Over the last year, the unemployment rate in The Netherlands has decreased from 3.1% in January 2021 to 2.9% in October 2021. Whilst we all expected Corona to make a longer term impact on unemployment, creating increases, it seemed to have the opposite effect. In fact, according to research released by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) – in Q2 of 2021, there were 106 vacancies for every 100 unemployed in The Netherlands. This means job vacancies on the market were larger than the number of people unemployed. Peter Hein van Mulligen, chief economist at CBS told Dutch public broadcaster NOS “We have not seen this in 50 years,”. He explained how this shortage has been brought about by coronavirus and a fall in immigration, as many EU migrant workers returned to their home countries last spring. Therefore, the decreasing unemployment rates complimented by the growing number of job vacancies, offer companies a good reasons to re-approach their Recruitment Strategy to find talent.
An idea to combat the talent shortage many companies are facing is to Hire talent from abroad.
Whilst many EU migrant workers left during the pandemic, there are still many who are willing to re-locate in order to follow their dream career. The Netherlands is after all an attractive country for Expats as the Dutch are known for being the best non-native English speakers of the world, the country is home to some of the largest multinational organizations and it offers attractive study programs in English. To give you a personal fact too, Go ahead HiRe gets approached by an average of 15 EU migrant workers per week who are looking for opportunities in The Netherlands. Therefore, an idea for companies to stay competitive in this somewhat challenging market is to hire abroad for their positions which do not require Native Dutch speakers.
The question is how?
Hiring abroad can sound somewhat scary for HR Managers as there are mostly more factors involved than carrying out a national recruitment. However, do not worry as it is more of a learning process than a scary one. To help you, we have outlined a few things you need to do when carrying out an International recruitment outside of The Netherlands:
- Create a hiring strategy around International Recruiting
- Prepare a re-location package for expats explaining all they need to know about the Dutch system
- Prepare a pitch or brochure which reflects your company + culture to the Expat
- Read up on 30% ruling as it is an attractive benefit for Internationals
- Re-think your internal organizational culture to make the Internationals feel Welcome
- Connect with International Re-location experts like Go ahead HiRe who can help you with all the steps stated above.
Predicting the future is hard but it seems that there are more and more job vacancies on the market and less and less talent available in The Netherlands. In order to continue to find high quality Talent for your organization and beat the shortages which lead to long Recruitment cycles, we believe hiring talent from abroad may be a competitive step for the future of hiring within companies across The Netherlands. If you are considering this but do not know how, get in touch with us today as we are the experts who can help you with the total International Recruitment Process of your future employees.
