I joined the company in 2021. After graduating from university, I joined an agency specializing in the IT industry, and in my previous position I was in charge of recruitment and talent development at a smartphone game company. I changed jobs to join COVER because a colleague of mine at my previous company joined COVER and introduced it to me. Currently, as the manager of the recruitment team in the Human Resources Department, I am responsible for recruiting around 200 people a year, both new graduates and mid-career hires.

I learned about COVER through a recruitment agency. And while I had only the names VTuber and hololive production were only vaguely familiar, I strongly felt that both the CEO and the employees are passionate about content and that inspired me to join the company. There are currently around 600 employees at COVER, but when I first joined there were only 60 to 70 of us, and the office occupied just one floor. When I first joined, there were only three people in the Back Office, but now there are 40 to 50 people in total, including administration and human resource, so I feel that the company has grown a lot. I feel that we are becoming a stronger organization day by day.

There were about 200 employees when I joined the company. I saw great potential in the realm of IT x 2D content to compete globally from Japan, and I was excited by the momentum I felt from hololive production’s prospects for global growth. That was a key factor in my decision. It is a rare experience to be able to experience a company evolving into a global one. I strongly felt that I wanted to experience this process in this one and only life I have.

COVER today has the shared company-wide challenge of “We’re going global!”, and there is a sense of both fun and accomplishment in overcoming this challenge step by step. 

For example, we recently collaborated with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and being involved in content that is spreading around the world is a major attraction of COVER. Forty percent of hololive production users are overseas, and I feel that global expansion will accelerate in the future.

Although number of employees has increased tenfold since I joined the company, the company culture has not changed. There are many people who are very earnest and value the company’s content. And even as COVER grows, there are many people who are determined to steadily and boldly take on new challenges. Even as it becomes a company with a large number of employees, a culture that respects individual uniqueness has been fostered.

There seem to be a lot of genuine people among COVER’s employees, right?  I think the reason we have a culture of taking on challenges while assessing the current situation is because everyone shares the clear vision of “We’re going global!” Even though we work in different departments, I feel that all employees are naturally connected by a shared sense of striving together and uniting to become a truly global company.

I would add that frequent internal communication is another feature of COVER. Our monthly company-wide online meetings also have a very warm atmosphere. There are lots of comments and emoji in the chat box sent in response to the presentations.

 They really liven up the chat, just like during streaming by celebrities, don’t they? (laughs). We use Slack at work, and there are channels for hobbies separate from work. I am in the Poker Channel.

We have about 100 channels for various hobbies, such as games, manga, and food, while employees across departments interact with each other about their favorite things. There are also calls for the creation of club activities, so the Human Resources Department would like to continue to promote this kind of internal communication in the future.

This may be obvious, but we place particular emphasis on whether our work environment will allow candidates to achieve outcomes, whether they are motivated to deliver outcomes, and whether they can fully demonstrate their competencies. To that end, we ask questions during the recruiting process to find out what the candidate is aiming for (including their future career), what they want to achieve, and whether their goals are aligned with COVER’s. When these align between the COVER and the employee, a natural sense of “this is what I should be doing” and “I want to do this” emerges, which I believe leads to significant outcomes.

In my view, it’s important to ask candidates what kind of career path they envision for themselves. If what the person wants to do doesn’t match the company’s vision, his or her performance won’t meet expectations. We look at both skills and cultural fit, but we also focus on people who have a sense of purpose about what they want to do. It’s tough to hire someone who simply says, “I applied because your company is growing.” As we are still a young company, our employee education programs are still being developed, so we need to recruit people with potential. Therefore, the Human Resources Department’s mission is to create positions where such people can thrive.

The Human Resource Department sets up periodic meetings between the department head and the new employee. Together with their manager, new employees set goals within the first three months of joining and create an action plan. Thereafter, we hold performance evaluation meetings based on these goals. The Human Resource Department holds regular one-on-one meetings with new employees to check if they have any concerns and to see how their work is progressing. In tandem with following up with new employees to help them become active as soon as possible, it is also very important for us in human resources to know the situation on the front lines to make good hires. We therefore try to know the situation on the front lines as realistically as possible and ensure the quality of our hires.

