Justa wants to be Japan’s number one recruitment solution for startups

What’s a startup with a tight budget to do when it comes to hiring new talent? Headhunters are too costly and paying exorbitant fees to post on job boards or run wanted ads just doesn’t make sense for an entry-level opening. Tokyo-based Justa wants to become the go-to recruitment solution for startups in Japan by making the whole process simple and accessible to everyone, regardless of HR experience or how much money is in the bank.

Justa operates out of the Red Brick Ventures incubator, located in the heart of Shibuya’s “Bit Valley.” Being a startup itself – and one that is, as project leader Nikola Pavesic puts it, “bootstrapped from within” – Justa understands that a venture-focused recruitment solution must keep costs to a minimum.

“Our main mission is two-fold,” Pavesic, 29, explains. “First, we want to be affordable, which is key to startups. The second is more idealistic, and that’s to boost the domestic startup culture at large.”

He continues:

I had Japanese friends who told me they hated their jobs. I noticed this pattern more and more – a lot of people my age, who are clearly intelligent and passionate and want to make a difference, were being held back by the culture. In Japan, people are often expected to stay with the same company for their whole career. We wanted to change that idea and offer startups as a viable exit plan.

A beta version of Justa, limited to startups, went live in mid-June. Registration opened to job-seekers, who can sign up via Facebook or Linkedin, in late August. The site has attracted about 70 registered startups and lists more than 200 job vacancies since then. More than half of those vacancies, according to Pavesic, are for engineers and designers. The remainder includes opportunities in various roles related to business development, marketing, and localization.

“We’re fully bilingual, making us approachable by both Japanese and foreigners,” Pavesic says. “Since our focus is on the Japanese market, 98 percent of our candidates are Japanese and almost all of our clients are domestic startups. Still, offering Justa in both Japanese and English is good for those outside of Japan trying to figure out what’s happening here.”

Clients include a number of standouts in the Tokyo startup ecosystem: translation service Gengo, crowdsourcing platform Lancers, and offline-focused ecommerce app Origami. Even well-established upstarts, like mobile gaming powerhouse Gungho and the Japan branch of Airbnb, are also listing job offers on the platform. Justa already hired an engineer through its own service, and other clients have already found interns or are in the interview process for full-time positions.

“Demand is high because there’s no service that’s exactly like ours,” Pavesic adds. “Similar services, like Wantedly, are based on social recruiting and not catering only to startups. We had more than 1,000 candidates sign up in the first month.”

See: Japan’s number one social recruiting service receives more than $2 million from Global Brain

Pavesic, pictured right, with members of the Justa team.

Skillful skill matching