Short and Sweet #17 4/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Short and Sweet #17 4/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

It’s estimated anywhere from ¥500,000 to ¥800,000 to hire a candidate according to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). Think back to yourself of a time where you hired someone, they come in and they start working, and after about a month, you notice “this is not the person you thought they were when you interviewed them.” This one step can really illuminate those challenges. Take up references from the candidate.

Short and Sweet #17 3/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Short and Sweet #17 3/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Has this happened to you? You get a resume of a really quality candidate that you’re excited to meet, and then the candidate comes in and you start to interview them, and after a while you think there’s a disconnect between what’s on the paper and the person you’re meeting. You’ve just spent an hour meeting with this candidate and it’s not the right person. Of course that happens to all of us all of the time. One easy way to get around this is to add a telephone screening to the front of your interview process.

Short and Sweet #17 2/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Short and Sweet #17 2/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Last week, one of my clients sent me an email which they sent to 40 or 50 recruiters. Basically they were looking for a demand planner. It’s the same position they had opened last year. When I talked to the hiring manager about that, he said “Yeah, the talent acquisition person basically sends the that out to all the recruiters they work with in the hopes that they can pull in some resumes.” I said “Well do you have any resumes from last year?”

Short and Sweet #17 1/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

Short and Sweet #17 1/4: How to hire effectively for SMEs in Japan

This time, we are geared especially for small and medium enterprises in Japan who are hiring. We find that even with COVID-19 and the restructuring that goes on, there are still critical positions that need to be hired. During this time it’s a good opportunity for small companies to really get strong on their processes and to think through what they are doing (especially for recruitment) to hire the right people, attracting the right people, building up their network with people that can help them later on. So I’ve put together this article (and video series) to help you inexpensively and quickly make an impact on you and your business and your team as they go through and hire.

Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

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Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

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It was a slow story, like sipping a warm drink. 

It feels like nothing happens, and yet, everything passes in a man’s life, learning, and death. And by the time we realize the moment of animal ecstasy in the divining morning light, it’s gone, slipped by and we wonder how we could have missed it. 

  It was like a Zen garden, where you must sit quietly

Hermann Hesse has created his own glass bead game and trying to unravel the story, makes it hold together all the more. Like Hesse’s easier Narcissus and Goldman, there is a Yang-Yin balance between materialism and spirituality. But in The Glass Bead Game, he spirals into a Borgian gyre that never resolves.  The elements pull in together in paired clumps, like Beethoven’s 9th, with piano and forte, light and dark, classic and folk, Apollo and Dionysus. Is that the contrast between Knect and Plinio Designori?  A perfection surrounds the contemplative and there is still the physical. Or is it the math and the music? The counterpoint surrounds the story. Then you arrive at the end of Knect’s journey (does “Knecht” refer to “servant" or “knight” and is there a difference, for we are on Parsifal’s quest for the grail, are we not?)

But in the end, so what? We are living the life of the enlightened one. Why can’t Hesse just say that to us in a few short pages. Because we need to experience it. And once we follow the complete cycle of Joseph Knect through his orphan beginnings to the head of Castalia, then we can quickly ease into the shorter rotations of the rainmaker, shaman, and yogi. 

Each time, for me, it comes back to the animal, diving into the cold water, the physical of the moment. 

The book was dull, but so is life. Then in death, all the experiences collapse like dominoes and and we look back at the design and realize how masterfully this was setup. The sun rises, as Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But then slips down into the dark depths again, never to again see the light.

Looking back at what I’ve written about The Glass Bead Game, I realize that I’m thrown into metaphor. The book defies definition or meaning. We can speak of pedagogy, enlightenment, utopia, religion, the nature of life, but at the end of the day, the story wonderfully defies such an easy classification. 

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Short and Sweet #16: How to ace a video interview

Short and Sweet #16: How to ace a video interview

With more and more interviews happening via video today on computers, tablets, mobile phones, it makes sense to learn how to present the best in front of the camera. I am going to go through 7 steps to help you prepare for a video interview.

Recruitment for the SME

Recruitment for the SME

In Japan, SMEs with limited HR and tight budgets, have unique hiring challenges, balancing between HQ needs and the local market. In addition, for the busy Manager, recruitment is only one of the several duties tackled during the day.

