by Stephan Hauser
Paul Levine is no ordinary man. He comes, sees, and conquers. He arrived in Japan in 1985 on a stopover from Taipei to Hawaii. With roughly $100 cash in his pocket, Paul liked what he saw and decided to stay and go for it. Today he is president of Access Technology Japan (ATJ), one of the fastest-growing and most successful headhunting firms in Tokyo, employing a staff of 20 in Japan plus retaining a crew of headhunters in three States in the U.S.
Headhunting is counted among some of the tougher businesses, where turnover, break-offs and burnout of staff are high. Why has Levine succeeded where others have failed? Why is Levine called the King of Headhunters by friend and foe alike? In a city abuzz with high-tech start-ups hungry for IT specialists and talented managers, Paul Levine is clearly delivering the goods better than the rest. Tokyo Journal visited his office in Akasaka, where ATJ occupies two floors across from the station.
tj Is it true that you only had a hundred bucks to your name when you arrived in Japan -- without any connections, anybody you knew?
Levine Absolutely.
tj So what was your first move?
Levine I was 23 then, and I couldn’t call daddy to wire funds. I had a 14-day visa, and I had to move fast. I had two bottles of duty-free whiskey, sold them on a street corner in Shinjuku, and tripled my bankroll. Then I found various work -- some teaching jobs-- and eventually joined a one-man headhunting firm. I learned what the recruiting industry is and how not to manage a consulting company. Within four weeks I was made vice-president.
tj How long does it take to learn the ropes in this business? And are there any special requirements for becoming a successful headhunter?
Levine Headhunting isn’t taught at university, and it’s also not a protected profession like dentist or lawyer. Anybody can call himself a headhunter if he likes. It took me about 5 years to graduate to the big league. Today I know many of the big players in foreign IT start-ups, and they call us when they need help. Nothing much surprises me at this point.
It takes a special kind of person, though, to become a good headhunter. Most of all you need BALLS like this [Levine gestures to simulate the size of two grapefruits]. And you must be sincere and genuinely interested in helping people with their careers.
tj When and why did you decide to start your own headhunting firm?
Levine You must understand that there is tremendous pressure to perform. In this business your boss is constantly pushing you to make placement -- constantly bitching, pushing, nagging and threatening. There comes a point when you can’t take the abuse anymore. That’s why so many good people in this business burn out, switch companies, or simply leave the profession altogether.
I always felt it should be possible to be a successful headhunter without someone breathing down your neck and giving you a hard time. All I ever wanted was a nice office with a killer sound system where I could drink Moselle wine and type résumés in peace. So in 1992 I started ATJ -- not because I wanted to become rich, but because I wanted to be in a position to do quality work without having to take a lot of crap from a second-rate hack.
tj Are you saying that because your boss was treating you like garbage, you decided to become your own boss?
Levine Exactly. I mean, I love this job so much [that] all the long hours of work don’t bother me at all. The success I have had with my own company would today have been the success of my boss’ company, and I would be just as happy about it. So when I think of how to manage my team I recall how it felt back then and ask myself if I have become like the jerks I previously worked for. The day I become like that is the day I quit and retire as a semipro poker player on an Indian reservation in California.
tj Your boss didn’t see your potential then?
Levine I don’t know. Maybe he did. But he just didn’t know how to make an employee happy.
tj So in March of ‘92 you rented an office and started on your own. After cutting out the middle man, were you earning heaps of money?
Levine It’s not the money that counts. There’s only so much you can spend. It’s the satisfaction of providing a useful service and doing it successfully. In this business people are going independent all the time. And most of the time they are taking their employer’s clients with them. But very few really make a go of it, and before they know it find themselves either working for another headhunter or disappearing from the scene altogether.
Rather than looking for the quick buck, I tried to figure out a way to run a headhunting company with a transparent payment system, good training, good atmosphere, a company where staff would start the day early and stay all night because they loved it, not because some guy beat quotas into them.
tj What is a transparent payment system
in the headhunting industry?
Levine Success does not come easily. One must pay the dues and suffer quite a bit before it gets to be fun. The introduction of a candidate is only the beginning of the process, not the end. We are the most expensive success-fee-based shop in Tokyo, and I’m proud of that fact. Our clients are delighted to pay us, because we exceed their expectations and go the extra mile to add value to the process and hopefully to their operation in Tokyo. We do not have "sales quotas" which must be met or the consultant is fired. That would force the consultant to treat people like oranges in a juice-making machine. That is the rot. It is not uncommon that a good headhunter only closes one deal a month. And if you are just starting out it may take you as long as a year to close your first deal. If I believe in him, that would be OK. As a result, only two regular consultants have left the team since ‘94.
We pay new headhunters a decent base to survive the initial months. However, in most other firms the base is puny or is only a draw against future commissions. In other words, the moment the rookie starts making placements, his commission is withheld to pay off his previous "loans" (speak: base salary).
