Changing the world one job at a time, with Akiko from Wantedly.
She enters the room with a gleaming smile across her face, and both hands tucked into her jeans. Her shoulders are hunched, building on her cool demeanour and laid back poise, as she sits across from me with intense eyes that I can’t get away from. It’s clear from the get go that she means business.
After all, she’s single-handedly built Japan’s largest social recruiting platform, with over a hundred million users.
“I coded the first version of the site. Initially, it was a Q&A service. Something like Quora. But I realised that people on it who were the most important part. That’s what made me quit Goldman Sachs to work at Facebook, even though it was just a small company in Japan.”
It was during her time there, that she saw how fast news spread all over the world, and how it impacted them in a very personal way. She saw how a social network could trigger political change among people, and change history. That’s when she knew that she wanted to impact lives in a big way through Wantedly.
“If you think about it, thirty percent of your life is work. And if that sucks, your life sucks. But if it’s really fun, your life is going to be really meaningful. That’s my mission. It’s the centre of what I do, which is to build a world where work means passion,” she says, with a resounding seriousness that demands the attention of everyone in the room.
She goes on to tell me how crazy it is that the smartest people in Japan are afraid of peer pressure, but so few of them stop to think about how short life really is. Changing these rules of society was the only thing she could see herself doing; changing how people were hired, was her way of doing that.
“Setting the right expectation is crucial. Also, you have to work hard to define your culture in a clear way,” she says. “If you can’t illustrate the problem, people can’t resonate with the company’s mission. It takes effort and time, but it’s very important. That’s the only way you can attract top talent, and give them a reason to stay.”
I go on to quiz Akiko about what keeps her going. Without pausing to think, she says that it’s about wanting to chase happiness, and that that is the same quality she looks for in people when hiring. In her view, many people are simply afraid of confronting what makes them happy. It takes a select few who have the courage to take action and step out of what is expected of them. She pauses to think about her own words for a second, before nodding to herself affirmatively.
“A good day for me?” Akiko repeats my question, and taps a finger on her chin in thought. “I constantly have to think about tomorrow, not just today. So if I can have half a day to myself, to do things that no one else in the company can do, then that’ll be a very productive day.”