#enlightenment

#enlightenment

Maybe lightning or a bright flash or a burning bush or a booming voice from the gray clouds of heaven. Maybe touching the ground and a choir of angels enfolds you in white wings and crowns you with a golden halo like Buddha.  Or perhaps, like Saul, you find yourself in a storm and a voice demands, “What the hell have you been up to with your life?” Better though is Gandalf, in Lord of the Rings, returning as Gandalf the White with a blinding aura around him mounted on his stallion, Shadowfax. Eureka! Enlightenment strikes!

However, my experience ranges more with the mundane drips and drabs of joy, tulips on a spring day, a “runners high”, elation at the sight of a rainbow. Though I confess I did once have a vision.  It sounds too dramatic for our agnostic day.

Another time, I sat in a cold Scottish Cathedral, with the scent of wood and dust from the pews. Something awakened, ecstatic, quiet, focused, and immediate. I sat knowing oneness. The brief moment passed and life continued.  I remember the Buddhist adage, “Before enlightenment, cut wood and carry water.  After enlightenment, cut wood and carry water.” 

Rumi says, 

Your intellect is in fragments, like bits of

gold scattered over many matters.

You must scrape them together so the royal stamp can be

pressed into you.

Enlightenment has been more an alignment and engagement with the universe.  Some days it’s there, some days not. Some days you feel like crap and pray and carry on. Some days you feel fantastic and on those days too you pray and carry on. Each day a gift.

I believe poetry—and all the arts—come from a divine grace: a Great Creator.  Muse works too. Experience through that one individual shared with others. The artist is a conduit bringing congruence between the outer and inner and shared with another. 

To the lover and visionary, it’s life as it’s being lived…

Being faithful is like the outside of a fruit peeling. It’s dry and

bitter because it’s facing

away from the center. Being faithful like the inside of

the peeling, wet and sweet.

But the place for peelings is the fire. The real inside is

beyond sweet and bitter. It’s

the source of deliciousness. This cannot be said: I’m 

drowning in it!

Even while we cut wood and carry water in our lives, we should wake to the deliciousness. We commute, head into the office on a Monday morning and start diving into our email. We meet with clients, have committees, share ideas, deliver results. Even there, though the peel separates the inner and the outer, be the deliciousness of now, of life, of living. In all the universe, you are the only chance to be. Create a masterpiece living in the moment in a realization of experiences, be it a flash, a booming voice, or just the juices of a ripe fruit on a warm day. 

(Rumi quotes fromColeman Barks, The Soul of Rumi)

Short and Sweet #15: Time management

Short and Sweet #15: Time management

Welcome to this episode of Short and Sweet. Today we are talking about time management. Give you some tips for time management as a new manager.

Short and Sweet #11: How to do a Great Interview? Part 2

Short and Sweet #11: How to do a Great Interview? Part 2

Welcome to Short and Sweet #11. Today we are going to talk about, how to ace the interview. This is part 2 of our 3 part series on how to ace interviews. So today is what to do while you are in an interview, and how to leave the best impression for the interviewer. Let’s get started.

Short and Sweet #10: How to do a Great Interview? Part 1

Short and Sweet #10: How to do a Great Interview? Part 1

Hi! Welcome to Short and Sweet #10.

Today’s question comes from Konno san who is a job seeker and had some questions about how to do a great interview. So the next 2 Short and Sweets are going to be about how to ace an interview.

Short and Sweet #8: Sustainability

Short and Sweet #8: Sustainability

Hi! Welcome to Short and Sweet episode 8.

Today we’re going to cover the very hot topic of sustainability, which is something that FocusCore has been working on thank you to the efforts to Cian Boland and Simon Jelfs within our company.

Short and Sweet #7: How do you choose a recruiter?

Short and Sweet #7: How do you choose a recruiter?

Hi! Welcome to episode 7 of Short and Sweet!

Today we’re going to speak about a question I got from a candidate: How do you choose a recruiter? Great question. There’s several ways to go about it.

Short and Sweet #6: What to do before you start looking for a job?

Short and Sweet #6: What to do before you start looking for a job?

Today we will talk about what to do before you start looking for a job? Many people come to our office and already thinking about changing jobs but haven’t given it that much thought. What I found are following 5 simple steps, prior to your job search.