The worst situation for a manager, and indeed for a company, is an employee who has been fired but who won't leave. Although in theory Japanese companies can hire and fire as they need to, it is the gray zone of the labour law and the power of the Labour Standards Inspection Office (Roudoukijun-kyoku) which holds most companies back from doing so. As a number of foreign firms...

In conservative Japan, one of the most important acts you can perform as a manager is to let a staff member go. Not only are there legal issues, but also a political minefield to negotiate if you want to maintain the morale of your remaining staff. Firings happen for many reasons. While in the West...

Thanks to those readers who responded to my Surviving the Weeding Process series. I had one good piece of feedback from a guy who wondered if my advice of getting certified really was a productive thing to do when in fact experience is probably much more important and useful to future employers. I would agree with him 100% that experience beats certification in this current market, especially since I'm a high-school drop-out myself! However, the point of the series was...

In this age of performance improvement, candidate-hunting recruitment consultants and company HR people are overworked and under appreciated. To keep up with the demands of their business managers, they are having to become more efficient and a common way they're doing this is to cut down the time spent on overall interviews by weeding out weaker candidates early on. The weeding process happens by throwing out resumes that don't include...