01
Realistic time-to-hire
A calibrated estimate for your specific bilingual role: weeks to first interview, weeks to offer accepted, where the bottleneck likely sits.
Free Strategy Call
Hiring Bilingual Talent in Japan Is Hard.
Let's Make It Easier.
Book a free 30-minute call with Emmanuel Gendre, ex-Google recruiter, to map a realistic path to your next bilingual hire in Japan - sourcing channels, time-to-hire, and budget, all on one call.
- 30 minutes
- Video call
- No obligation
- No sales pitch
The 30 minutes
What we cover, minute by minute
Concrete agenda. No discovery-call theatre, no slides. We come in, we map your situation, you leave with a plan.
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0 - 5 min
Where you are now
Roles open, what you have tried, what is and isn't working. No long context dump needed.
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5 - 20 min
Pipeline & sourcing audit
We look at your sourcing channels, response rates, and conversion math for bilingual candidates in your role.
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20 - 25 min
Which strategy fits
Active sourcing, agency, referral campaign, or hybrid. Honest answer about which tool the role calls for.
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25 - 30 min
Your questions
Five minutes to answer anything: salary benchmarks, visa, contracts, market timing.
What you walk away with
Three deliverables. Yours to keep.
You get these whether or not you ever hire SaiyouTeam. No gating, no upsell, no follow-up nag.
02
Sourcing-channel shortlist
Ranked channels for bilingual candidates in your role: where the talent actually sits, expected response rates, and which channels to skip.
03
Honest budget comparison
What it actually costs to fill the role through each route - agency, SaiyouTeam, or building it in-house. Numbers, not hand-waving.
Book your slot
Pick a time that works for you
All times shown in Japan Standard Time (JST, UTC+9). The link to the call lands in your inbox immediately after booking.
Fit check
Is this call for you?
A good fit if
- You are a SMB or startup hiring bilingual talent in Japan
- You have 1-10 open roles, mostly tech or operator
- You are frustrated with agency fees or low-quality candidates
- You want a clear sourcing strategy, not just a list of CVs
- You are budgeting your hiring plan for the next 1-3 quarters
Not the right call if
- You are a candidate looking for a job (try TechieCV)
- You are a recruitment agency selling services
- You need staffing or dispatch (派遣) workers, not direct hires
- You are an enterprise (1,000+ employees) with a full TA team
Who runs the call
Emmanuel Gendre
Founder, SaiyouTeam · TechieCV K.K.
Emmanuel advises small and mid-sized companies (SMBs) on HR and recruiting in Japan. He brings 12 years recruiting experience, including a recruiter role at Google in EMEA and years as a Recruitment Consultant placing bilingual IT professionals in Japan. Bilingual hiring is the question SMB clients ask him about most often, and this strategy call is part of that advisory work.
Every call is run by Emmanuel personally. No SDRs, no rotating account managers, no scripted discovery flow.
4x
Cheaper than agency fees
42 days
Average time-to-hire
200%
Better retention rate
We had been chasing a bilingual senior backend engineer for four months through two agencies. Emmanuel mapped the channel mix on the call, we ran a sourcing campaign, and we offered six weeks later. At a quarter of what one agency placement would have cost.
Akiko M.
Head of Engineering · Tokyo SaaS startup
I went into the call expecting a sales pitch. I came out with a one-page memo ranking five sourcing channels for our bilingual designer role and a realistic time-to-hire estimate. Genuinely the most useful 30 minutes I have spent on hiring this year.
David L.
Founder · Bilingual fintech, Osaka
Emmanuel's blunt about which roles agencies are actually right for, which is rare. He told us to keep working with our agency for one specific role and helped us run sourcing in-house for the other three. We have made two hires already.
Ryo K.
COO · Industrial robotics, Yokohama
Why this call exists
Hiring bilingual talent in Japan, the honest version
Bilingual professionals - English plus business-level Japanese (日本語ビジネスレベル), or the reverse - make up a small slice of Japan's working population. Most are passively employed at competitive firms. Four structural problems make the search harder than it looks.
01
The pool is small, and mostly passive
Job-board postings reach a fraction of the bilingual talent pool because the senior half almost never opens a job site. Active sourcing on LinkedIn and BizReach (ビズリーチ) is the only consistent way to reach them.
02
Agency fees compound the problem
Recruitment agencies in Japan typically charge 30 to 35 percent of annual salary per placement. For a 12M JPY senior bilingual engineer that is 3.6M JPY for one hire, with no guarantee on the next role.
03
Speed and quality usually trade off
Agencies optimize for speed of placement, not match quality. Building in-house gets you better fits but takes 6 to 12 months to set up a sourcing function from scratch. Most SMBs cannot wait.
04
Visa and contracts add friction
Bilingual hires often need an Engineer / Specialist (技人国) or Highly Skilled Professional (高度専門職) visa, plus a clean Japanese employment contract (労働契約書). Getting these wrong derails offers in the final week.
Want the deep version before the call? The free Hiring Playbook covers all of the above with calculators, templates and visa checklists.
FAQ
The questions founders actually ask before booking.
Bilingual professionals make up a small percentage of Japan's working population, and most are passively employed at competitive firms. Job boards reach a fraction of that pool, agency fees run 30 to 35 percent of annual salary, and active sourcing on LinkedIn and BizReach (ビズリーチ) is the only reliable channel for senior bilingual roles. We run that sourcing as your in-house team, at a fraction of agency cost.
Yes. The 30-minute call is free. You walk away with a sourcing-channel recommendation and a rough time-to-hire estimate even if you never hire us. No sales pitch, no follow-up pressure.
Primarily tech and engineering roles in Japan: software engineers, data and ML, product, design, infrastructure, engineering management. Bilingual sales, BD and operator roles are also common. We do not cover finance front-office, legal partner-track or medical roles.
Still useful. Many founders book the call 2 to 3 months before opening headcount, to plan budget and timeline. You can also browse the free Hiring Playbook (calculators, salary benchmarks, visa guides) in the meantime.
Emmanuel Gendre runs every call personally. 12 years of recruiting experience, including a recruiter role at Google in EMEA and years as a Recruitment Consultant placing IT professionals in Japan.
For SMBs hiring 1 to 10 bilingual roles, yes. We run the entire process end-to-end (search strategy, sourcing, screening, interview design) for a flat monthly fee, typically 4x cheaper than success-based agency fees. For one-off senior placements where you only need a name on your desk, an agency may still be the right tool.
You receive a one-page recap with the sourcing-channel mix discussed, a time-to-hire estimate, and a budget comparison (agency vs. SaiyouTeam vs. internal). If you want to move forward, we kick off a 4-week sourcing campaign. If not, you keep the recap and your time.
Yes, on request. Email info@techiecv.com with your standard NDA before the call and we will sign it. Confidentiality is the default for every call regardless.
Not ready for a call?
Two other ways to get value
Ready to map your bilingual hire?
30 minutes. No obligation. Walk away with a plan whether you hire us or not.
Emmanuel runs every call personally.
ex-Google · 12 years recruiting in Japan
特定募集情報等提供事業者 · Registered Provider of Specified Recruitment Information Services