Coming Full Circle: Why I Returned to Tokyo
Dear colleagues, friends, and partners,
I want to share our background story to explain my return to Japan, and our launch of TalentHub Partners K.K.
Building a Career in Japan
Tokyo has always been at the centre of my professional and personal life. My first real connection came as a student at the University of Tokyo, an experience that hooked me on Japan and set the stage for everything that followed. I built my career here from the ground up — first as one of the earliest members of Boyd & Moore, later as a leader at RGF Executive, and then as founder of Experis Executive, which grew into a respected executive search and RPO business before being acquired by ManpowerGroup Japan. Along the way I also had a stint at VMware, where I managed RPO delivery while simultaneously consulting on market entry — essentially two jobs at once, but an experience that gave me a unique view into both client and agency perspectives.
What Three Firms Taught Me
As I prepared to return to Japan, I found myself reflecting on this journey. I am proud to have played a part in three search firms that each achieved successful acquisitions. While my contribution was just one piece of the puzzle, I like to think it was a small but significant part of their growth stories. More importantly, each step taught me lessons — about leadership, about building teams, and about the importance of evolving with the market — that I now carry into TalentHub.
Family First
Japan is also home for my family. My wife is Japanese, and our three sons — all Japanese passport holders — grew up in Tokyo before we decided to send them to New Zealand for schooling. The aim was to give them both sides of their heritage: the grounding of life in Japan and the international exposure of family, cousins, and English-language education in New Zealand. Those years abroad were invaluable. For the first time, I was able to spend real time with my children — time I had sacrificed in my workaholic years in Tokyo. I was present for their schooling, their sports, and their day-to-day lives. At the same time, I worked with my co-founder, Konstantin Ivanov, to build what started as Referable — a referral-generation SaaS platform.
With my family in Tokyo — Japan has always been our home and now we’re back!
Lessons From Down Under
We proved the concept with pilots, but breaking into the ANZ market was extraordinarily tough for a bootstrapped venture without an established local network. The technology worked, but sign-off cycles were slow, the market crowded, and we learned quickly that even with successful pilots, growth would be challenging without deeper roots. We experimented, pivoted, and kept refining. Out of that process came the conviction that we had the right foundation, but needed the right time and the right market.
Returning to Tokyo
By 2024, the timing was clear. Our eldest son had already graduated university in Auckland and taken on the family business while also chasing national representation in volleyball (proud Dad moments!!). Another son had returned to Tokyo for university, and the youngest remained in high school. Family life had shifted again, and it was time for me to return to Japan.
Coming back to Tokyo felt natural. Within 24 hours of arriving on one of my first trips back, I bumped into old colleagues on the street — something that never happens in Auckland. Tokyo is where my professional networks live, and it still feels like home.
What Has (and Hasn’t) Changed in Recruitment
What I found on my return is that the fundamentals of recruitment in Japan remain the same — and yet the challenges have sharpened. Clients still say the hardest part is finding talent. Agencies still say clients are easy, candidates are hard. Digital tools like Findy and BizReach have grown, but they remain operator-dependent. Success-based pricing models dominate, and while everyone complains about LinkedIn’s rising costs, it remains a baseline tool.
Focusing on RPO and Technology
Against this backdrop, we adjusted our strategy. Instead of stretching thin, we doubled down on recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) as the place where our technology could deliver the most impact. Our early work on referral mapping and microsites became the core of new modules designed to help clients control their narrative while enabling agencies to add their own profiles, recruiter credibility, testimonials, and even calendars for direct booking. Instead of just sending job descriptions, recruiters will be able to share structured, branded content that candidates trust — and clients will be able to see which agencies are truly representing them as champions.
Executive search remains important, and our platform supports it with AI-powered candidate scoring, enrichment, and market mapping. But in the near term, RPO is where the model will shine. Having met with many agencies in Tokyo since my return, it is clear that the majority are still operating with workflows that haven’t evolved in more than a decade. A few are ahead, but most still pitch clients in their own way, with little consistency or control from the client side. We intend to change that.
Meeting Market Demands
The demand for digital transformation in recruitment is real and the need for better solutions in Japan is pressing. Our goal with TalentHub is simple: to offer recruitment solutions that work — solutions that create lasting positive impact. Through four core modules — Agency Activation, Talent Branding, Referral Mapping, and Channel Optimisation — we are building tools designed to improve how clients and agencies work together, raise the quality of candidate engagement, and leave the recruitment process stronger than we found it.
Partners
The “Partners” in our name reflects more than just clients. We want to collaborate with agencies as true partners, giving them secure and private access to the same tools and microsites so they can deliver consistently and credibly. Our vision is that partner agencies benefit directly from the platform — raising standards across the board and helping everyone deliver more value.
Preparing for Launch
We are now in the final stages of preparation, with our recruitment licence application submitted to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. At present, TalentHub Partners K.K. is focused on building the foundation for launch — preparing to support executive search, RPO delivery, and potential white-labelling of our platform. The delays we faced, partly from relying on the wrong partner for company setup, set us back six to eight months. But they also gave us valuable time to refine our core modules and strengthen our conviction about what matters most.
We’ve had interest from several RPO providers, both in Japan and overseas, and even conversations about potential white-labelling. Once our recruitment licence is granted, we will have options: to prove the platform ourselves, and later to offer it as a white-labelled solution to others. The lessons of the past decade — from scaling a recruitment business in Tokyo, to building SaaS in New Zealand, to piloting referral solutions, and now returning to Japan — have all led here.
The Next Chapter
This is the next chapter — not just for me, but for the recruiters and clients we will support. For my family too, it’s a continuation of our life in Japan. Tokyo is where my career began, where my children grew up, and where our roots remain. It’s where I’ve built, scaled, and exited before — and it’s where I’ve chosen to return, building again for the future.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing more as we continue this journey.
Murray Clarke
Co-Founder
TalentHub Partners K.K.
