As evolving technology continues breaking down barriers in the IT business world, an increase in competition for jobs is one thing that is apparent. Location, time, working conditions, and other variables factor in to the changing shape of how we work. Unconventional companies like Buffer that have staff working remotely from all over the world, founders included, gather the best personnel available and personify the work structure of the new age.
Offering More than 200 positions in over 30 countries
With a beta release in August 2014, Jobbatical’s mission is to connect skilled people to startup companies located all over the world. People who find work through Jobbatical will need to move to the city or location of that company for a minimum one year period.
As opposed to working remotely from your current location, Jobbatical is suggesting a new working system where users relocate to the company’s city or area. By living somewhere for at least one year, Jobbatical offers an experience that otherwise can’t be had as a casual traveler. At present more than 200 positions in over 30 different countries are on Jobbatical, and registered users have exceeded 5,000.
Jobbatical seems it would be an valuable resource for companies who are looking to hire talent from other countries. All processes in posting a new job, from taking pictures to writing a description, is completely planned and designed by the Jobbatical staffers. They take into consideration how to make say, for instance, a job in Malaysia looks as appealing as possible to job seekers in other countries when taking pictures and creating a profile. As the service is still in beta, all planning services are free of charge, however they are considering becoming a paid service in the future.
Popular locations: Singapore, Germany, Estonia, and more
Singapore-based Adtech startup is seeking a QA engineer.
Over half of the jobs published on Jobbatical are for some sort of software engineer. Other types of positions include marketing, business development, sales, UX/UI engineering, product management, etc. Singapore, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Estonia are some of the most popular work destinations.
In the past, two of the most popular positions were community management at Jakarta-based food industry startup AbraResto, and travel guide inspection at Alien Adventure, a travel industry startup in Amsterdam. Other positions registered to the site range from engineer jobs in Vietnam to marketing jobs in Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, and many more.
This time we had the chance to hear from Jobbatical’s Japanese-American global marketer, Isabel Hirama. Currently living in Estonia, the initial push was an open position at Jobbatical for a “native English speaker who can do marketing.”
I thought the idea of a going somewhere to work for a short time while having an adventure was fascinating. All of the positions are generally about one year. Of course giving a full commitment to move somewhere for a year is tough at first, but actually living somewhere for that long gives you an experience that travelers just can’t get.
Karoli Hindriks, co-founder and CEO of Jobbatical, is Estonia’s second-ever female startup CEO who has succeeded in securing VC funding. She became CEO of MTV Estonia at her age of 23 and has helped build various other media since.
The idea for Jobbatical, a hybrid of the words “job” and “sabbatical”, came to Karoli in March of 2014 when she was in Malaysia.
She realized that relaxing at the beach is nice and all but after about a week you start to get bored and restless. After searching the web for short term jobs that can be done while adventuring around new places, she found nothing but volunteer jobs on farms, nothing that made use of her business skills. Soon after, she had the chance to go to Silicon Valley, where she went around to startups in the area and eventually got a 6-month position. She thought, people should have to go searching for jobs by themselves, there should be a marketplace for this kind of thing.
Hindriks explained:
To get out of your own country for one year and go do a job on the other side of the globe; I thought there should be a style of working like that. Our long term goal is for the word Jobbatical to be in the dictionary, then I want to make it so it’ll be obvious that there is a way to work like this.
Finding people with entrepreneurial qualities
Recently, not only startups and corporations, but also NPO and social enterprise jobs in multiple countries are increasing in number, said Hindriks. In the near future, Jobbatical is planning to start doing curation on the site as well as begin offering a sort of matching system.
Jobbatical is largely targeted at so-called “globetrotters”, or people who travel widely, which is why Hindricks believes that because globetrotters have some entrepreneurial qualities, jobs at startups are a particularly compatible fit. There are many people who either like traveling, experiencing new things, or people who embrace change. She says that Jobbatical attracts people who want a change of scenery, dive into the unknown and get a fresh start, people with the entrepreneurial spirit.
