Using HubSpot in a staffing business: placement rate up 140% and faster management decisions | Migi Naname Ue Inc.

■ Company profile
Miginanameue Inc.
Website: https://migi-nanameue.co.jp/
Industry: Recruitment
Employees: 150
Products: Sales Hub, Marketing Hub

Miginanameue Inc. (founded September 2018, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) offers a wide range of staffing services, from career-change support centred on young and early-career candidates, through placement of experienced professionals and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for employers, to career coaching and explainer content.

Now in its eighth year, the company has around 150 employees. It runs several business areas and expands each while keeping them in balance, with a particular focus on recruitment and RPO for experienced hires.

The company’s strengths are its attentive, hands-on support for “job seekers in their 20s who are building their careers” and its “ability to design matches that squarely address employers’ hiring needs”.

The problem: “the spreadsheet won’t respond” — a data bottleneck eating into the team’s productivity

Miginanameue originally managed all candidate, job, company and selection information in one place in spreadsheets.
As the business grew, data on candidates, jobs, companies and selection increased at an accelerating rate, and every increase in rows and formulas made processing slower, creating bottlenecks such as “we can’t get to the information we want” and “entering data takes forever”.

Duplicate data entry had also become routine, cutting into the time career advisors (CAs) should have been spending on their core work of interviews and matching.

With medium- to long-term growth as a given, the company needed a foundation for accurately capturing and analysing factual data such as lead times and using it in decisions, but that very foundation had stopped functioning.

Adopting HubSpot: a design that puts “ease of use” for the team first

As a fundamental solution for their data management, Miginanameue were already considering HubSpot, with its excellent scalability and ease of use.

While considering which partner to ask for implementation support, they were introduced to NowVillage Inc. by an acquaintance. Valuing our deep understanding of the recruitment industry and our ability to design with day-to-day operation in mind, they chose us as their implementation partner.

After listening to their problems, we set two goals — “automate non-core tasks as far as possible so the team can focus on activities that lead to results” and “manage data correctly to improve the quality of business decisions” — and supported the HubSpot implementation.

On that basis, we normalised the complex data structure specific to recruitment (candidates, jobs, companies, selection) and built a database in HubSpot that links them together. At the same time, we clarified the “standard way of working” needed to embed it in day-to-day operations.

〈What we did〉

・Building the database (object design specialised for recruitment)
We designed the candidate, job, company and selection objects and defined the relationships between them, ensuring data consistency.

・Training on workflows
Through basic designs for automatic task assignment, reminders and follow-ups, we minimised CAs’ routine work. By automating non-core tasks, we helped them concentrate on their core work.

・Training on reporting
We designed dashboard operation, visualisation of conversion rates and lead times, and KPI tracking, building a foundation for better-quality business decisions.

・Phased rollout
To embed the system in the team as quickly as possible, we followed a “small monitor group → improvements → company-wide rollout” process, tuning it with the team’s “usability” as the top priority. This prevented the system from being abandoned.

In this way, rather than building a complex “everything included” system from the start, we began operating with “a scope that does not burden the people using it”.
In regular brainstorming sessions, we thoroughly eliminated points that “could be done in theory but would be too complex to run in practice”, preventing confusion on the ground.

Results: more focus on core work, and a sharper view of the business

With NowVillage’s phased support, Miginanameue gradually began to see the following results, and ultimately achieved the following.

■ What HubSpot delivered
・Using HubSpot as MA/CRM to manage candidates from registration to placement in one place
・Placements per CA up 120%
・Placement rate up 140%

Here are some other results from implementation through to adoption.

1. Adoption on the ground: minimal friction and a smooth transition
Led by the team leaders, a trial with a pilot team and incorporation of their feedback were followed by a company-wide rollout (phased introduction), and as a result the system took hold without major disruption (friction). Designing from the team’s point of view paid off, keeping the stress of the system migration to a minimum.

2. A foundation that captures “the data they want”, and faster business decisions
Now that information is managed correctly, important metrics directly tied to management decisions, such as lead times by selection stage and by job, which were previously hard to obtain, can be collected and visualised accurately and in real time. This has improved both the quality and the speed of business decisions.

3. A shift to fact-based communication, and less management effort
As data became a common language, friction caused by misunderstandings between team members and managers has decreased. Discussions have shifted from “interpretations” such as “I think this” to “facts shown by the data”. As a result, managers spend less time on management, and more productive conversations have become possible.

4. An environment for focusing on core work
With the bottlenecks in data entry and search resolved and tasks increasingly automated through workflows, career advisors (CAs) now have more time to focus on their real core work of interviews and matching.

A comment from Miginanameue Inc.

Mr Yokota, Director of Miginanameue Inc., shared the following comment on the results.

“When we were using spreadsheets, the files got slower as the data grew, and entering and viewing information tended to stall. That was a major source of stress for the team.
After adopting HubSpot, things changed completely, and now we can accurately track even detailed metrics such as lead time by job. As a result, conversations within the team have shifted from ‘gut feeling’ to ‘facts’, and the quality of discussion has improved.
Going forward, as well as strengthening the link with Marketing Hub, we want to actively pursue further automation using APIs and AI, and speed up decision-making even more, both in management and on the ground.”

They also gave the following as the deciding factors in choosing NowVillage Inc. as their partner.

“NowVillage’s implementation support was kind and thorough from start to finish, and I felt they deeply understood not only HubSpot but ‘the structure of the business itself’.
They continued to follow up after implementation, and I really feel we built ‘a system the team can keep using’ together.
In particular, NowVillage’s phased rollout process, which took the team’s perspective into account, kept disruption to a minimum and led to very smooth adoption.
I can confidently recommend NowVillage Inc. to any company considering HubSpot.”

The HubSpot certified partner behind the implementation: NowVillage Inc.

More than the support NowVillage provided, this case was made possible by Miginanameue’s leadership and the cooperation of everyone on their team.
Through this project, we were reminded once again that “an operational design the team can keep using” and “a partner who understands the business structure and works alongside the client” are the keys to unlocking a tool’s true value.

As a HubSpot Platinum Partner, NowVillage Inc. works with three watchwords — trust, expertise and care — aiming to understand each client’s business model in depth and to support the adoption and embedding of “a HubSpot that is genuinely used on the ground and delivers results”.

“Our data has become too heavy to handle”
“We want an environment where we can focus on core work”
“We want to move away from managing things in spreadsheets”

If this sounds like you, please feel free to get in touch.

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