Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up for the myFT AI Digest – delivered straight to your inbox.
The head of Japan's largest recruitment agency said artificial intelligence will solve the country's labor shortage, but warned that its usefulness will be limited until people gain more confidence in the technology.
Japan “needs to do its best on AI,” said Hisayuki Idekoba, CEO of Recruit Holdings, in an interview with the Financial Times, pointing to the successes employers have had using AI tools to attract more job candidates.
He added that the adoption of AI in advanced economies will be slower than people expect, with progress hampered by deep-rooted public mistrust.
“It's not just about technological progress, it's also about how people feel about letting technology into their lives,” Edikoba said in an interview in Tokyo.
With worker shortages reported in various industries across the country due to an aging population, Recruit has bet big that using AI will make it faster and easier to match job seekers with companies looking to hire.
Recommended
“The way people search for jobs has not changed over the past few decades, and I have always felt that there is a need for innovation,” Edikoba said, citing cases where people were applying for jobs with the wrong skill sets, while companies could use artificial intelligence to improve performance. job description.
“I think people will find it easier to accept the back-end use of AI to improve recruiters’ productivity.”
The Japanese group, a leader in digitalization in travel bookings, restaurants and hair salons, acquired US jobs site Indeed in 2012 and has been expanding its artificial intelligence services for job search and matching.
On average, employers who used AI tools had a nearly 16 percent increase in applications, Edicoba said. He added that job seekers were 55 percent more likely to apply to a job recommended by the AI than to a job that appears in search results.
In January, Recruit launched IndeedPlus, a service that uses artificial intelligence to more efficiently distribute job ads across different job search sites, enabling faster matching between recruiters and applicants. In Japan, about 11 percent of Recruit users applied for a job recommended by AI.
“I'm finally starting to achieve what I was aiming for with a realistic acquisition,” Edikoba said, adding that he would consider additional technology acquisitions but not a large-scale acquisition aimed at increasing revenue.
Last month, the group said it expected its annual net profit to rise 31 percent from a year earlier to 354 billion yen ($2.4 billion), while revenue was expected to fall 0.9 percent to 3.4 trillion yen.
Across Japan, companies are having to rethink their entire business models due to worker shortages. Thirty percent of the population is over 65 years old, and pressure is increasing on the quality of basic services and public infrastructure.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has sounded the alarm about the shrinking labor force and overall population, warning last year: “Japan is standing on the brink of whether we can continue to function as a society.”