Estonia, where every part of one’s life is digitized to the point where even doing tax returns takes just five minutes, is also sometimes called “E-stonia” in reference to their trend of making use of technology in many aspects of its peoples’ lives. Hindricks hopes that the Estonia based Jobbatical will change even more the way we live and work today.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Counterworks recently launched in full Shopcounter, an online marketplace focusing on retail counters. Upon launch, Counterworks also announced that Kento Yamamoto of The Clip [1] joined the team as CCO (Chief Creative Officer) from June, who has been collaborating with various startups in designs. Online marketplace handling pop-up spaces for retailers Shopcounter is an online marketplace handling pop-up spaces for the purpose of displaying, selling or promoting products, where user retailers can complete the rental procedure online including search, inquiry, reservation and payment. Overseas, San Francisco-based Storefront and UK-based Appear Here are offering similar services, indicating that it is a sector noteworthy of the limelight. Counterworks CEO Naoki Mikame had been working for Japanese adtech startup FreakOut until last August. After that, he started this new company on his own and launched Shopcounter due to his original interest in the real estate business. Mikame notes, I have been interested in the real estate business in part since my parents’ company deals in real estate and construction. However, the management style for real estate has been changing lately as indicated by Airbnb. Considering this situation and leveraging my experiences, I came to launch…
From the left: Counterworks CEO Naoki Mikame, CCO Kento Yamamoto
Tokyo-based startup Counterworks recently launched in full Shopcounter, an online marketplace focusing on retail counters.
Upon launch, Counterworks also announced that Kento Yamamoto of The Clip [1] joined the team as CCO (Chief Creative Officer) from June, who has been collaborating with various startups in designs.
Online marketplace handling pop-up spaces for retailers
Shopcounter is an online marketplace handling pop-up spaces for the purpose of displaying, selling or promoting products, where user retailers can complete the rental procedure online including search, inquiry, reservation and payment.
Overseas, San Francisco-based Storefront and UK-based Appear Here are offering similar services, indicating that it is a sector noteworthy of the limelight.
Counterworks CEO Naoki Mikame had been working for Japanese adtech startup FreakOut until last August. After that, he started this new company on his own and launched Shopcounter due to his original interest in the real estate business.
Mikame notes,
I have been interested in the real estate business in part since my parents’ company deals in real estate and construction. However, the management style for real estate has been changing lately as indicated by Airbnb. Considering this situation and leveraging my experiences, I came to launch Shopcounter, while also keeping in perspective a social background where the number of vacant storefronts has been increasing.
Real spaces for e-Commerce
Space available at a Harajuku shopping mall
Mikame explains that growth now in the e-Commerce market is another factor behind the birth of Shopcounter, in addition to the surplus of available pop-up spaces.
Mikame says,
The e-commerce market size is expanding as the number of online trading users increases. A sizable number of consumers constitutes the e-commerce end-user pool intent on directly touching the products in order to confirm the details before purchase, so that even web-originated stores require marketing plans that utilize real spaces.
Today it has become much easier to establish a small business. Those who want to open stores can own their spaces by utilizing vacant stores or empty commercial spaces, and we hope to support them upon gathering customers online.
Shopcounter is seen being suitable as well for active marketplaces that cater in handcrafted goods.
Considering the characteristics of Shopcounter, it is important that many people can easily visit the pop-up spaces. Hence, most of the rental properties listed on the website are located in areas with much traffic or good accessibility. By focusing on the retailers, it can likely be differentiated from other marketplaces handling rental spaces.
Designer taking part in management
Another announcement in addition to this official launch of the service noted that Kento Yamamoto, who is a designer of The Clip, will join the team as CCO.
Yamamoto explains:
I have been involved in design of Shopcounter from the early stage, however development had been delayed in spite of the pre-launch in February. Being interest in business content, I came to think of joining the team on my own.
I have participated in a lot of matters related to newly establishment of startups as a designer so far. There are still only a few designers who understand management as much as the product owners, even less with skills of actually designing and coding hands-on. It would be interesting to develop a new role model for designers, by joining startups as a board member who owns the company stocks as well.
Recently, we had reported that Mikihiro Fujii, an UX (user experience) designer, had joined Tokyo-based Goodpatch as a corporate officer. We should keep an eye on Counterworks and see how the management team which adds a designer will impact the entire organization.
