Think it’s tough getting a top candidate to sign on the dotted line here in the UK?

Then have a little sympathy for recruiters in today’s vigorous business climate in Japan, where convincing a top Japanese candidate to accept a new job may even require getting Mum and Dad on board first, says the head of Robert Walters’ Japan operations.

“Thirty-five-year-old accountants will say: ‘I can’t change jobs; my mother doesn’t think it’s a good idea’,” managing director Kevin Gibson told Recruiter. “Offers get turned down because bosses will go to see parents to talk their children out of leaving.”

As more Western banks and companies such as Tesco expand their operations to Japan, the recruitment market there continues to grow. At Robert Walters, for example, turnover in the Tokyo office has “almost doubled every year in the last three years”, Gibson says. “This is the best market in the world for a recruiter.”

Fortunately, Japan’s long-standing tradition of remaining with a single employer for life is beginning to fade in parallel with cultural and societal changes playing out throughout the workplace: increasing acceptance of women as professionals and the development of a part-time workforce, for example.

A new attitude is dawning, says Gibson says, that “changing jobs can be good for you, and that it’s a feature of career advancement – not a source of embarrassment”.

Nevertheless, recruiters must drive the process of identifying and luring talent to move to companies that are expanding into the Japanese market – so much so that entertaining candidates take priority over wining and dining clients.

Gibson estimates that 70% of the emphasis is on “candidate acquisition and control”. He adds: “Recruiting in Japan is a high-contact sport.”

Japanese recruitment companies are, for now, focusing on finding candidates for junior posts and general office work while Western firms take on the higher-level recruiting assignments, Gibson says.

A major push for Robert Walters will be to hire more Japanese recruiters, and the company has started an internship programme to bring in bilingual Japanese speakers.