Around 15 to 20 new employees join us every month, so we have a fostered culture of welcoming new people. While there are many new joiners, turnover is low at around 10%. I think this is because we work to have a good culture match from the time of hiring. Also, people often assume that we work a lot of overtime. But the average overtime for the whole company is around 12 hours a month, so I think it’s a comfortable working environment.

When people join the company, we have them introduce themselves in the company-wide Slack channel, and each department also has a welcome lunch. As another example, at the monthly company-wide meeting, the CEO gives a talk and each department makes a presentation about their projects, so you can get an idea of what’s going on across the company. To add, there is an annual company-wide meeting, where awards are given and workshops are held, so I think COVER has an environment where even new employees can easily bond with their colleagues.

Currently, 10% of our employees are foreign nationals, so we are undertaking initiatives related to diversity and creating a global environment. We have a system that supports language learning through subsidies of up to 100,000 yen per year, and we also hold internal teach-ins to learn about foreign cultures. Recently, at company-wide meetings, those who are skilled at English are also starting to make presentations in English.

We are aiming to increase the ratio of overseas employees to 20% in the future. In line with this, we are promoting multilingual support within COVER, such as by providing materials and guidance in both Japanese and English. We also research the difficulties faced by overseas employees working in Japan, and organize teach-ins attended by all employees. To become a more global company, we want to be able to handle cultural and language barriers. I also try to stay attuned to the needs on the front lines by actively listening to requests and concerns within the company. I make it a point to listen through our consultation channel, focus on the belief that improvements can be made, while being mindful of not saying “that’s impossible.”

That would be someone who can get a lot of people engaged in a project and see it through to the end. As COVER expands and more people join, we are looking for people who will take the initiative and develop themselves, rather than those who have a passive stance. For instance, when training younger employees, I think it’s important to let them try things first. By proactively taking initiative, some employees are entrusted with significant responsibilities within 2 to 3 years of joining COVER out of university. This could include supporting large-scale projects involving hundreds of staff or even being promoted to manager roles in their second or third year with the company.

COVER’s values include “Bold-spirited,” “United without boundaries,” and “Outcome driven,” and I believe it’s key to see things through to completion while involving people from various areas. If you only look at the emphasis on “Outcome driven”, you might think that you absolutely have to succeed, but that’s not the case. What we emphasize is that you should give it your all and your desire outcome even if you fail. Even if you fail you won’t be reprimanded as long as you did your best to the end, reflect on what happened, and find ways to improve for next time. I think it’s a wonderful company culture.

To me, people who always strive for excellence. We need individuals who can think not just about what has been built so far, but about how to go global and what actions will take us there most quickly, while also being able to see any tasks and challenges through to completion. I would like to see people who can take on new challenges without being bound by past COVER’s achievements.

Yes, I agree. I think we need to think about things in terms of the difference between the present and the future. On the other hand, because of the successes we have built up to date, we are looking for people who can strike a balance between our established businesses and new challenges, while being excited about taking on new challenges. It takes a lot of stamina to keep taking on challenges, and I know it can be tiring. Yet I think that people who can turn challenges into a positive motivation and say, “This is kind of work fun,” and move on to the next challenge are needed and will be successful at COVER. We need people who can respond to such situations since there is no precedent in a lot of cases.

You might say COVER today has “become an adult”. As companies grow, the number of things they can do increases, but there are also things they must protect, so this is an important time for us. I think it’s important to keep the heart of a youngster while also protecting what you have built up so far.

I would like to choose the word “acceleration.” When COVER was still small, with only around 200 employees, I had to do everything in my area of responsibility by myself. But now that the organization has grown, I have an environment where I can get a lot of people involved. I feel that we’re in a phase where we can leverage this environment to accelerate even further, And with global expansion, we are now at a phase where we can achieve 10 or even 100 times more growth. You could say the curtain is rising on our next act.

As our business expands through overseas development, I would like to create a Human Resource Department that can respond to this. With COVER seeing increasing diversity in job types and backgrounds, I want to continue driving improvements and taking on challenges over the next five years. We aim to be an organization with a high level of expertise and a rich internal collaboration.

We are going global with VTubers, a business that no one has done before, so there are many unknowns regarding how we can become an even stronger organization. My goal is to better understand the front lines and propose and create optimal organizational structures, attractiveness to potential hires, and programs that enable our business to grow and our employees to fully demonstrate their abilities. I want to build a strong organization that is distinctly COVER and become a company that emanates from Japan and can compete globally.