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Even after the Recruit scandal[1], Recruit still has pretty much an absolute monopoly on HR in Japan. Their massive recruiting events are the primary method of finding a job. At the events, applicants are commoditized by filling out forms with the same subset of credentials, everyone wears pretty much the same suit, and even those with naturally lighter hair dye it black. Recruiting events for students and recent grads are separate from those for the previously employed (which are not as well attended by major companies). They're a major contributor to the status quo in Japan where high school and college names are the most important credential (which makes entrance exam scores of the utmost importance), introductory pay is low, and where those who leave a previous job have a difficult time finding a new one.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruit_scandal

> At the events, applicants are commoditized by filling out forms with the same subset of credentials, everyone wears pretty much the same suit, and even those with naturally lighter hair dye it black.

I'm confused. Why is this particularly related to Recruit? Those rules are observed in any recruiting event in Japan. E.g. students are often recruited at on-campus events, which as far as I know have nothing to do with Recruit. Neither has the weird custom of hand-written resumes.

Recruit is one of those huge companies that people don't know about outside of Japan, another one being Rakuten. These companies (as well as Tencent, Baidu, etc.) are starting to set their sights on Silicon Valley and I think you're going to see some pretty aggressive moves from them as they try to catch up with (or outright buy out) US companies.
In the case of Rakuten it currently looks like a total disaster, the global Rakuten site is only a tad bit less ugly than the japanese one and machine translated, rendering it more or less useless.

I'm sure Amazon.co.jp wouldn't fare well in Japan either if they were doing such a half-assed job as the english Rakuten site.

For what is worth, Rakuten is #1 at online retail in Japan. Amazon.co.jp is #2 but the difference is pretty significant.
Rakuten bought play.com (uk site) and priceminister.com (french site) recently. In Paris, the priceminister ads in the subway have Rakuten's name on them. So I think Rakuten has already started to expand.
Indeed.com was pretty much trash anyway. Maybe they can sell it as a write-off
I'd never heard of it but Alexa 256 (73 US) would indicate they are doing something very, very right.
I was referring to credibility not traffic.
I've always thought Indeed was pretty great, and easy to use.