Offers different approach for retailers
According to Mikame, Shopcounter has set the goal of some 300 spaces to be registered in Tokyo alone by next March.
We are now at the stage of proposing plans to rent out counters or sections available. There we explain to store owners that customers differing from former ones would visit the store as a result of collaborating with other types of business or brands.
He adds,
Also we tell owners prior to registration that they can refuse to rent the space, and should rent only to retailers having concepts that match the entire store. Store owners will be charged intermediation fees if the rental contracts are concluded.
Recently some cafés or coffee stands attached to apparel shops can often be seen in Japan, in an effort to approach target users from different perspectives or to extend their in-store time. Shopcounter also appears to be angling for such demands.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
The Clip is a prototyping and engineering team focused on developing web services and mobile apps. The Bridge logo was designed by The Clip team. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Sekai Lab was launched February last year, to serve those in Asia crowdsourcing app development. The company recently announced a tie-up with China’s biggest crowdsourcing platform Witmart, and started accepting orders in full for entrusted development of apps from China. See also: Japan’s crowdsourced app development service Sekai Lab raises $1.2M Sekai Lab has been offering an entrusted development platform in 15, mostly Asian, countries where some 100 companies such as app developers or systems integrators are participating. By utilizing these international resources, the company provides comparatively inexpensive and high-quality offshore development for projects from Japan and elsewhere. Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa told us that the reason for cooperation with Witmart was as follows. Until now China has been entrusted with development projects from outside the country, acting as an offshore development base. However, as labor costs for engineers have risen and the domestic market has grown, China has changed into a client-side market. Witmart is one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms in China, with some 10 million contractor users. On its website, lots of development proposal are submitted, such as for mobile apps, eCommerce websites and so forth. While rather small-scale items…
From the right: Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa, PR Manager Ikumi Shiba
Sekai Lab was launched February last year, to serve those in Asia crowdsourcing app development. The company recently announced a tie-up with China’s biggest crowdsourcing platform Witmart, and started accepting orders in full for entrusted development of apps from China.
Sekai Lab has been offering an entrusted development platform in 15, mostly Asian, countries where some 100 companies such as app developers or systems integrators are participating. By utilizing these international resources, the company provides comparatively inexpensive and high-quality offshore development for projects from Japan and elsewhere.
Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa told us that the reason for cooperation with Witmart was as follows.
Until now China has been entrusted with development projects from outside the country, acting as an offshore development base. However, as labor costs for engineers have risen and the domestic market has grown, China has changed into a client-side market.
Witmart is one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms in China, with some 10 million contractor users. On its website, lots of development proposal are submitted, such as for mobile apps, eCommerce websites and so forth. While rather small-scale items are accepted by Chinese freelancers, medium-scale projects and above requiring much man-hours beyond their capacities have been left untouched. Sekai Lab aims to accept such matters from China and conduct crowdsourcing through the Sekai Lab platform.
Entrusted matters from inside and outside Japan including China will be ordered to developers in Asia through Sekai Lab platform. Although clients and developers directly conclude contracts in some cases, in fact, Sekai Lab often receive the orders as a prime contractor and conduct project management for actual entrusted developers, or act as a bridge SE (system engineer) between clients and developers.
Taking a project from China as an example, Sekai Lab’s SEs in Japan, Chengdu (Sichuan, China) or Quindao (Shandong, China) conduct hearings on the requirements from the client, then provide details to developers in Da Nang, Vietnam through the platform to commence work.
Inagawa elaborated:
We used to consign entrusted matters evenly to all 100 participating developers in the past. Currently our selection team narrows down the candidates in advance for each project and requests estimates from them, because each developer has its own specialty field such as development languages or frameworks. After collecting estimates from multiple developers, we leave the final decision up to the clients as to entrustees or the type of contract to be concluded.
The Sekai Lab page which recently launched on the Witmart site.
Based on the writer’s experience in systems engineering, large enterprises tend to avoid consigning systems development to subcontractors from the standpoint of information management, despite the general subcontract structure in Japan’s systems integration field. No wonder many enterprises hesitate to entrust development overseas where Japanese laws cannot be enforced.
