Recruit (company)



Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. (株式会社リクルートホールディングス), also known as RGF (an acronym for Recruit Global Family) outside Japan, is a human resources holding company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded by Hiromasa Ezoe (江副浩正), then an educational psychology student at the University of Tokyo, as Daigaku Shimbun Koukokusha (大学新聞広告社, University Newspaper Advertisement Company) in 1960. It was a spin-off from the Todai Shimbun (the University of Tokyo's main student newspaper).

In FY 2021, it reported sales of 2,872 billion Yen and revenue of 297 billion Yen, with 55.5% of its sales generated overseas. Its flagship world-wide services include the job search engine Indeed and the employer review site Glassdoor. The company is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a component of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core 30 indices. As of March 2024, the company has the 13th largest market capitalisation in the country of 11.4 trillion Yen.

Overview
Founded by Hiromasa Ezoe, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. primarily offers staffing, promotional media, human resource media, and IT solutions. In recent years, the company has significantly focused on IT-driven business sectors. It holds business competitions within the company that all employees can participate in, fostering a corporate culture that encourages freely initiating new ventures. Popular terms such as "freeter (フリーター, freelancing part-timers)", "employment ice age (就職氷河期)", and "gaten-kei (ガテン系, meaning blue-collar jobs)" have originated from information magazines it has published.

Following the Recruit scandal in 1988, which was regarded as one of the largest post-war scandals in Japan, the company faced a loss of credibility, adversity worsened further by the burst of the bubble economy. This led to the manifestation of bad assets issues with subsidiaries such as Recruit Cosmos (real estate) and First Finance (financial services). The entire group found itself in a difficult situation. In June 1992, its shares were transferred to the major supermarket chain Daiei, placing it under the Daiei Group. However, due to deteriorating performance within the Daiei Group, Recruit Holdings separated around the year 2000. At the time when it joined the Daiei Group, Daiei adopted a stance of being a "silent shareholder" without assuming any debts. Consequently, under Kunio Takagi from Daiei, Recruit managed to settle approximately 1.4 trillion yen in interest-bearing debt from the bubble era's real estate and non-bank business failures by the fiscal year ending in March 1994 by itself. Currently, Recruit operates independently of any corporate group, maintaining neutrality in the service industry while expanding its business operations.

History

 * 2011/10 – The company acquired US-based Staffmark for US$295 million.
 * 2012/10 – The company acquired US-based Indeed.
 * 2014/10 – The company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
 * 2015 – Recruit Holdings acquired Treatwell for €180 million.
 * 2015 – Recruit Holdings acquired Quandoo for US$219 million.
 * 2016 – Recruit Holdings acquired USG People for €1.42 billion.
 * 2016 – Recruit Holdings acquired Simply Hired, a competitor of Indeed.
 * 2018/3 – Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. acquires the Canadian job search website Workopolis.
 * 2018/5 – Recruit Holdings acquired Glassdoor for US$1.2 billion in cash.
 * 2020/7 – Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. Relinquishes its stakeholding in Treatwell