Thorough, customer-first interviews produced a high-quality recruiting landing page that solved the hiring problem

Industry: Engineering outsourcing services
Employees: 429
Challenge: Strengthening recruitment (mid-career and new graduate)

Zuken Tech Inc. (head office: Yokohama, Kanagawa) supports the “optimisation of operations” for electrical and mechanical CAD with technical services
built on a track record of more than 20 years since its founding.
Feeling a need to strengthen its recruitment of new graduates and mid-career hires, the company began working with NowVillage on creating a recruitment landing page.
This time, we spoke with Mr Miyahigashi, Chief of Recruitment, Training and Career Counselling in the HR and General Affairs Department, who is responsible for recruitment at Zuken Tech, about the background to choosing NowVillage’s support, the results, and what he expects from us going forward.

A challenge we had long been aware of but hadn’t been able to tackle:
recruitment marketing in the digital space

―First, could you tell us your position and about your company?

I’m Miyahigashi, a chief in the HR and General Affairs Department at Zuken Tech Inc.
We provide total support for design system operations and hardware and software development, helping customers solve their challenges from two sides: the operation and management of design tools and systems such as CAD, CAE and PLM, and hands-on design and development work in mechanical, electrical and electronic, LSI and software.

―What are your team’s responsibilities and goals?

Our team mainly handles mid-career and new graduate recruitment.
We take care of all the work in the recruitment phase single-handedly, such as information sessions and listings on job sites.
Our annual targets are 25 new graduate hires and 36 mid-career hires.

―What challenges did you have before coming to us?

We were meeting our annual targets, but we had two major challenges.
The first was that our online presence for recruitment was weak.
The second was that work depended on particular individuals.
As for the first, “a weak online presence”,
we had relied heavily on our parent company’s brand until now.

However, considering future talent shortages, we felt we needed to sharpen Zuken Tech’s own ability to recruit
so that we would be chosen by higher-calibre candidates.

In particular, there was a lot of room to review our presence online, which is now the main place people gather information. Specifically, across our corporate site, recruitment site, social media and so on, we felt we needed information that would give jobseekers a reason to become interested in Zuken Tech, and messaging that would make jobseekers who visited the site with just a little interest think, “I want to work here.”

As for the second, “operational efficiency”:

As recruiters, we had honed our presentations at information sessions and our face-to-face pitches about the company’s appeal, but these had become skills tied to individuals.

To scale up recruitment, and so that our limited staff time could be invested in more important areas, we felt the need to turn our current know-how into explicit knowledge.
For example, by turning it into tools using video, we imagined limiting the parts that need direct involvement and speeding up the transfer of skills to other members.

However, even though we felt the need, we had no web know-how in-house and didn’t know where to start.

We do have PR and marketing teams, but they are very small and we knew they were fully occupied with sales-related work, so there was no department we could rely on.

As a result, we could already picture ourselves stumbling from the start, and we had become hesitant, thinking it might be better not to try at all than to end up with something half-done.

―Why did you choose us?

That said, it was clear that this was a challenge we had to solve, so we got quotes from three companies, including large firms and companies with a good reputation, and heard what each had to say.

There wasn’t much difference in cost, but each company’s approach differed greatly. Among them, Mr Aoki of NowVillage stood out by far, compared with the other companies, in his attitude of trying to understand Zuken Tech.
I used to work in sales myself, so I can clearly see differences in responsiveness. To put it bluntly, when I’m on the receiving end of half-hearted sales, I lose interest.

Mr Aoki properly understood our challenges, thought about them from a long-term perspective, and then put forward “the proposal we needed right now”.
So, regardless of company size or reputation, we chose NowVillage, as we felt they would sincerely engage with solving our challenges.

The best creative, found by insisting on the target audience’s perspective

―What do you see as our distinguishing features?

Their strength in “understanding the company”, “direction” and “creative”.
Their ability to turn complex information, such as the thoughts of the recruiting side, the people on the front line and jobseekers, into words and diagrams was outstanding.
Many times, when our discussions got stuck, they moved things forward by organising the points at issue or giving easy-to-understand examples.
And, to repeat myself, their eagerness when I explained the company was amazing!
Including students and jobseekers, nobody had ever asked us so many questions before. (laughs)　
I felt that they were “genuinely trying to get to know our company” in the true sense.
My impression was also that they were hungry for first-hand information, interviewing extensively, for example by interviewing employees who had actually joined the company in order to set the persona.
I didn’t have the impression that other web production companies would go that far, so I was surprised they would do that much for this price.
And the way they properly reflected the results of their information gathering in the output, the recruitment landing page, was impressive.
Down to the smallest details, such as the “employee voices” to reduce the gap people feel after joining and the structure of sections to bring us closer to jobseekers, they designed and wrote it with a clear sense of purpose.

I was also very happy that they gave us serious advice, from Zuken Tech’s perspective, on other areas beyond the scope of this project.

―What do you expect from NowVillage going forward?

Of course effective recruitment methods such as video production and ad operations,
but beyond that I’d also like to consult them on a wide range of things, even team building within the organisation.

―From your point of view, Mr Miyahigashi, what kind of companies would you recommend NowVillage to?

Put simply, I think it’s small and mid-sized companies that haven’t been able to keep up with the times.
When the website has started to feel like something from the Showa era, for example, the employees inside are actually well aware of it and see it as a problem.
After all, it’s sad for employees too when the website, the face of their company, is out of date.
But even when they’re aware of it, they can’t communicate the expected benefits well and senior management doesn’t understand, or they want to improve but don’t know how; I think NowVillage is extremely valuable for companies like that.
What I think is great about NowVillage is that they face challenges from the same perspective as us, and move things forward while clearly setting out the aims and the plan.

Even companies like ours that hesitate to step into unexplored territory can, I think, entrust it to them with peace of mind.

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Zuken Tech Inc.
Website: https://www.zukentec.co.jp/
Industry: Engineering outsourcing services
Employees: 429

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