market in Asia. Japan being a mature economy, our local hiring numbers are relatively small, but the challenge is still big. Most educated, successful businesspeople in Japan don't speak English. While we don't require bilingual capability for every job, it does make Recruitment more challenging. People are also more conservative about changing jobs, or even making their personal information available on websites. I also find Japanese people not so willing to refer candidates, unless they know you and the candidate extremely well, and unless they believe there is a very high possibility the referral will result in employment. Job boards and agencies are also not as developed here. The greatest challenge for me is sales recruitment, because in the Biotech space we often require the candidate to be a scientist as well as a "businessperson" and there are just not many such people out there.

Unfortunately, there is limited talent available in Japan for regional positions, so I had to quickly get used to phone interviewing candidates for regional roles in Singapore or Shanghai. That's a change for me, since almost everything is done face to face in Japan. In general there is very limited labour mobility in Asia Pacific compared to the US, or even the EU, because of course it's not a "single market". It will be interesting to see if and how much this changes in the coming years, given the high growth needs and the wealth of talent in this part of the world.

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