Loving it in Tokyo

Nazim Sayed, Senior Business Analyst with Royal Bank of Scotland based in Tokyo, is an ardent admirer of Japan and its work culture. The 37-year-old got his first taste of Japanese ways in the late 1990s during a stint with IT export firm Datamatics in Mumbai, when he had to deal with a lot of Japanese clients. Delighted with the experience, Sayed decided to shift base, and has been working in Japan for the past 14 years. “My stints with investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have taken me all over the world, but the work culture in Japan is very different. People are friendly, and honesty and hard work are still the most prized assets,” he says.

As an Indian, Sayed may have been an oddity when he moved to Japan 14 years ago, but is part of a crowd now. Indians are being hired in Japan like never before. Executive search firms like Elixir Consulting, Global Hunt and Executive Access confirm that there has been a sharp rise in the number of Indians being hired in Japan. Both Japanese and multinational companies are doing so; Indian firms like Infosys, Wipro, and Larsen and Toubro are also looking to ramp up operations there. “We have witnessed a 20 to 30 per cent increase in the number of Indians being hired for Japan over the past year. The recent tsunami slowed down the hiring for a brief period, but it is coming back to normal,” says Ratnesh Kumar, Manager, International Practice, at Elixir Consulting. Adds Executive Access Managing Director Ronesh Puri:“Indian talent is being recognised globally, and being hired in Japan is a reflection of that growing Indian market.” He points out that many Japanese companies are looking at increasing investments in India and they consider it prudent to hire Indians who can help in scripting their strategy. Sunil Goyal, Director of Global Hunt, attributes the trend to the availability of manpower in India at low cost. “Indian resources are skilled, cost-effective and English speaking. And Indians are lapping it up since the compensation levels in Japan are about twice the amount they would get in India,” he says. Agrees Sayed: “If I were to move back to India, I would have to take a pay cut of about 70 per cent.”

Apart from the usual sunrise sectors like information technology, IT enabled services, and banking and financial services, others such as manufacturing, infrastructure and power are also in the thick of hiring in Japan. The demand is highest in the mid and senior levels across functions like engineering, construction, documentation, quality control and architecture. So, if you are itching to make a global career move, opportunity beckons eastwards.