However, with Sekai Lab such things do not matter, according to Inagawa. This is because his company mainly deals in development regarding web services or apps, independent of mainstay systems. An average budget is around 4 million yen (about $32,000) and an average man-month cost is 14 to 15 for projects handled by Sekai Lab. It dies not compete with major Systems Integrators or consultant firms due to the differences in the scale of targeted projects.
Inagawa added:
Our clients range from individuals to listed companies. Non-IT clients account for 60 to 70 percent of the total base, the rest being IT ones. We see many business software developments involved for projects from outside Japan. Also, there is preponderance in localization of apps ordered by Japanese companies expanding overseas, or vice versa.
When China meant “offshore development base” is a thing of the past. According to Inagawa, labor costs for Shanghai engineers are now almost the same as that of Japanese counterparts. However, not many Chinese developers are capable of high quality apps development even though they are losing ground in price competitiveness. Having built up a reputation for its work through diligent work, Sekai Lab has been able to gain many larger-scale projects from China compared with projects from Japan.
Sekai Lab this month expands into Bangladesh, its 15th development base. As its name ‘Sekai (meaning ‘the world’ in Japanese)’ implies, it is taking on the global market, in both name and deed.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s LIP, a startup developing communications services, started providing a smartphone app called ‘5pm’ in San Francisco last week. The app is available for iOS on the iTunes AppStore and for Android on Google Play. At the same time the company also announced that they had fundraised in January an undisclosed amount from Venture United, CyberAgent Ventures, Prime Capital and Incubate Fund, in addition to Kotaro Chiba, co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming company Colopl (TSE:3668). LIP was founded in November 2014 by Yusuke Matsumura, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at San Francisco-based growth marketer school Tradecraft and had been involved in development of artificial intelligence, and Mai Sekiguchi, former producer of a ‘pure-love app’ called One Heart (no longer available in the AppStore) for love declaration arrangement on Facebook. Matsumura had once participated in Incubate Camp 7th, a startup bootcamp program by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund, where she presented a business plan for an online dating service as well. There he met Sekiguchi through mutual friend Takahito Iguchi, a serial Japanese entrepreneur well known for having developed Sekai Camera, founded LIP soon after and subsequently launched the first product. Limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’…
Japan’s LIP, a startup developing communications services, started providing a smartphone app called ‘5pm’ in San Francisco last week. The app is available for iOS on the iTunes AppStore and for Android on Google Play.
At the same time the company also announced that they had fundraised in January an undisclosed amount from Venture United, CyberAgent Ventures, Prime Capital and Incubate Fund, in addition to Kotaro Chiba, co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming company Colopl (TSE:3668).
LIP was founded in November 2014 by Yusuke Matsumura, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at San Francisco-based growth marketer school Tradecraft and had been involved in development of artificial intelligence, and Mai Sekiguchi, former producer of a ‘pure-love app’ called One Heart (no longer available in the AppStore) for love declaration arrangement on Facebook.
Matsumura had once participated in Incubate Camp 7th, a startup bootcamp program by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund, where she presented a business plan for an online dating service as well. There he met Sekiguchi through mutual friend Takahito Iguchi, a serial Japanese entrepreneur well known for having developed Sekai Camera, founded LIP soon after and subsequently launched the first product.
Limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’
LIP expressed their intention to develop a communications service which deepens human relationships. Their first product ‘5pm’ is an online matching app for arranging one to meet somebody after work.
The time frame available for matching is only 20 minutes after 5 pm. By limiting user conditions including the matching time and place, not to mention the meeting time, the waiting time and efforts spent before the meeting are reduced; such things have formed a hurdle for existing online meeting services.
LIP launched their service in San Francisco because it is quite popular to build new human relationships via internet there. According to findings by The University of Chicago researchers, one-third of new marriages in the U.S. today initially began over an online meeting service.
By improving the product in reflection while obtaining feedbacks from San Francisco users who tend to be cosmopolitan, the team plans to localize it for use in multinational settings in the future.
