Pasona Singapore Pte. Ltd.

Ms. Lee: Our recruitment business has two pillars: placement services and contract staffing services. Contract staffing services include both long-term contracts and short-term temp assignments for a few days, such as events. The basic flow is that we receive a job description from the client, build a deep understanding of the requirements, and then search for the right candidates. Most of our clients are Japanese companies establishing operations in Singapore, which reflects the strength and trust of the Pasona brand. We also work with non-Japanese clients in sectors such as FMCG, banking and finance, and IT. We are generalists rather than industry specialists, and our strength is that our consultants can provide high-quality support for requirements in any industry or role. 

Our Singapore office is organized into a Recruitment Consultant Team and a Sales and Marketing Team. Consultants source and introduce candidates while also communicating directly with clients to gather feedback and handle negotiations. The sales team’s role is not limited to securing job orders; it also drives client engagement through proposals for our various services and the organization of seminars, bringing the needs identified during client visits back into the company. Communication with Japanese management is handled by the sales team, while local consultants work with local HR staff, so the most suitable person always faces the client. This teamwork is the source of our strength. We also receive cross-border requests for hiring in Japan and other Southeast Asian countries, and we collaborate with Pasona offices in other markets when needed.  

Ms. Morimura: We call this structure our “270-degree model,” a hybrid that sits between the fully divided 180-degree model and the end-to-end 360-degree model. With a lean team, having everyone operate at 360 degrees makes time allocation difficult. So, our sales team concentrates on business development and securing job orders, while consultants focus on sourcing yet maintaining direct communication with clients. Because the consultants who gather firsthand information from candidates every day are the ones speaking with clients, they can share accurate insights on market rates and hiring difficulties, minimizing the misunderstandings and information loss that come with relaying messages. Clients who have worked with a consultant once often return to that same consultant, so the role naturally evolves into account management as well. For our current organization, this model works extremely well. 

Ms. Morimura: The Singapore market has shifted significantly in recent years. Over the past two years or so, reconsidering the role of the Singapore office has become a common management theme among Japanese companies here, regardless of industry, driven by rising costs compared with neighboring countries. Companies are now selecting which functions to keep in Singapore, such as treasury, finance, planning, and regional headquarters, and which to move elsewhere. At the same time, we are seeing more companies from sectors such as retail, F&B, IT services, entertainment, and semiconductor equipment-related industries entering the Singapore market. Acquisitions of local companies by Japanese firms have also increased significantly compared with when I came to Singapore. The HR challenges companies face has become far more complex. 

Against that backdrop, we provide HR total solutions that go beyond recruitment. Management members posted to Singapore often come from sales or engineering backgrounds and carry the full range of HR issues, before and after hiring, without any dedicated HR staff. Responding to the high expectation that “if you bring it to Pasona, they will find a way,” we built a structure that accompanies companies through their entire journey: from pre-incorporation research to registration, establishing work rules and benefits, the first hires, payroll, and labor management. Rather than doing everything alone, we also partner with professionals in each field so that our clients can focus on their core business. Seeing a client’s anxiety to turn into relief is the greatest motivation in this work. 

Ms. Lee: In the recruitment business, data is everything. Before PORTERS, however, consultants used another system, and each managed progress in their own way. Consultant A and Consultant B recorded things differently, making it very difficult to consolidate accurate information in a timely manner. Even file naming conventions varied from person to person, which made the eventual data migration a genuinely tedious process. We needed a way to see everyone’s activities clearly and track them properly. Standardizing our data management process was the starting point for implementation. 

Ms. Lee: Being able to see everything in one place. Under a single job order, everyone can see who has proposed which candidates, how clients have responded, and how the entire project is progressing. Every number and every piece of information is centrally managed, and each member’s actions are visible, so the whole team works from the same picture. It also mattered greatly that PORTERS truly understood the meticulous, Japanese style of management we practice. That made them feel like a partner rather than just a vendor. 

Ms. Morimura: If I may add one more deciding factor, it is how much it means to manage client information in one place. Beyond recruitment, we provide a wide range of services as a group, from establishing work rules to payroll and labor management. Cross-selling, introducing several of these services to a single client, is therefore essential to us, and being able to manage the underlying client data in one place is an indispensable function for the business as a whole. We depend on data to the point where I wonder what we would do if PORTERS were gone, and at the center of that dependence is exactly this ability to keep everything in one place. 

Ms. Lee: Being able to see everything in one place. Under a single job order, everyone can see who has proposed which candidates, how clients have responded, and how the entire project is progressing. Every number and every piece of information is centrally managed, and each member’s actions are visible, so the whole team works from the same picture. It also mattered greatly that PORTERS truly understood the meticulous, Japanese style of management we practice. That made them feel like a partner rather than just a vendor. 

Ms. Morimura: If I may add one more deciding factor, it is how much it means to manage client information in one place. Beyond recruitment, we provide a wide range of services as a group, from establishing work rules to payroll and labor management. Cross-selling, introducing several of these services to a single client, is therefore essential to us, and being able to manage the underlying client data in one place is an indispensable function for the business as a whole. We depend on data to the point where I wonder what we would do if PORTERS were gone, and at the center of that dependence is exactly this ability to keep everything in one place. 

