YOUTRUST CEO Yuka Iwasaki on Hiring Beyond the Resume

YOUTRUST founder Yuka Iwasaki argues that resumes capture only 10% of a person, and explains why side-job trials and trust networks are replacing traditional recruiting.

• Traditional recruitment agents charge 35–100% of first-year salary as commission, creating incentives to steer candidates toward highest-fee companies regardless of fit.
• YOUTRUST, launched April 2018, now has over 50,000 cumulative users and recently closed a Series B round; Iwasaki’s goal is to reach every desk worker in Japan.
• Companies that succeed at side-job-to-hire treat contractors as full employees: same information access, NDA-covered, invited to all-hands — not as guests or outsiders.
• YOUTRUST internally uses 1–2 month side-job trials with structured week-by-week onboarding tracking before making full-time offers.
• Top talent rarely appears on job boards — they already have offers from former colleagues, so Iwasaki recommends “context hiring”: build relationships before a role opens, not after.
• Resumes express roughly 10% of a person; YOUTRUST’s referral feature lets trusted peers vouch for traits like honesty or team cohesion that no CV conveys.
• Iwasaki frames her personal mission as proving that a woman without a blue-chip pedigree can build a major company, to expand role models for underrepresented founders.

2025-06-26 · Watch on YouTube