Matsumura explains that fields related to actual human interactions are very interesting, yet important. Not only does LIP focus on this kind of dating service, but it also plans to develop various services covering the communications sector.
By deepening human relationships, LIP supports construction of better friendships as well as chance creation of romance. Moreover, it offers an approach as to the issue of improving the marriage rate, one of Japan’s major social issues today.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy Proofread by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based Genesis Healthcare, the Japanese startup that develops and provides genetic testing kits, announced today that it has fundraised 620 million yen ($5.1 million) from US-based Founders Fund and Japanese trading giant Mitsui & Co. (TSE:8031) With the investment, the two investing companies took a 6% stake in the healthcare startup. Since its launch in 2004 under the previous name of Weight Management, Genesis Healthcare has been developing and offering a variety of genetic testing and analysis services including DNA Banking as well as genetic testing kits for giving users advices for ancestry, lifestyle habits, alcohol metabolism promotion, cancer risk, dietary fat intake, or skin aging. The company has acquired genetic data from about 400,000 people in Japan. In partnership with Mitsui upon the latest investment, Genesis Healthcare wants to expand their applications beyond to food or restaurant businesses and deliver optimized healthcare services to consumers. With the support of Paypal founder Peter Thiel who leads Founders Fund, the startup wants to better reach the global market while developing innovative technologies. Edited by Kurt Hanson
From Genesis Healthcare’s introduction video.
Tokyo-based Genesis Healthcare, the Japanese startup that develops and provides genetic testing kits, announced today that it has fundraised 620 million yen ($5.1 million) from US-based Founders Fund and Japanese trading giant Mitsui & Co. (TSE:8031) With the investment, the two investing companies took a 6% stake in the healthcare startup.
Since its launch in 2004 under the previous name of Weight Management, Genesis Healthcare has been developing and offering a variety of genetic testing and analysis services including DNA Banking as well as genetic testing kits for giving users advices for ancestry, lifestyle habits, alcohol metabolism promotion, cancer risk, dietary fat intake, or skin aging. The company has acquired genetic data from about 400,000 people in Japan.
In partnership with Mitsui upon the latest investment, Genesis Healthcare wants to expand their applications beyond to food or restaurant businesses and deliver optimized healthcare services to consumers. With the support of Paypal founder Peter Thiel who leads Founders Fund, the startup wants to better reach the global market while developing innovative technologies.
See the original story in Japanese. The Microsoft Innovation Award 2015 (MIA2015) is an annual opportunity to showcase how startups have developed innovative software and services that bring progressive ideas to life. The presenting ceremony for the award was held at Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago where the MIA Award and Audience Choice’s Award winners were announced following the finalist pitches. In the event, The Bridge coordinated two panel discussions focused on data-driven startups. Panel 1: How will a data-driven approach factor into healthcare apps and platforms? The event’s second session kicked off with a panel about how healthcare startups are leveraging big data to improve their platforms and businesses. Moderated by The Bridge co-founder Masaru Ikeda, this session included: Francois Cadiou (CEO, Healint) – on screen via Skype Yoko Gibo (Managing Director, Noom Japan) Yuji Mizoguchi (CEO, FiNC) Shinichiro Isago (Technical Evangelist Manager, Emerging Technology Evangelism, Microsoft Japan) Healint has developed an app called Migraine Buddy which collects data recorded from sufferers of migraine headaches. By recording the symptoms of migraines from patients, doctors can more accurately report on those symptoms. Healint performs big data analysis based on accumulated user data and, by sharing…
Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Image by A Health Blog.
The Microsoft Innovation Award 2015 (MIA2015) is an annual opportunity to showcase how startups have developed innovative software and services that bring progressive ideas to life. The presenting ceremony for the award was held at Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago where the MIA Award and Audience Choice’s Award winners were announced following the finalist pitches.
In the event, The Bridge coordinated two panel discussions focused on data-driven startups.
Panel 1: How will a data-driven approach factor into healthcare apps and platforms?
