Mr. Shinohara：Would you mind providing us the following information? Your business, number of employees, and your revenue?

Mr. Smith：Skillhouse is celebrating our 12 anniversary this year. We are a specialized IT staffing and services company providing all industries and markets with temporary, contract, permanent placement and outsourcing service focused solely on providing IT Professional staffing services. We currently employ over 200 staff and continue to grow each year.

Our vision is to build a company and brand whereby companies that need IT staffing services automatically think of and contact Skillhouse. Equally important, to build a company and brand whereby IT Professionals looking for new opportunities think of and register with Skillhouse.

Mr. Shinohara：What differentiates Skillhouse from other staffing companies?

Mr. Smith：There are several differentiators. The primary distinction is that we only focus on providing the market with IT professionals with core IT skills within application development, desktop and network engineering and project and IT management. We attract over 300 IT applicants each month and are currently working with over 400 clients providing only IT staffing services. The entire company focuses on this core activity.
Secondly, almost 50% of our Japanese IT professionals speak advanced English and just over 50% of our non-Japanese IT professionals speak advanced Japanese.

Third, we have a majority of our IT candidates coming from the securities, banking, insurance, retail, services and pharma industries.
As a result, if a client is looking for an IT professional, with bilingual capabilities and with experience in a specific industry, we can provide the best available IT professionals to meet client and candidate needs.
It should be noted that our primary focus is on candidates and they come first. For most of the past three decades, it’s been a candidate driven market for IT professionals and our core objective is to secure the right career opportunity for them.

Mr. Shinohara：Would you mind sharing us your career? When did you become interested in Japan?

Mr. Smith：My parents had two sons, and they always wanted a daughter. When I was in college, they had emptiness syndrome. In order to fill that void, my parents started inviting exchange students for homestay. Our first homestay student was from Japan, and she stayed in our house for one year. During summer vacation, I came home and stayed together. That probably was the first exposure I had to Japan.
To be honest, how I got here was by chance, but a lucky chance. I was very young in my career and working for a US based specialty IT staffing Services Company in the early 90s. The largest client of our company required the same IT staffing support services we were delivering in the US to be provided to their Japan operations (which was the head of Asia/Pacific at the time). Our company president did not want to expand out of the US, but when our client applied pressure, we established a branch office here. No one wanted to go and as I had a lot of sales success on the account and perhaps more so for being the only one raising my hand, was given the opportunity to establish the Japanese Branch at a very young age.

Mr. Shinohara：What kind of company?

Mr. Smith：A specialty IT Staffing and IT Outsourcing Services Firm headquartered in New York.

Mr. Shinohara：What is the story behind the establishment of Skillhouse Staffing Solutions K.K.?

Mr. Smith：At the time of me wanting to establish my own firm, I had already enjoyed the ups and downs of specialty IT staffing and outsourcing services for 12+ years in sales and management and in the US and Japan. Although I was successful, had a lot of control and was “comfortable,” I knew that if I was able to make my own strategies, have the final say and manage the business the- way I wanted, I could be much more successful. I wanted start and build a company that was 1. Dedicated to Candidates; 2. Exceed Client expectations and; 3. Create a working environment unique and enjoyable for employees. Thus Skillhouse was born.

Mr. Shinohara：Currently in Japan, the lack of IT professionals is a concern. In 2020, it is said there will be a lack of 370,000 professionals. What is the future direction of Skillhouse?

Mr. Smith：I don’t know how the calculation is done or the fact that there is going to be a shortage of 370,000 in 2020. I do know, however, that there is a shortage now. This has been the case for the past decade plus.
There are two ways to solve the IT Professional shortage problem. First, there needs to be a much stronger effort in creating greater supply whereby more and more University students major in Computer Science. I have several ideas on how this can be accomplished, but will save that for perhaps another interview discussion. Second is to supplement the current workforce with non-Japanese IT professionals. We have seen many companies over the past 20 years take advantage of this and many, many more are going to have to be flexible enough take advantage of the tremendous resource pool outside of Japan.
By looking into the data of the last 15 years, a lot of data center management and general helpdesk services, development, etc. have been offshored by many companies. This is due, in-part, to an IT Professional shortage, but primarily because it’s too expensive to employ, maintain and manage these activities in Japan.

Mr. Shinohara：What do you think about IT engineers in the field of AI and security? In the near future, are you thinking of focusing on those fields as well?

Mr. Smith：IT security, definitely! The reason is, in the past IT security had its own little department and specialty. Now, IT security is a part of development teams, project management teams, help desk teams, and corporate governance. Therefore I think the integration of IT security now is embedded in almost every business process or service and affects all departments within an organization.
As far as AI, there is not a current market need on a large scale for this type of IT professional. Until such vendors, such as IBM’s Watson and others make more and more progress to make AI a commercial business need, it will remain a niche for the short term. Long term, AI will be equally integrated into all departments just as IT security is now.

Mr. Shinohara：You have been using our website “Daijob.com’ for a long time, how is the contribution for your business?

Mr. Smith：The one consistent fact about IT staffing services is that there will always be a market need for this service. The one differentiator that makes a company successful is their ability to attract, employ and retain these valuable resources. By utilizing many deferent tools, tactics and strategies to focus on this activity is key to success. Daijob is one of the tools we have relied on for 12 years and will continue to do so as we are able to accomplish many of our recruitment goals with the support and service from Daijob!