Ms. Lee: Three uses anchor for our daily work. The first is weekly reporting. Consultants used to report their weekly activities manually; now we extract reports directly from the system. Because job IDs are linked to candidate profiles, we can see immediately who has applied to which position and at what stage of the selection process they are, and managers no longer need to check with each consultant individually for updates. The second is candidate matching. We used to sort candidate information manually, color-coding profiles by category. Now the job matching and quick match functions let us narrow down candidates efficiently with keyword searches such as “administrative” or “accounts.” The results are not 100 percent, but they work as an effective first filter. The third is data export. We export data from PORTERS for statutory reporting to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and to build candidate lists for marketing, which is far faster than our old Excel-based approach. 

We also send job introduction emails and resume to clients directly from PORTERS using standardized templates. Because recipients are fixed in the system, we avoid human errors that easily occur in manual email work, such as sending a contact with a similar name. And since most of the information we need lives in the system, we can reach 10 to 20 candidates at once in just a few clicks, where previously we contacted each person individually and manually by phone or email.

Ms. Lee: Recruitment in Singapore operates under the strict fair employment framework of TAFEP, the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices. We cannot identify candidates by attributes such as race, religion, nationality, or age, so every candidate has to be evaluated purely on their skill set. For example, when a client needs someone who speaks Bahasa Indonesia, we search for “Bahasa Indonesia” as a skill keyword rather than looking for Indonesian nationals. Singaporeans and permanent residents may hold that skill too, and the final judgment is always based on the resume itself. Our consultants also get creative with keywords, using specialized terms and abbreviations that only candidates in certain professions would write on their resumes. On top of that, we combine multiple filters such as expected salary, notice period, current responsibilities, openness to sales roles, and whether the candidate holds a driver’s license. 

Ms. Lee: Time is the biggest one. Before PORTERS, extracting data, entering records, and tracking emails were all manual work, and the team sometimes had to work late into the evening. Now an update takes seconds, and everything is recorded in the system so it can be traced at any time. The hours we used to spend gathering data have been redirected to more productive work such as sourcing and calling candidates. 

Visibility has improved just as much. Each week we extract back-end data and track detailed indicators for every consultant: how many CVs were sent, weekly placements, and the momentum of activity across the month. That has made pipeline management far easier and allows us to forecast revenue for the coming months, something that was much harder to implement or visualize in our previous environment.

Ms. Morimura: Sarah has described the view from the front lines, but from a management perspective as well, I believe the value of PORTERS lies in how it turns data into the foundation of the business. The data we have accumulated is a vital strategic asset that supports our business, and having every piece of data accurately stored and instantly retrievable is what underpins the quality of our decisions. Rather than a flashy feature, it works quietly as the infrastructure of our business. That, I think, is the real strength of PORTERS. 

Ms. Lee: From an operational standpoint, the first is sheer data management power. Once the parameters are set, a single click gives you access to an enormous range of data, and the system is quick to operate. The second is how easy it is to customize. You can add or remove fields yourself with drag and drop and simply test things out, and once you learn the basics of report building, you can adjust fields to create all kinds of formats. Tasks like preparing a newsletter distribution list, where manual searches make it easy to miss a condition, become reliable: set the detailed conditions once in a report, and afterward you only change the date to get accurate data. It is a real safeguard against human error. And above all, there is support. Our dedicated PORTERS representatives are always there, and they are the first people we turn to whenever something comes up. That sense of security underpins our daily use of the system. 

Ms. Lee: If you are struggling to consolidate your data, you should absolutely adopt it. The very fact that you are considering it is proof that the need exists. Ask the PORTERS team for a demonstration and see the capabilities for yourself. The team is extremely cooperative, and we have no regrets whatsoever about the decision.

Ms. Lee: I wish I had understood earlier how the data inside the system connects together. Fields that look identical can actually be separate items recorded in different ways, and accuracy is only maintained when both are updated. Knowing that from the start would have saved us a great deal of data cleaning. That experience shaped how we rolled the system out internally. The core team first built a deep understanding of the system, then worked out how to explain each operation from the logic of the consultant’s workflow, so that people understood why they were performing each step rather than just clicking buttons. We then ran company-wide sessions where everyone operated the system at the same time, resolving screen differences and errors on the spot. Even now we take questions daily, reach out individually when data has not been entered correctly, and hold one-on-one sessions for anyone who is struggling. Unifying everyone’s account settings and templates to standardize the way we work has been the key to adoption.

Ms. Lee: We want to reach more clients and candidates: Japanese companies, local companies, and multinational corporations alike. We also want to keep raising the number of matches we deliver. Regulations exist, but there is still enormous potential to explore. Our aim is to be a one-stop partner that can provide the right talent whenever it is needed. 

Ms. Morimura: We want to be an indispensable partner that grows together with our clients. Building on the Pasona Group’s philosophy of well-being, we want to bring a preventive approach to HR: finding issues together with our clients and providing the right support before problems ever surface, much like preventive care in medicine. The foundation for that will be the data we accumulate every day.