From the right: Shinichiro Isago (Microsoft Japan), Francois Cadiou (Healint) on screen, Yoko Gibo (Noom Japan), and Yuji Mizoguchi (FiNC)
The event’s second session kicked off with a panel about how healthcare startups are leveraging big data to improve their platforms and businesses. Moderated by The Bridge co-founder Masaru Ikeda, this session included:
Francois Cadiou (CEO, Healint) – on screen via Skype
Shinichiro Isago (Technical Evangelist Manager, Emerging Technology Evangelism, Microsoft Japan)
Healint has developed an app called Migraine Buddy which collects data recorded from sufferers of migraine headaches. By recording the symptoms of migraines from patients, doctors can more accurately report on those symptoms. Healint performs big data analysis based on accumulated user data and, by sharing and marketing that information to pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, new medicines are developed and healthcare quality is improved.
CEO Cadiou argued that the app attracts many Japanese people:
Things like one’s own nervous system can be quite difficult to grasp, so patients should record and manage their condition daily, gather the appropriate data, and then see a doctor in order to recieve the optimal method of treatment.
FiNC, a mobile health technology startup in Japan, employs full time personnel, physicians, pharmacists, and instructors in the preventive medicine field. Most recently, with the release of their healthcare news app Wellness Post, FiNC has been making the push to proliferate medical information relevant to their users. Additionally they are working on a new preventative medicine crowdsourcing platform for nutritionists, trainers, and other health specialists.
NYC-headquartered Noom has been offering preventative medicine solutions for consumer and commercial use since 2008. More recently they have been developing a smart AI (artificial intelligence)-based personal coach app called Noom Coach, as well as Noom Health, an app that family physicians and trainers can use to get an accurate picture of their patient’s health based on each patient’s recorded diet and exercise, making it possible to offer counseling to many patients remotely at low cost, and with a high degree of accuracy.
Now is the time to make healthcare data a real focus
To start the discussion, the speakers were asked to share what led them to start their businesses. Speaking from his own clinical development experience, Cadiou found himself focused on the various ways progress can be made in transitioning from paper to web apps and sensors, and so on. To approach these hurdles, Cadiou started working with data scientists and programmers, considerably progressing his research and development practices in Singapore.
In view of many healthcare startups born out in the world, FiNC CEO Mizoguchi shared his point of view on the state of the healthcare market. He said,
Healthcare is a concern everyone shares, which is why we are in such a good market to expand globally.
Noom, on the other hand, broke into the market through a NYC-based startup accelerator specializing in healthcare. Gibo expressed,
The healthcare business world as a whole has a high barrier of entry and is a difficult place to grow as a business. That’s why the existence of an accelerator that combines big business with healthcare technology is so crucial, and also why Noom has also been able to work together with a variety of medical institutions.
Adding that through beginning to offer enterprise targeted services they have seen considerable growth. The healthcare field itself appears to be experiencing a movement of innovation right now that is justifiably garnering global attention.
The three companies are each engaged in analyzing data connected to their users’ healthcare and putting that into use in developing services, so the question of how is this kind of big data to be effectively used is becoming of interest. Gibo pointed out that as far as health care data goes, the data that has been collected so far is small, and supplying data to insurance companies and patients has only recently started. However, it can be said that a data-based business model incorporating feedback regarding insurance companies is on the verge.
Mizoguchi shared,
There have been a lot of offers for the trial deployment of our services, and we’ve begun dealing with the local government. […]
This has all just recently started in Japan so data and evidence are still scarce. With consent from users, we’d like to make that data open to use and build a structure for use and application. By recording physical, location, and movement behavior data, the time when we can provide individualized health care services based on users’ individual data may be soon. Our aim is to continue searching for the best ways to utilize data to make as many people happy as we can.
In response to this, Microsoft’s Isago said,
Up until now Microsoft has largely been involved in the game and entertainment industries, but the requests from people in other industries such as healthcare increased when the Kinect was introduced. […]
Basically I think you could say that more and more people are realizing the possibilities technology holds. Currently we’re focusing our efforts on the medical and security fields. We’re always on the look out for startups that are interested in working together with Microsoft to develop new services that utilize various different kinds of cloud data.
