Robert Walters eyes 70 percent staff boost in Japan

By Nathan Layne

TOKYO (Reuters) - British recruitment company Robert Walters (RWA.L) is looking to increase its employees in Japan by about 70 percent over the next two-and-a-half years as it taps demand for financial specialists and aims to land more local clients in a country where job mobility is on the rise.

Kevin Gibson, managing director of Robert Walters' Japan operations, told the Reuters Japan Investment Summit in Tokyo that its number of recruiters and other staff could climb to 250 by the end of 2009 and 300 by 2010 from about 175 now.

His bullish stance on hiring comes even as some of its core investment banking clients continue shedding staff in the wake of the subprime crisis and with the world's second-largest economy susceptible to a slowdown in global growth.

Robert Walters, whose rivals include Michael Page International Plc (MPI.L) and Hays Plc (HAYS.L), places a lot of back-office positions at western investment banks -- jobs that are comparatively immune to swings in the financial markets.

It also plans to grow by serving more Japanese clients and sees opportunities in demographic trends. Retired baby boomers, for example, could be brought back to the workplace in increasing number to help fill a shortage in the talent pool.

"This is a huge market and there are a number of areas which we haven't fully exploited yet," Gibson said.

He said that while the tradition of the "salaryman" with a job for life does not apply to younger workers in Japan, lingering resistance to job-hopping means each move requires more work and -- higher fees -- than Robert Walters sees elsewhere.

"The end of the salaryman era is a very old story but we actually see that day in and day out. And we see the propensity to move from job to job within the younger generation just as high as Singapore and Hong Kong now," Gibson said.