A placement within three months of launch, becoming number one in the Tokai region for second-new-graduate recruitment

Ad Planner Inc. (head office: Nagoya, Aichi) provides comprehensive people services, mainly in the Tokai and Kanto regions. Why did the company, which has worked on a recruitment project for people in their first few years of work since April 2020, choose NowVillage as its consulting partner? We asked Mr Ono, the project leader.

Starting by giving shape to each other’s assets, and becoming a major pillar of the business

First, could you tell us how the work began?

Ad Planner had signed an alliance agreement at the end of 2019 with UZUZ, Mr Imamura’s previous company. At the time I was responsible for overseas business, and the agreement itself was gathering dust. When we launched a project in April 2020 to put effort into the niche market of people in their first few years of work, I thought it was a waste to leave it dormant, and we began collaborating on the basis of giving shape first to the good assets each of us already had.

Were you handling it alone at first?

Yes. In the first half, April to September, I worked alone within the budget I was given, and from the second half it became a four-person project in order to grow the business. From April this year we have added more people, and as a company we are determined to make it a second pillar of the business. Because there is no competitor putting serious effort into people services focused on 20 to 25-year-olds in their first few years of work, we are now the number one recruitment firm in that category in the Tokai region.

What exactly did you do?

For the first six months we placed people through a flow in which we proposed candidates from the alliance partner to companies, and we handled the counselling and the recruiting adviser side. From the second half of that year, to establish a way of attracting candidates on our own, you supported us with service planning and strategy. Specifically, building a landing page, designing the paths for acquisition, and estimating the expected values involved. We chose from several measures you proposed. Our organisation has no engineers and is all sales, so from a position of knowing nothing you advised us warmly, and we are very grateful.

Building the right relationship of trust, and candidates being hired

Your own service started in January 2021. What results have you had?

As you can see from having worked with more than 10,000 companies since founding in 1982, our great strength is opening up new business. We are confident in listening to and counselling client companies, and we feel it working. But what struck us while running the service was how little attention is paid to building the right relationship of trust and getting the right information. As things stand, job advertisements often have grey areas around conditions, suitability and probation periods. If we, standing between the company and the candidate, handle job information carelessly, trouble may arise between them. With that sense of risk we tightened our listing standards and became stricter still in how we deal with customers.

Partly thanks to that, in mid-March 2021 several candidates were hired. Among them was a science graduate from a well-known postgraduate school, whom we could propose with confidence, and who went to a manufacturer and a software company. That students from well-known universities register with us also feels like proof of trust.

Over the year since launching the project we have gradually firmed up the base, and now a feeling runs through the whole team that recruitment is exciting. We want to turn that into momentum and open up 500 companies in the first half of 2021. While deepening trust, we want to press the accelerator so that candidates are not left waiting.

A smooth working relationship even at a distance

What do you expect from NowVillage next?

If there are further measures that take us closer to the goal, we would like you to propose them as they come. Mr Imamura and Mr Takayama understand our character and our strengths well and always bring apt proposals, so all I do is say that sounds good, let us do it. Ad Planner has a culture of saying let us try even when it means investing in a possibility, so we would like to take on new measures too. The purpose must not drift, but I want to keep the excitement of opening a new channel.

From your point of view, what kind of company is NowVillage? And on that basis, which companies would you recommend them to?

The proposals are very logical and the scheme of support is clear. That you answer carefully and never give up on things we do not understand also makes you dependable as a partner. And at the same time Mr Imamura is not purely logical; he is human, and, if I can put it crudely, there is something homespun about him that is appealing. I think it is a distinctive company, with tenacity and a strong core inside a start-up’s polish.

And because running a project by sharing documents through internal social tools and a drive was something we had not done in-house, we learned a rational, smooth way of working. Nagoya and Tokyo are far apart, but we communicate comfortably and without stress. In fact we now use the same approach with other companies. With an affinity for digital tools, working together at a distance is perfectly possible. In that sense you may suit companies outside the big cities. I think there are many companies doing well that still have problems around hiring. We too want to expand the business further, mainly in the Tokai region, so we look forward to continuing with you.