Still work to be done

摘要

In the summer of 2007 Toshifumi Mori moved back to Japan, having spent 14 years in America, Canada, Britain and Germany working for Mitsubishi, one of Japan's big industrial groups. He was struck by some of the advertisements he saw on the Tokyo subway. Such hoardings, he feels, "tell you what's in". Alongside the posters promoting mobile phones and beer he was surprised to see advertisements for headhunters and recruitment firms. "There was nothing like that 15 years ago," he says. He joined Heidrick & Struggles, one of several companies both promoting and profiting from a more flexible Japanese labour market.