MEMBER PROFILE

An introduction to some of the people at Hajimari

Satoru Yamanaka

Executive Directors

Biographical summary

Satoru Yamanaka was born in Tokyo in 1980.
After graduating from Tokyo Gakugei University, Yamanaka joined Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan Ltd. in 2004.
From his second year with the company, Yamanaka was assigned to personnel, where he handed a variety of personnel-related duties including hiring, labor management, program design and labor relations.
In 2010 Yamanaka joined Willgate, Inc.
After launching that company’s personnel department, Yamanaka continued working in personnel but branched out to managing a wide range of fields, including advertising, accounting and finance, sales, marketing and engineering.
Yamanaka went independent in 2019, founding FCRP Inc.
to engage in personnel consulting, business-launch consulting and related matters.
In 2020, while continuing to run FCRP, Yamanaka joined Hajimari as a consultant, with responsibility for Personnel Pro Partners, HRU, personnel and advertising.

What is your area of responsibility?

I’m the person responsible for Personnel Pro Partners, HRU, personnel and advertising.
I launched Personnel Pro Partners out of a desire to change the way companies do personnel management in Japan.
In the course of my consulting work, I had joined several companies and communicated with a wide range of others,
and troubles with personnel seemed to be a recurring theme.
Though many companies were concerned, they had no idea how to solve their problems.
In my 17 years in the personnel field, I had encountered such concerns many times,
and found that there were in fact many people who knew how to solve them.
I realized that if those talented people could help the companies struggling with their personnel issues,
we could change the way personnel affairs are handled in Japan.

What kind of company is Hajimari?

Hajimari is a Company that is incomplete in the best sense of the term, because we’re still moving toward achieving our ideals.
It’s full of people who have unique potential.
Working out how to fuse those potentials and benefit from their healthy competition is part of the excitement of working here.
When all that potential is unleashed, that’s the moment when Hajimari comes into its own as an organization.
So we’re still driving that process and we’re still lacking in many ways. We have to keep working together to build the Company.
And we still have a great need for talented people to join us in this adventure.

What is your vision going forward?

There’s so much I want to get done at this Company!
For starters, through my work at Personnel Pro Partners and HRU, I want to change the way personnel management is done in Japan.
I think we can get this done in about three years. I’m incredibly excited about that!
Another thing I want to accomplish is bringing more and more people on board who share our vision.
At the same time, I think we should branch out into areas like apparel and snacks,
because they create a space that makes life fun on a very direct level.
It would be amazing if we could create that space ourselves.
Finally, none of this is worthwhile if we don’t have fun doing it, so doing things that are fun and exciting are part of my vision for Hajimari.