Wantedly founder Naka Akiko (仲暁子) said that people should not pursue time efficiency at all costs, but should find a way of working and a career that suit them through taking the longer route.
Naka Akiko (仲暁子) said, “Rather than trying to find the right answer from the outset, taking the longer route is more time-efficient,” and described how she had updated her views on work and careers through repeated challenges and failures. She said her thinking had changed between the time she founded the company and the present, and that she had realised empathy alone would not sustain a business.
She said the value of meeting and talking in person remains important, and described how Wantedly introduced skills matching and personality assessments to include suitability and compatibility among the evaluation criteria. She also discussed how casual interviews evolved into nominated casual interviews, expressing a view that both assessing capabilities and determining personal compatibility are important.
She again stressed the importance of the process of identifying and eliminating what does not suit oneself through experience. She argued that, even as AI evolves, there will remain things that people cannot understand without experiencing them personally, and that there is value in taking the longer route rather than pursuing time efficiency excessively.
Drawing on her own experience, she suggested that people should not work backward from a future goal and choose a path of “putting up with the present,” but should build a higher launchpad for their future careers by accumulating diverse experiences. She concluded by encouraging readers to experience their own unique longer route.