June 2022 | The ICISA INSIDER
| Insights
Talent – the uninsurable risk? By Olfertjan Niemeijer, Managing Consultant at Intependent Recruiters
Insurable Risk? As recruiters in the Dutch market, we see one big uninsurable risk in our area of expertise for Dutch and other European markets : failing to attract new talent and struggling to retain existing employees. In many cases, businesses find it very hard, if not impossible, to replace lost talent.
And I am not referring to director positions. In many ways, these are still easy to fill – everybody wants to be a director, after all! No, I am talking about the positions within companies where the employees actually do the hard work. The Underwriters, Account Managers, Controllers, Software developers, Management Assistants and the like. Taking the Netherlands as an example; as of writing this article, there were 133 vacancies for every 100 people looking for work. This is a tricky challenge for companies. Many have had to respond to the reality by limiting or freezing growth plans. Even Schiphol, our national airport, has had to cancel flights because they simply cannot find enough security people to process the travelers. Do you need a good plumber, a carpenter, a plasterer? You better be prepared to wait! And the situation in the Netherlands is not unique. Most of our International partners are experiencing the same issues. Some of the important markets for sourcing good, young talent in Europe, like Romania and Poland, are no longer good options. The pandemic experience, coupled with improving career opportunities in these countries means that moving to other countries for a career or better pay is not the same attraction it once was. Not a very bad situation for an executive search/recruitment firm you might say? This is kind of the core reason of your existence isn’t it? Well, not quite. As recruiters, we only make money if we are able to actually fill positions. Saying no to long-trusted customers - in fact any customer - is something we hate to do. So we have been working with our clients on more long-term solutions. Being a trusted recruitment business partner also means commitment to clients’ long term recruitment goals. This includes offering solutions from a broad perspective inclusive of HR and Recruitment. HR will have an important |
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role in compensation, retention and employee satisfaction. Our solutions are all about engaging with new recruits. The most important advice I can give to employers in the credit insurance and surety sector is: change your attitude towards applicants. Today, it’s all about candidate experience. That first and second interview are as important for you to sell your company and the vacancy to the candidate, as they are for the candidate to demonstrate their skill and experience. The days that you could grill a candidate in an interview and still expect that candidate to want to join your company are way behind us. Younger generations expect to be pampered and spoiled and we try to make our clients aware of that. A further piece we give to Dutch companies that may be applicable to other markets; change your company language to English. This is the only way to benefit from International talent in such a tight labour market. Over 40% of our recruits are non-Dutch speakers and the same will be true for other markets with less widely-spoken languages. But this doesn’t need to be seen as a weakness. You know what; people that move countries for work are more motivated, better educated and often much cheaper compared to Dutch employees. Because of this we are members of an International recruitment network (talentor.com) that enables us to engage talent in over 34 countries. An example: For some engineering roles we are focusing on attracting talent from South Korea. Job opportunities are low in Korea at the moment, especially for young people, which makes moving abroad more attractive to them. They also have an excellent schooling system and are able to adapt and integrate relatively quickly to living in European cultures.
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