Company Overview

1. Company Overview

Under the mission of "creating a society where people are filled with possibilities through connections," i-Plug <4177> aims to solve the problem of the rapid decline in Japan's workforce population from the perspective of matching between companies and job seekers through technology and platform business, with the vision of becoming the most chosen platform by the young generation who will lead the future. Specifically, i-Plug offers a new graduate offer-type job hunting service called "OfferBox", which allows companies to directly approach students who they want to hire and are interested in during their job hunting. Subsidiary E-Falcon Inc. provides aptitude testing service "eF-1G".

It is said that 30% of new graduate students who have been hired leave the company within three years due to a mismatch between the job seekers and job opportunities. To solve this problem, current CEO Tomoya Nakano, who established i-Plug in Itami City, Hyogo Prefecture with current directors Nubuaki Tanaka and others in April 2012, started a new graduate introduction business. However, struggling with insufficient knowledge of the new graduate introduction business and inadequate differentiation, i-Plug gave up on continuing the business after 20 business days. In such a harsh situation, Nakano came up with the idea of a direct recruiting service positioned against entry-type recruiting services and started offering "OfferBox" (student registration started in October 2012, offer transmission in December 2012). Subsequently, "OfferBox" became a growth driver for i-Plug and its business expanded smoothly. In March 2021, i-Plug was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) Mothers Market, and moved to the Growth Market with the market reorganization in April 2022.

The importance of job "matching" has become increasingly emphasized.

2. Business environment

New graduate recruiting services are said to be expanding steadily in the long run, and their methods can be broadly divided into entry-type and direct-type (offer-type, scout-type, reverse-recruitment-type, etc.). Compared to other methods, entry-type is the most common employment method. This is a style in which students browse job information that a company has posted on job search sites and apply for the job. The entry-type was suitable for large-scale recruitment during the high-growth period because it ensured a large number of applications, but recently, it has become outdated due to the difficulty of precisely hiring the talent needed and the cost of narrowing down prospective employees. Also, there are many companies that students are not aware of, either because they avoid them or because they are looking for qualification holders. For students, there are disadvantages such as information asymmetry and the need to choose a company within a short period of time. On the other hand, direct-type, which has begun to spread against the background of the penetration of the internet and the improvement of search functions, is a method in which companies access the profiles (database) of students who have registered and select the most appropriate candidate. Due to its ability to allow companies to select the optimal talent pinpointedly, the method is effective and has kept pace with the times.

In Japan, the importance of job "matching" has become even more important due to such factors as declining population, aging population, extension of healthy life expectancy, and the vulnerability of social security systems, and it is expected that the competition for talent acquisition will further intensify in the future. However, amid this aging society, it is necessary to form a 100-year career and it is expected that in the near future, individuals will choose the best job based on their life stage. For Japan, for companies, and for individuals, the importance of job "matching" is becoming ever more critical, and direct recruiting services are being recognized as an extremely effective and time-appropriate recruitment method that uses the internet and search technology to realize a person-centered selection process. It is predicted to continue to grow not only as a temporary solution to the COVID-19 pandemic but also as a standard for personnel acquisition in the future.

(Author: FISCO guest analyst Nobumitsu Miyata)