Pros
1. Easy-going, relaxing environment with nice colleagues (though half of the people I actually consider nice already left the firm) and not a lot of pressure on performance. If you are an inexperienced new grad dying for that bit of 'Working experience' every single firm on earth is asking for or if you are not looking for anything bigger than a stable job from a well-know brand domestically while enjoying your life, this is definitely the one. 2. Flexible working hours. You can literally go home at 5:30 if you want to, no one says a thing, of course if you are doing a so-called good job and they have the late shift from 11:30 to 8 which also helps if you need some stuffs done at the city hall or something. 3. Nice building and cheap cafeteria. A lot of people are impressed with the building (so did I) and I always wonder if things would have get a tart better if the company pays their employees a bit more using the amount they use to decorate this Overly Nice building. Cafeteria on top floor, 500yen for salad and rice all-you-can-eat together with main dish and desserts. 4. A good name to put on your resume. If you plan to stay in Japan working for domestic companies and even if you are to go back home, the brand Pasona does add some value to what you say to your next employers during interview. And maybe a lot of your friends and acquaintances in Japan will think that working in Pasona is so cool and admire you for that, not like I care that much, but I am running out of positive things to say so I'm just gonna count that anyway.
Cons
1.Micro-management and a lot of unreasonable rules that only apply to foreigners (at least if you are not the bosses' favorite). It wouldn't be a big deal if they are just a normal department of a normal Japanese company but they call themselves GLOBAL and the majority of candidates are also foreigners yet the discrimination is not subtle. 2. Ridiculous salary lower than that of a part-timer. This is why they hire anyone and almost everyone (assuming you have a bit of recommendation from current employees). I do not know how much a Japanese earns there when they first start but for any foreigner, you start off with a hourly pay contract renewable every 3 months, no commission, no bonus, no housing allowance and not even travelling expenses for the first few months. 3. Good people never stay. To be fair, they still have a few good ones (3 maybe) and they are basically carrying the whole department through while there are a lot of free-riders. It is almost laughable that a recruiter who can speak neither English nor Japanese well get absolutely no pressure over KPI or end result and they simply just show up at office everyday, pretending to do their job and asking dumb questions while wasting others time. This is why a lot of top performers left cause it was just too unfair for them to get paid the same with this kind of free rider while a lot of agencies always seek them out with better offer in term of everything. 3. Zero training. You get like 1 month or 2 months training at first but it is more about how you should behave around your boss kind of training than how to do your job properly. You are then thrown at it, using whatever common sense you have figuring things all out by yourself (oh then when they actually teach you something, it is exactly stuff that you already pick up observing them days after days). This is why even though the turn over rate is so high, they never care as they didn't have to spend that much to train you and they just keep looking for cheap labor to replace one another. 4. The ridiculous candidates assigning system. Although Pasona works very different from most recruiting agency, there should be a limit to how different they aim to be. Teams are not divided by industry or anything (first it was based on nationality- which is discrimination to the utmost- then they re-assigned the team last month, this time, based on absolutely nothing), recruiters just deal with whatever positions they want, scout whoever they want and work on any industry they feel like. Obviously, that gives a wide range of candidates to scout from and you never run out of candidates to talk to every week (again it makes no sense if somebody only have 1 or 2 new candidates coming in per week, they are just not cut our for them job then). On the other hand, recruiters do not share candidates and you cannot touch candidates scouted by another. So where all the people who register in the database by themselves go to? So everyday, they have 1 recruiter (it is not about taking turn, only a few selected ones are allowed to do this) do the job of assigning new cans to each recruiter? What is the criteria? Again, none. If they see good candidates, they take him/her for themselves. If you are not on good terms with those people? Here are a few examples of the kind of candidates you will get: somebody who speak neither English nor Japanese, fresh graduates from universities in their home countries who is curious about coming to work in Japan, people who did a bit of everything but has absolutely no specific skill set, people who are marked as 'Impossible to place'. I mean I like challenges and always like do to the impossible. It is when other people give up on someone that I feel even more motivated to help that person. But with the crazy work load (which is not the same for everyone, it is just that I don' t want to see myself slack off for one second), getting candidates out of nowhere without further notice and just because no one else wants to do it can be really frustrating sometimes. I can go on for days but I would rather not since i like to keep things objective and let people experience things themself. Just never complain that no one ever told you!