Senior Associate, Talent Acquisition

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Job Description

We are looking for an experienced, curious and hands-on Recruiter to join our Talent Acquisition team in Tokyo. (4 days onsite is required at Yaesu Midtown Office).

This is an exciting opportunity to become the first full-time Recruiter to join our Head of Talent Acquisition in Japan, helping us continue to build and evolve our recruiting capability in the market.

You will work closely with the Head of Talent Acquisition, Japan and our RPO recruiting partners while taking ownership of searches across a diverse range of businesses, including real estate, logistics, data centers, infrastructure and investments, as well as other corporate functions as needed.

This role offers a unique opportunity for someone who already has a solid foundation in recruiting but wants to take their capabilities to the next level. Working directly with an experienced Talent Acquisition leader, you will have the opportunity to learn how to build recruiting strategies from the ground up and put them into practice, while developing deeper expertise across direct sourcing, talent mapping, stakeholder management, recruiting analytics, technology and employer branding.

We are looking for someone who enjoys solving recruiting problems. Japan can be a challenging talent market, but simply explaining why a search is difficult is not enough. We want someone whose instinct is to ask, “What else can we try?” and “Is there a smarter way to get there?”

If you are curious about businesses and people, enjoy finding talent others may not find, and want the opportunity to shape how recruiting is done in Japan, this could be a great next step in your recruiting career.

What You’ll Do

• Build and Execute Recruiting Strategies
• Partner closely with hiring managers to understand not only the requirements of a role, but the business need behind the hire.
• Translate hiring needs into a clear recruiting strategy, considering the target talent market, sourcing channels, candidate proposition, timeline and potential challenges.
• Work backwards from target hiring dates to develop and execute a practical recruiting plan.
• Manage the full recruitment lifecycle from initial search briefing and sourcing through interviews, feedback, offer management and pre-hire activities.
• Maintain momentum throughout the recruitment process and proactively drive next steps with candidates and hiring managers.
• Manage multiple searches with different priorities and deadlines, making thoughtful decisions about where to focus time and resources.
• Identify risks and bottlenecks early and recommend practical solutions before they impact hiring timelines.
• Conduct talent mapping and market research to understand relevant organizations, talent pools and individual candidates.
• Develop sustainable pipelines for recurring and strategically important hiring needs/
• Work as one team with our RPO recruiting partners, while personally owning key searches and direct-sourcing activity and helping maintain a consistent, high-quality recruiting approach.
• Use data, market feedback and candidate conversations to understand what may need to change.
• Consider alternative approaches such as adjacent talent pools, different sourcing strategies, referrals, talent communities, employer branding, external partners and new technology.
• Develop strong relationships with hiring managers and senior business leaders.
• Communicate confidently with stakeholders at different levels and across different geographies and cultures.
• Maintain accurate and timely candidate, requisition and recruiting activity information in Workday.
• Use recruiting data to understand pipeline health, identify bottlenecks and determine where action is needed.
• Bring a high level of accuracy and attention to detail to candidate information and recruiting operations.
• Be comfortable with technology and quick to learn new systems and tools.

Japanese Requirement (Fluency is Required)

• Contribute to employer branding and talent attraction initiatives in Japan.
• Draft, review and edit high-quality Japanese-language content for candidates and external audiences.
• Help develop content and ideas that communicate who we are, what we do and why talented people should consider joining us.

What We’re Looking For

We don't expect every successful candidate to have followed the same career path. What matters most is your recruiting foundation, curiosity, judgment and ability to turn ideas into action.

Ideal Candidate

• Approximately 5+ years of recruiting experience, ideally including experience within an in-house Talent Acquisition function.
• A strong track record of direct sourcing and engaging passive talent.
• Strong research and talent-mapping capabilities.
• The ability to understand a business need and translate it into a practical recruiting strategy.
• Experience managing multiple searches with competing priorities and deadlines.
• A strong sense of ownership and urgency, with the ability to plan backwards from hiring deadlines and drive searches toward an outcome.
• Creative and resourceful problem-solving skills, with the ability to change strategy when an approach is not working.
• Strong analytical capabilities and the ability to use data and market feedback to determine next steps.
• Confidence with recruiting technology and ATS platforms. Experience with Workday Recruiting is strongly preferred.
• Technology fluency and an interest in using data, digital tools and emerging technology to improve recruiting.
• Excellent written and verbal Japanese, including the ability to draft and edit polished external-facing content.
• Strong business English, with the confidence to participate actively in discussions with international stakeholders.

Reporting Relationships

There is no set deadline to apply for this job opportunity. Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the search is no longer active.