President & Founder
During my past quarter century career, I was hired as a start-up CEO for a newly founded Japan subsidiary of a British recruitment
agency. In that role, I found a common gap between what the clients needed and what the candidates wanted, after interviewing with over 1,000 candidates and over 100 clients.
As a consequence of continuous effort in self-development coupled with personal ambition of obtaining a better career and high-level skill sets, many talented and capable candidates tend to have relatively frequent job changes. Although such candidates are not necessarily so-called “Job Hoppers” who easily change jobs, showing little patience, it is not easy to distinguish “quality” candidates among all “frequent job changers”. Therefore, it is getting more difficult for a “quality” candidate who has vast experience, a high-level skill sets, and a wider outlook, to find a suitable job opportunity over time, as they are passed over by the employers. Furthermore, it is often seen the cases in which a “quality” candidate has to settle for a non-permanent employment and lower salary for the same or even higher level jobs than the regular employees.
The ratio of the non-permanent employees in Japan has reached a record high of 37.4% as of 2014 (source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications “Labour Force Survey”). This ratio shows over 25% increase in the past decade. Whereas the majority of non-permanent employments voluntarily choose this form of employment to seek flexible working hours or financial support for households in between childcare and housework, nearly 20% reluctantly chose this path due to lack of permanent employment opportunities. The ratio is even higher among male workers having reached about 30%. Many of capable candidates suffering from the gap between their talent and motivation, and working opportunities are likely to be a part of this group. It is unfortunate for both individuals and companies, and it is even a big loss for the society.
The recruitment firm I contributed to for Japan launch withdrew in 2008 triggered by the Lehman Shock. In that year, I founded Watase Corporation that is the predecessor as well as the parent company of GOS. Since then, I have been working on how to fill the gap between the talent and motivation, and working opportunities that I have seen in my career as a recruitment agent. Although I saw setting up a volunteer organisation or a NPO was a possible option, I still held a strong belief that the best way to lead more people to success is to materialise and successfully operate a new business model. The answer is “GOS” Project.
Generally, the ideal attributes of a candidate for an employer, regardless of the position needed, are:
- Highly skilled and motivated
- Good personality
- Young
- Low salary
- Clean CV – less frequency of job changes
As you can see above, it is quite hard to fill the huge gap between the employers’ expectations and experienced candidates’ attributes. On the other hand, the proportion of “ideal” candidates is continuously decreasing in line with the declining birth rate and the increasing aging population. Consequently, companies are always suffering from shortage of quality labour.
Under such circumstances, what if someone with experience externally undertakes a position, role, or section as the team? GOS employs experienced professionals as permanent employees and provides skilled services for the companies suffering from shortage of quality staff or skills. Detailed instructions of how to execute tasks are not necessary unlike the case for temporary non-permanent staff. As GOS experts are not the employees of the Client, the Clients can utilise GOS service flexibly for all levels of jobs simultaneously such as entry level, middle or even executive level when needed. The duration of the service is also flexible.
Although diversified working history with frequent job changes tends to make some employers reluctant, it conversely creates a strong advantage of highly adaptable workforce that can match diverse corporate cultures and working environments. In addition, GOS experts can work with pride having stable employment in GOS and be respected as professionals. By creating such a new business model, we can contribute to develop a flexible management system for Japanese labour practices that are relatively stiff based upon the lifetime employment culture, and consequently fill the gap between the employers and job seekers. This is the real aim of GOS Project.