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The salaryman's job hunt

Hiro's job hunt started unexpectedly the June before his senior year of college. He received a telephone call at home from a friend who had graduated the year before and had gone to work for a top Japanese financial institution we will call "Ringo Bank." Hiro was unprepared for the call, because at the time, most Japanese companies had entered into a noncompulsory agreement to start the official recruiting season after October 1. The friend asked if Hiro would be interested in working for a bank. When Hiro replied yes, the two had dinner and discussed what the young banker was doing at Ringo. Hiro was encouraged to talk with a few other Ringo managers who had graduated from his university, and, one by one, appointments were set up for him.

Gradually Hiro realized that his interviewing process at Ringo had begun. Like other banks, Ringo used its alumni network to contact about a hundred potential candidates, ask each one out socially, talk about anything just to size the student up, then very informally cut down the numbers. Ringo was culling applicants without telling them they were involved in a selection process. Within a week or so after his initial contact with Ringo, Hiro received calls from several banks and security houses, asking if he might be interested in their companies. Always, the initial approach was made by an alumnus of his university, some of whom he already knew, whereas others were strangers. The point was not necessarily to tap into Hiro's circle of trusted friends; a school tie was good enough to initiate a relationship. In fact, one of Hiro's closest friends was also at Ringo, but for its own reasons, the bank chose to approach him first through a more distant acquaintance.

Today Hiro is surprised, looking back at this experience, at how casually he and his classmates went about making one of the most important decisions of their lives. Everyone fully expected to stay with his first employer for life, but no one took control of the process to ensure that he would end up with the best match. Hiro didn't really prefer the financial services industry to any other, but the year he graduated, banking and securities companies were the most aggressive recruiters. He was very interested in working outside Japan but never made up a resume, never looked for banks active in international markets, and never initiated a contact with a recruiter. Ultimately, his choice of an employer hinged much more on whom he happened to know than on any objective comparison of the different firms pursuing him.

Hiro quickly found himself quite busy meeting many alumni of many different companies. Usually these meetings took place away from company offices, because the recruiters did not want to be obvious about ignoring the voluntary October 1 start date. After about a month of meeting with Ringo Bank managers who were alumni of his university, he was invited to meet with a manager who was not a graduate of Hiro's school. Hiro thought this signaled the beginning of the formal interview process, but, unbeknownst to him, his recruitment was almost over at that point.

After this meeting, Hiro was taken aside by a close friend who had entered college with Hiro but graduated a year earlier and taken a position with Ringo. This friend asked Hiro if he wanted to join the bank. Hiro was torn. He liked Ringo Bank, but he wanted to work overseas and had met with several managers of another bank that specialized in international business. He honestly described his feelings to his friend, who replied. "Unless you promise that you will join us, we won't be able to offer you a job." Before Ringo made a formal offer to Hiro, he was free to talk with as many potential employers as he liked, and he listened to everyone who approached him in order to avoid risk. Now, however, the game had changed. Japanese banks do not want to be compared, and only a fool would try to attract as many offers as possible before picking one, as a Westerner might. Dodging Ringo's offer would show the wrong attitude and embarrass the bank.

Hiro was given several days to make up his mind. Everyone understood that this was a decision expected to last for decades, and they didn't view his desire to think over an offer for a few days as a sign of weak commitment, as long as he did not talk with other companies while he weighed his choice. Hiro had a strong desire to work overseas and felt the other bank would give him better prospects for landing such a posting. But a fact of Japanese life is that nobody could promise Hiro a position outside Japan. Until he receives his first assignment, a new salaryman doesn't know what he will be asked to do for his new employer. In the end, Hiro chose Ringo because he had a trusted friend senior to him there, but not at the other bank. He called his friend to say he would like to join Ringo and immediately afterward received a formal job offer. Hiro's job search ended less than two months after that first telephone call in June.

Eventually, as he helped Ringo recruit at his alma mater, Hiro came to understand that personal relationships end up governing most salarymen's career choices--not only his. An alumnus acts as senpai (roughly, "mentor") to each job candidate. A senpai can be anyone senior to the person being courted, though a close, older friend from college days is preferred. The different senpai get together after the first casual approaches and subjectively narrow down the list of candidates to those who apparently fit the company culture best. A candidate is formally recommended by his senpai after he meets with many alumni and gains their informal approval. The candidate's interview with a senior who is not an alumnus of his school is usually a formality. If the senpai is missing something important, the formal decision maker will point this out, but usually the company's decision follows the consensus that has already been formed.

In the end, Hiro chose an employer for life based principally on his trust in a particular senpai. He soon learned that personal relationships also govern the career paths of most would-be salarymen. After he had been with Ringo for several years, Hiro was one of the alumni from his school asked to meet with a particular student. The young student had many personal contacts within the bank and was well liked, so Ringo extended him an informal offer. Another bank also asked him to join their firm, and there his senpai was a former athletic teammate. The candidate listened to both banks, tried to understand their differences, and finally told Ringo, "I will accept your offer, but please let me go back to the other bank to apologize to my senpai." Ringo agreed, and the man never returned. By agreement, all Japanese banks offer the same position and compensation to newly minted college graduates, so the candidate's personal relationship with his senpai had to be what reversed his decision. For Hiro, the moral of the story is that college seniors make one of the most momentous decisions of their life based on who they know in, not what they know about, a company.

Hiro's parents were even happier about his decision to join Ringo than he expected they would be. Graduating from a top college and joining a large, well-known corporation like Ringo brings social recognition. As we have seen, one doesn't get to be a salaryman just by being talented. It takes a long time to join this elite group, and many requirements must be met. Like most of his counterparts, Hiro felt proud of his achievement. Unlike many of his Western counterparts, he could command respect for the rest of his life for this accomplishment, regardless of whether he achieved concrete successes as an executive.

Excerpted from Inside the Kaisha: Demystifying Japanese Business Behavior, Chapter 1, by Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson (c. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1997 ).

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