Gibo also expressed that the healthcare market itself is still in an early stage, and that through collaboration with businesses such as Microsoft to open up commercial channels, new paths are created.
Commenting on the future of healthcare Gibo had this to say,
In regard to health, we’re aiming for a worry-free society. Progressing to a society where people can understand their own bodies and have the appropriate control is the objective of healthcare.
Panel 2: How will data-driven startups change how to find the right job opportunities?
From the right: Shinichiro Isago (Microsoft Japan), Yukihiro Ikemi (Grooves), and Toshiyuki Oka (Atrae)
The second panel, regarding data-driven hiring platforms that turn skills and careers into data to meet with the needs of employers and suggest potential employers to users, featured the following people:
Shinichiro Isago (Technical Evangelist Manager, Emerging Technology Evangelism, Microsoft Japan)
Up until now Atrae has been running Green and other recruitment sites, but recently, in cooperation with big data analysis company Brain Pad (TSE:3655), they have launched a personnel mining service called TalentBase, which utilizes big data analysis AI. Unlike the typical resume based on your previous business experience, this new service creates reference data based on human relations using data analysis. The aim is to create better person to company matches based on connections and shared evaluations.
Grooves is currently running Forkwell, a portfolio site for engineers, as well as CrowdAgent, which generates recruitment matches from its 3,500 registered companies. It aims to be a national recruitment information portal with a network of more than 16,000 business people. Additionally, Grooves recenty established a HR tech R&D unit, aiming to conduct research on applications of artificial intelligence and big data analysis within the personnel recruitment field. Kenji Hirata, the first person to become engaged in international standardization of personnel training and competency was appointed as head on the research institute.
The HR market itself is calling for a major change
It could be said that one of the essential dilemmas among companies is how to effectively match potential employees with open positions. As the field of matching through the use of data and AI experiences a swell of interest, these problems are addressed. The discussion participants were asked what reasons led to the development of their services.
Ikemi explained that despite the fact that the recruitment business in Japan alone is a 7 trillion yen ($57.2 billion) market, 44 billion yen ($360 million) globally, these business practice haven’t changed since pre-war times. He said that as a tech enterprise, they started with the idea of wanting to create a service that will shake up the HR field in Japan. Even at that, he clarified by saying that the large amount of matching of people and businesses was “unexpected”. He supposed that similarly to dating and marriage matching sites randomness is a considerable aspect.
Ikemi explained,
Optimizing matching using big data is good, but we want to suggest matches that feel like stories.
Additionally, Ikemi explained that Japan not adopting HR-XML (Human Resources – eXtended Markup Language) had a major influence on the job hunting market. In the US, more so that recruitment platforms, crawler-type recruitment services are widely recognized, for the reason that HR-XML, which aims for the collaboration of recruit information, is continuing to become more familiarized. Through HR-XML, unification of topics like “Job Description” found on recruitment media and corporate sites has made possible automation and data-based matching, as well as personalized recruitment recommendations. However, Japan took a different path while not adopting such collaboration, which is why we have seen the spread of recruitment matching that utilizes individuals’ resources. From this, an opportunity is being missed to gather superior foreign personnel in Japan and inversely to send Japan’s superior personnel out into the world.
He continued,
We want to realize a new ‘Job Description’ in Japan.
When asked if things that were before done by humans be replaced by machines, Oka said he doesn’t think career consultation can be done with AI. He also said that more so than matching a person with a company through TalentBase, the aim is to create a place where a person can connect to another person within that company, and by focusing on building human relationships, new methods for choosing a place of work can be found that don’t necessarily rely on factors like one’s previous income and company position. Because we have to consider not just data but also human relationships, which can be seen as a sort of irrationality in society, said Oka.
Isago also commented that while working at Microsoft,
When doing recruiting through the same vendor, we can only gather one type of people. If the business itself wants to experience growth, how to create a place where recruitment matching for other types of people than those that have brought the company this far, this is the time to for businesses to meet this challenge.
Similar to healthcare, this is a task carried by the world’s businesses, which is why the successes of international enterprises set a global precedents, and why the potential for services themselves to expand globally is yet to be realized.
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
Shintaro Eguchi
