Adam Sands is a Senior Recruitment Manager with Hays Japan, which is a global business providing human resource services and recruitment support across 33 countries. Adam has extensive experience in recruitment within the IT industry, specifically within the Tokyo area. His role is to connect prospective workers with the right companies and people, enabling both parties to derive value.
Adam was able to answer a few questions we had about his career and professional endeavours.
Adam, when did you start at Hays Japan and what motivated you to get into recruitment consulting?
I started at Hays back in 2011, so I’ve been with the company close to a decade. For me, I’ve always had a rather strong interest in People, and IT. When Hays Japan presented me with a career opportunity, I made sure I took it with both hands.
In your opinion, what are the most important skills a recruiter requires?
In my experience, I think the most important skill for any worker is a capacity to work hard. I think this skill is very applicable to recruitment consulting. I work and manage a team of over 16 consultants, so I’m constantly dealing with many different clients and stakeholders every day. In order to keep up with this workload, it’s important to also be diligent and able to focus their efforts on several different things at one time.
In addition, I think a recruiter needs to have strong interpersonal skills. I need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely with team members, candidates and clients, while remaining cognisant of different points of view. At the same time, a recruiter needs to be able to show a degree of compassion and empathy, particularly during times of high stress and workload.
How important is honesty to your line of work?
Honesty is incredibly important as a recruitment consultant; I think it’s a corporate attribute that is important in every business (at least, it should be). Transparency is a crucial part of enhancing work efficiency, while cultivating diverse perspectives. Diversity breeds innovation and innovation engenders further business success and profitability.
As a recruitment consultant, what are the primary services you provide?
My team of 16 consultants specialise in IT and contract recruitment primarily. We rely on our strong network of contacts in Japan to map candidate skills with specific job descriptions and vacancies. Basically, we act as the intermediary between the clients and the pool of candidates looking for work.
Moreover, we can help Australian businesses or companies from all over the world get established effectively in Japan. We’ll make sure that you have a strong, equitable blend of foreign and native employees, thereby putting your business in a strong financial and industrial position. If you are considering expanding your business to Japan, then you should certainly consider reaching out to us for your recruitment needs. We can provide detailed and reliable support for businesses in need of IT personnel.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
When I’m away from the office, I like to relax and wind down. I think it’s very important to have a good balance between work and your social life, which is something many companies are embracing more and more each year now. Hays Japan are very compassionate when it comes to providing workers with the autonomy to embrace a healthy balance between work and life.
In my spare time, I like to do things that add meaning and value to my life. Since 2018, I have been a volunteer for the Save the Children Foundation. It is one of the older fundraising charities in the world (established in 1919) and strives to provide economic and social protections for young people across the world.
What are some of the future market and recruitment trends?
Companies are becoming more and more flexible to their staff in Japan allowing them to increasingly work from home, as well as include more flexible working hours. This is a major change for some of the larger companies whom are having to change their current culture mindsets to adapt to this change.
Additionally, we see a lot of Japanese companies becoming more comfortable hiring overseas highly skilled IT professional’s whom have the niche skills and ability they are looking for in their project needs with a communication level of Japanese instead of requesting a higher level of fluency as companies become more open minded and diverse.
Thank you Adam for your time!
You can follow up and connect with Adam Sands at linkedin.com/in/adamsands
