From Chasing the Olympics to Taking On Business Challenges at Recruit

Make it to the Tokyo Olympics or retire from running. That was the choice I had set myself in college. After graduation, I found myself outside restaurants near Tokyo Station, walking in without appointments to propose listings on Recruit's restaurant platform. It was my first day in sales. How I got there, and where that first step has taken me, is the story I want to share.

I grew up in Japan and devoted myself to long-distance running, earning selection to represent Japan while in high school. I wanted to compete at a higher level in college, so I set my sights on studying in the U.S. and went to the University of California, Berkeley. From 2015 to 2019, I majored in sociology while competing all four years there, working to maintain good grades alongside athletics.

By 2019, I felt that reaching the Olympics was unlikely. Because I had given running everything and achieved all that I could, I decided to draw a line under it after graduating. The Japanese national championships in my final university year became my last competition. It was time to consider what I could tackle in business.

Many students around me were aiming for international consulting or finance firms. Others, particularly those in technical fields, hoped to stay in the United States and join major technology companies. My own priority was to identify the skills I wanted to build next.

I had invested heavily in athletics, but I had no practical business experience. Without being overconfident, I wanted to learn from the beginning. What attracted me to Recruit during its selection process was the opportunity to work directly in a business and understand how it earned revenue. As I considered consulting, I found myself drawn to the tangible experience of helping operate a business myself.

At the time, I thought of Recruit as a company that was exceptionally good at earning money. I wanted to understand the skills behind that through firsthand experience. That was why I joined. Walking into restaurants on my first day was an intense introduction, but it was also an entry point into the challenge I had chosen.

My roughly two years and three months in sales overlapped with the pandemic. When conditions eased, some restaurants invested in attracting customers. When restrictions returned, their situations could change immediately. Some struggled with cash flow; others closed. I kept asking what I could do for them.

Selling a more expensive product would achieve little if the restaurant could no longer survive. I learned to work alongside owners and support their decisions. Those experiences connected earning revenue with delivering something customers actually needed. They also taught me the weight of every yen a customer spent.

In January 2022, I moved into the planning work I had hoped to pursue. Through sales plans, targets, and staffing decisions, my responsibilities grew from working with individual restaurants to helping a sales organization operate.

One initiative aimed to improve our platform's share of restaurant listings, where we trailed a competitor. Using customer feedback gathered by sales colleagues, I designed an approach that lowered the initial listing price, making it easier for restaurants to join. The next step was to deliver value by bringing diners to their restaurants, giving them a reason to continue listing. The entry price and the reason to stay were parts of the same plan.

I then set targets for more than 100 salespeople, monitored progress, and repeatedly adjusted our approach based on results. My role had expanded from making proposals to restaurants myself to designing and driving an initiative carried out by a much larger group. That change made the growth in my responsibilities tangible.

Later, I wanted to make more use of my experience in the United States and my English skills. I applied for an internal transfer into Corporate Planning and the President Office. Today, I work directly under the company president in a project management office role, helping coordinate initiatives that span multiple departments. That work also involves discussions and negotiations with a U.S. affiliate.

In these conversations, I draw on both the language and communication skills I developed abroad and the business understanding I gained through sales and planning. My experience working with customers and sales teams in Japanese now supports work across the company. My study abroad experience, combined with the skills I gained through practical work, has broadened the scope of challenges I can tackle.

When considering your career, I suggest asking yourself what skills you want to develop and what responsibilities you would like to assume with them.

For me, Recruit has offered room to grow from working with restaurant owners to driving an initiative involving more than 100 salespeople, and then to company-wide projects directly under the president. I have been able to expand my work in the directions I hoped for while building on what I learned before. If you want to learn by taking ownership within a business and carry that experience into your next challenge, I would encourage you to talk with people at Recruit about the work you could do here.