It's not uncommon to see someone juggling general affairs and accounting duties, putting off updating job postings, spending half a day responding to applicants, and having their main job phone ring while scheduling interviews. By the time they finally get around to thinking about recruitment in the evening, they've run out of energy. When the topic of "recruitment didn't go well this quarter" comes up in a review meeting, the cause is often dismissed as "the person in charge should have tried harder." But is that really the case?<\/p>\n
Is the fact that it's being done "part-time" due to the incompetence of the person in charge?<\/h2>\n
In conclusion, in most cases, the reason why tasks are handled half-heartedly is not due to the individual's ability. It's a result of the company handing over the actual work without anyone clearly stating the "prerequisites" for hiring.<\/p>\n
The recruitment process, even just listing the steps involved, is far more extensive than one might imagine, including selecting recruitment platforms, creating job descriptions, handling applicant inquiries, scheduling interviews, and following up with successful candidates. Moreover, if the premise of "what kind of person do we want to hire?" isn't established before each decision, the person in charge has no choice but to rely solely on their own intuition. This isn't just a matter of doing it as a side job; it's closer to forcing the person in charge to use the most time-consuming method\u2014making decisions from scratch each time.<\/p>\n
The weight of handling recruitment tasks alone is difficult to truly grasp until you actually experience it. Furthermore, if it's a side job alongside your main responsibilities, you simply don't have the time to dedicate yourself to it fully from the start. It's not a matter of "lack of experience" or "lack of commitment," but rather a lack of dedicated time that leads to delayed decisions and a reactive approach. We don't want to confuse these two points.<\/p>\n
This is not a unique phenomenon occurring only in a few companies. A survey conducted by Recruit Management Solutions and Nikkei BP (targeting 779 new graduate recruitment managers, February 2026) revealed that approximately 60% of new graduate recruitment managers responded that they are "struggling to achieve their recruitment targets," and about two-thirds feel that "the current methods need to be changed." The reason why they know they need to change but can't is not because the managers lack motivation, but rather because they are so caught up in sticking to the same schedule and media selection as the previous year that they haven't allocated the time within the company to reconsider "why they are recruiting in the first place."<\/p>\n In conclusion, the root cause of recruitment becoming a side job is that companies treat recruitment only as a task to fill vacancies when they arise.<\/p>\n We believe that "recruitment failures cannot be rectified through training." That's why recruitment plans should be designed by working backward from the medium-term management plan, rather than addressing immediate vacancies. What kind of organization do we want to create in three or five years? What roles will be needed, and what kind of people, with what strengths, should we entrust with what responsibilities? Simply handing over the practical task of "finding people" without this blueprint is like asking someone to guide you to unfamiliar territory without a map.<\/p>\n Through our work consulting with HR companies, we've come to realize something: what companies truly need isn't someone to handle the recruitment process itself, but rather the underlying design and planning that precedes it. The process of articulating who you want to hire, what you want them to do, and working backward from the company's future\u2014if this is left vague and the practical tasks are simply handed over to someone handling multiple roles, that person will be forced to stop and think at every single decision. A single line in a job posting, a single interview question\u2014if the premise is clear, it can be decided in minutes, but without that premise, it can become a source of hours of agonizing.<\/p>\n This is actually based on the same techniques we use every day in our branding work. When a client says, "We need good talent," we don't just post a job opening based on those words alone. We ask them to dig deeper into the vague words until they take on a concrete form: what exactly does "good" mean, why is that person needed, and what is currently lacking in the organization? We don't act on vague requests in an vague way. We give shape to possibilities that haven't yet been put into words. This is the very foundation of our work, and it applies directly to the initial design of our recruitment process.<\/p>\n In short, the premise design is about translating the outline of "the kind of person who will thrive in our company," which is determined by working backward from the company's future, into language that everyone can understand.<\/p>\n Specifically, we consider three main elements. First, competencies\u2014defined by working backward from the company's future, representing the behaviors and strengths that will be valuable and lead to results within our company\u2014should be put into words as actions, not abstract slogans. Instead of saying "a proactive person," we should specify it as "someone who tries to bridge the gap between the current situation and the objective in their own way, before waiting for instructions." Second, we must connect that person profile with what the company wants to entrust to them. Without a clear outline of the role, interview questions and evaluation criteria will vary from person to person. Third, this premise should not remain in the mind of just one person handling multiple roles, but should be shared with management and the head of HR. If only one person knows the premise, it is ultimately the same as putting the burden of hiring decisions on that one person.<\/p>\n If these three things are in place, the speed of decision-making will change dramatically, even if the person in charge has other responsibilities. It will shift from hiring based on on-the-spot decisions to hiring based on pre-defined procedures. What seemed like a side job will actually become a job that can be handled even with just a few minutes of effort, provided the necessary prerequisites are met.<\/p>\n We believe that ideals and policies are useless if they are merely stated. Slogans posted on the wall or words spoken at the annual management plan presentation only gain meaning when they are used in daily hiring decisions. The same applies to the underlying assumptions. Instead of creating them once and being done with it, we need to create a situation where we can return to those assumptions every time we make a daily decision, such as asking interview questions, writing a sentence in a job description, or talking to successful candidates. Only when this is achieved can those in charge of multiple roles escape the situation of "relying solely on their own intuition and making decisions from scratch every time."<\/p>\n When we reflect on the fact that "recruitment didn't go well this quarter either," we first want to ask ourselves this question:Was the half-hearted approach due to the individual's work style, or was it a design flaw where the company failed to allocate sufficient time for providing prerequisites for hiring?<\/strong><\/p>\n Recruitment is a core function that shapes the future of a company. Because it's an area that cannot be corrected through training, it's essential that management itself dedicates time to designing the underlying assumptions before leaving it to the efforts of the person in charge. At Lionheart, we use the "technique of concretizing vague words" that we have cultivated in the field of branding to help translate the assumptions of recruitment into language that will function regardless of who is in charge. If you feel that you would like to take a look together at how well-defined the assumptions are in your company's recruitment process, please feel free to contact us.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It's not uncommon to see people juggling general affairs and accounting duties, putting off updating job postings, spending half a day responding to applicants, and having their main job calls ring while scheduling interviews. By the time they finally get around to thinking about recruitment in the evening, they've run out of energy\u2014this kind of scene is far from uncommon.","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[39,46,58,82,96,98],"class_list":["post-2820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hr","tag-recruitment","tag-branding","tag-hr","tag-82","tag-96","tag-98"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3008,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions\/3008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2820"}],"curies":[{"name":"WordPress","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Has](\"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/corp3-fig01.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nHas your company or organization designed its recruitment process not as an administrative task, but as a core function that builds the company's foundation?<\/h2>\n
What constitutes a "premise design" that functions regardless of who is in charge?<\/h2>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.lionheart.co.jp\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/corp3-fig02.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nThree actions you can start today<\/h2>\n
\n
Summary: Is it the person in charge who's doing it half-heartedly, or is it the company's design team?<\/h2>\n