Boosting Recruit Holdings’ Enterprise Value with the Power of Communication Department

For investors to have a comprehensive understanding of Recruit Holdings.

My current job title is a manager in charge of two teams: IR and external public relations. IR team directly communicates to investors with the value Recruit Holdings creates, and provides information investors need to make decisions to become our long-term shareholders. External PR team, on the other hand, communicates to wider stakeholders, through multiple media, regarding how Recruit Holdings creates value, aiming to gain support on our business activities. Having said that, each business has its own PR team targeting individual users and enterprise clients, therefore, the main targets of Recruit Holdings’ external PR are investors and NGOs. IR and external PR team cooperate in raising the value of Recruit Holdings with the power of communication.

Recruit Holdings is listed on the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and IR team is engaged in daily communication with global investors. The reality is that Recruit Holdings has far less name recognition outside Japan. For example in the United States, many people are familiar with Indeed and Glassdoor but don’t know that Recruit Holdings is their parent company. Given such a situation, we want global investors to be aware of our strength of having a unique business portfolio of HR Technology centered on Indeed and Glassdoor, Matching & Solutions focused on Japan, and Staffing which has expanded through global M&As, which leads to the three pillars of our business strategy -- “Simplify Hiring,” “Help Businesses Work Smarter” and “Prosper Together”. It’s a challenging mission, and we tackle it day by day.

For example, we put a lot of effort into improving our quarterly results disclosure material. In particular, the quality of English material has improved dramatically, in order to ensure a fair disclosure in both languages. Also it is important to be aware that investors are very busy, analyzing multiple companies, which means they spend a limited time on a single company. We are always mindful to make the material we make and also where and how to provide them to investors as simple and easy as possible.

Another example is how we communicate our three pillar business strategy, a key when it comes to making a decision to invest in Recruit Holdings. We organized a presentation event on “Prosper Together”, and our COO, Ayano Senaha, went through participants on the details of initiatives for ESGs. At another presentation event on “Help Businesses Work Smarter,” managing Corporate Executive Officer Yoshihiro Kitamura, who is in charge of the Matching & Solutions business, walked through the details of the strategy. Both events included Q&A sessions and they answered questions from investors and media representatives in a straightforward manner. I believe, through both events our passion and the management team’s appealing personalities, all of which cannot be conveyed solely through disclosure documents and video clips prepared in advance, were well communicated. You can find videos and other material on those events on the IR page of our website. Please do have a look at it.

Challenges never end; the way to become a leading global company.

I started my career at a global financial service company in Tokyo as an equity sales for institutional investors. Soon afterward, I moved to the Hong Kong office, where one day I accompanied an IR officer of a European firm on a visit investors. He was so enthusiastic, gaining the confidence of investors as he told the story of his company. That experience was how I got interested in IR as a career. Later, I joined Recruit Holdings in search of opportunities to work for a global company operating on a greater scale. When my agent introduced Recruit Holdings to me for the first time, I was not aware how global Recruit Holdings’s business portfolio was. I remember being surprised by reading earnings releases and annual reports. I have talked to many investors since I joined Recruit Holdings, and my experience tells me that anyone would agree on the value Recruit Holdings creates if he/she knows about its vision, management strategies, and corporate culture. I want to keep improving our communication so that many more people will recognize Recruit Holdings as “a global tech company and a leader of HR matching business.”

In order to do that, we have to keep evolving and improving. In the quarterly results disclosure for instance, we always put 100% effort to the job. The day after the results announcement, I already started thinking about what can be improved and what new challenge I want to take on. You can choose to make your job a routine work, but as I work with my boss and colleagues, who embody the company’s mission “Faster, simpler and closer to you”, making improvements and taking on new challenges became a part of everyday’s thinking. As I look back, embracing the company’s mission, culture and working together with people who embody them really helped me grow as a professional.

No compromise in work life balance.

IR is a window to the capital market for companies, therefore we get to hear investors' voices directly, understanding how we are assessed and what we are expected of. I always thought this information and knowledge could be a great use of other departments, particularly external PR where communication is a pivotal tool. I often pointed this out when talking with my boss, and then one day he told me “If you think, so why not don’t you try it?” This is how I became a group manager of both IR and external PR teams. I am grateful for the opportunity and environment in which I can take on new challenges with the full support of my boss. I feel this sort of environment is directly connected to advance my career.

I read various books written about Recruit before I joined the Company. Since the day one, I’ve found that Recruit really is a mission-driven company and each and every employee embodies it. The company’s mission “Faster, simpler and closer to you.” is everywhere. Whatever we do, it has to align with the mission and we have to know why we are doing it and for who. By doing so, I think my productivity has drastically improved. We can work 100% remotely, even before the COVID-19, and the system and support for flexible work gets better year by year, which I appreciate very much as a working mother with a kid in elementary school. Recruit is a workplace I can recommend with confidence to people who want to enjoy every day of work to their full extent without making any compromise in work life balance, as I am doing now.