Japan is the hardest market in the world to hire in. This is the field manual.

You can open a new market in Southeast Asia faster than you can fill a single Director role in Tokyo. Every HR leader who has tried to build a team in Japan eventually learns this — usually the expensive way.

Lifetime employment. The seniority ladder. The bilingual bottleneck. A shrinking population and a talent market that punishes companies who show up with the global playbook and expect it to work. Every year, foreign companies in Japan burn millions on searches that stall, offers that get declined, and leaders who leave inside eighteen months — not because they chose the wrong candidates, but because they misread the market.

The Hardest Market in the World is the insider's guide to executive search in Japan, drawn from nearly two decades on the ground placing senior leaders into foreign-capital companies. It is written for the people who own the outcome: CHROs, Country Managers, Talent Acquisition leaders, and search professionals who need Japan to actually work.

"A must-read for anyone hiring leaders in Japan." — Lou Adler, author of Hire With Your Head

Inside, you will learn:

About the author: Yan Sen Lu is the Founder and Managing Director of Makana Partners, a Tokyo-based executive search firm. He has spent eighteen years recruiting leaders for the world's most ambitious foreign companies operating in Japan.

If Japan is breaking your hiring process, this is your field manual.

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