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Berlitz Japan

Education Management • 1,600 employees • Based in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan

Berlitz Japan is the leading provider of language instruction in the country. They have over 1,600 employees and instructors working across locations throughout Japan and in their headquarters in Tokyo and Osaka.

“We’ve been working with Trakstar Hire since the very beginning and I’ve never felt let down by the software, company, or support I’ve received.”

-Mark Behrens, Senior HR Manager

Challenges before Trakstar Hire

Berlitz Japan previously used a Japanese-language applicant tracking system (ATS) with basic functionality and spreadsheets to manage their hiring. The semi-manually process presented the following challenges:

• Candidates who were not proficient in Japanese struggled to apply. They would usually contact Berlitz’s helpline and be asked to email a PDF-version of the application.  
• The ATS was designed to only accept Japanese-language input meaning that applicants who were not proficient in Japanese had difficulty using the required system entry format. This usually resulted in applicants contacting a help-line and their application being handled by email. For applicants who could use the settings, the hiring team converted submitted applications into PDFs, sent the PDFs to relevant hiring managers, and tracked candidates in a spreadsheet.
• The ATS itself was only in Japanese while most of the users were non-Japanese speakers. In addition, collaborating and sharing information within the ATS was difficult. The system admin couldn’t set individual user accounts access limitations, nor could they request team members to log in, review a candidate’s application, and share their thoughts. 
• The ATS was in Japanese so candidates who didn’t speak the language had to email their application. The hiring team would then convert it into a PDF, send it to the correct hiring manager, and keep track of each candidate in the spreadsheet.
• Collaborating within the ATS was difficult. The system admin couldn’t create individual user accounts for team members to log in, review a candidate’s application, and share their thoughts. 
• The ATS didn’t have email functionality. All communication with candidates took place outside the system.

How Hire solved their challenges

Berlitz Japan transitioned to Trakstar Hire in 2014, making them one of our first customers. They’ve watched the system evolve and experience the following benefits today:

• All of Berlitz Japan’s hiring activities for their 50+ locations in Japan are housed in Hire. 
• They’re able to create user accounts with different levels of access for each hiring team member. Everyone can share their thoughts on an applicant by adding comments to the candidate profile.  
• The system admin can easily share candidate profiles with any hiring manager. This is especially helpful when a candidate is better suited for a different job than the one they applied for. 
• They can email candidates directly from Hire. The messaging history and any documents a candidate sends are automatically stored in their profile.

Key results

• Much of Berlitz Japan’s hiring process is now automated and nearly all the busy work they previously experience has been eliminated. 
• They’re able to create custom application questions and heavily use the Questionnaire function to help them get a sense of how candidates communicate which is an important soft skill for language instructors.
• Also very importantly the change gave the local hiring managers immediate access to candidate information and to see the hiring pipeline.