And then there are the conditional rules, commissions attached to a complicated sliding scale, and all kinds of other special circumstances. This often creates a situation where the headhunter is constantly in debt to the company he works for, and due to the complex set of payment conditions never really knows whether he is going to get paid his commission or whether he’ll get some BS explanation about the special rules that only his boss understands.
No wonder such environment causes stress and disillusion. And as a result people are constantly leaving and "stealing" clients away from their previous employers.
On the other hand, at my company the base is paid with no strings attached. And commissions are paid when a deal is made. It’s simple, it’s transparent, and it’s fair. In the last five years two regular consultants have left. We found a job for one, and the other is in the U.S.A. and does part-time work for us there. Turnover of staff is the other guy’s problem. No one quits ATJ. And that’s just on the staffing side.
tj So what are the other sides?
Levine Basically there are two more sides: the people side, and the client side. The people side is the specialists that come to us, and with whom we work out 10-year career plans and then proceed to placing them at companies where they can achieve their full professional potential. These are the human beings. And their needs supercede all else in the process.
Then comes the client side, the companies that seek professionals from us.
tj Sounds like all you need is a steady flow of specialists looking for jobs and enough companies with positions to fill. You probably have a very large database and a sophisticated search engine assisting you with coming up with optimum matches.
Levine While it is true that we fully utilize technology to help our operation, there is much more to it than simply pulling matches out of a computer. What really counts is truly understanding the individual, his skills as well as his personal outlook on his career. Only then will we truly succeed in placing that individual in a company that he will be comfortable working with -- in terms of job satisfaction rather than compensation. Successful on the job leads directly to job satisfaction, and job satisfaction, over the long-term, is our objective in any placement. Nobody is helped by simply placing an engineer with a firm that happens to need one. Two-thirds of a good match has to do with what the candidate hopes to achieve, his personality, career path, "intention" and corporate culture. In the end neither the client nor the individual are happy with the kind of matches that come from a database without the human touch. We aim for quality introductions and lasting placements, not short-term revenue targets.
tj Come to think of it, in a scenario where a job placement doesn’t work out, the individual may ask you to find him another job, and at the same time the client will need a new recruit. In other words, placing the wrong guy with the wrong client looks like the surest way to get repeat business.
Levine Headhunters pursuing that model are like unscrupulous drug dealers offering a quick fix. They don’t care whether the fix is tainted as long as they can collect right here and now.
In ATJ we are aggressive for good business but have no interest in bad business. We are straight -- no bullshit. To us an individual is not a piece of meat with a résumé attached. To us he is a human being with a family, with dreams, and a role to play in society. When we prescribe a particular opportunity to a candidate, he can be reasonably sure we have given due consideration prior to making a recommendation. I like to compare good recruiting to a doctor recommending a medicine and bad recruiting as a drug dealer selling what he’s got on hand.
tj Is headhunting coming of age in Japan?
Levine Headhunting is very much behind in its development compared with the U.S. Here in Japan it’s still a kind of cottage industry, really. There are no excellent recruiting companies in Japan -- ATJ included. We are marginally OK, while 98% of the rest are poor to terrible; and therefore by just being OK we, by default, are the best. Our clients tell us we are the best of the recruiters they work with. We get a similar reaction from our candidates. Based on their comments, I can state that we are the best in Tokyo today. We are constantly struggling to become truly excellent and define the highest standard of excellence for the recruiting practice in Tokyo. We will achieve this -- victory-or-death.
tj Are you covering a niche market?
Levine Our clients are U.S. companies that are world leaders in the information-technology industry. That includes vendors in the broad IT market with a specialty in communication-related technologies. We find IT people for technology-using organizations in securities and financial sectors.
A company entering the Japanese market can come to us to find everything from IT engineers to marketing and sales people to technical support, administrative staff and the Country Manager.
tj In summary, why are you The Man, and what makes your company so different from the rest?
Levine We are a "No BS" shop. You always get the straight story from Paul Levine. You get the real story, not a line of crap.
We are the only recruiting company specializing in foreign-capitalized high-tech start-ups. We have 20 headhunters working exclusively on IT start-ups, 15 hours a day. No other recruiting company in Japan has that many hard-core consultants working on IT and nothing but IT. We dominate our niche.
I am still WITH my people, constantly consulting and advising, constantly training. I’m a hands-on guy. I know all the deals, all the people, all the companies. That gives me the edge that no desk-managed shop can beat.
We have a high standard of ethics. We don’t "steal" people away from companies to fill a job. We work hard. We always go the extra mile.
Other headhunting firms are our best advertising. They screw up, and in the long run we will get their business.
I motivate my people. I give them positive reinforcement. In other companies the headhunters are competing against each other. At ATJ we are a team. We are all friends, part of a big family. And we all have the same goal: finding the best man for the job.
Contact: Access Technology, Japan
3-2-6 Akasaka, Minato-ku
Tokyo 107-0052
Tel: 3588-8835 Fax: 3588-0899
www.atj.co.jp
e-mail: info@atj.co.jp