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 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.

A relatively new thing to the Dutch market, as with many of your locations, is remote work. One of the good things to come from the Covid pandemic is that working form home has become much more accepted by companies and employees. Limiting travel for employees makes it much more attractive to stay in their job or accept jobs that offer remote work. We have already had vacancies where there are options to be located in the German or in the Dutch office, for example, because there is flexibility. The location of the candidate is not important anymore. During Covid we have seen many candidates improve their work/life balance by moving away from crowded, expensive, cities to other areas. And being able to work form Barcelona for a week does sound nice…

During the Global Financial Crisis we also saw that many of our clients stopped educating and training new staff. Instead of campus recruitment, everybody was looking for experienced hires. Responding to that trend, we have been successful in setting up trainee programs for our clients. A side effect we have seen in these programs is that many of the mid-level and senior employees of these clients loved to share their knowledge with trainees. This in turn, made these staff love their jobs even more by giving them a role in developing their younger and future colleagues.

There is no golden rule that will allow a company to be the employer of choice. Being aware of all developments in the market and looking at your company critically from the outside is the best way to start. I am sure if you are able to do that you will even find reasons that make credit insurance companies or sureties the sexy employer of choice that also made you chose for that career! About Independent Recruiters

Independent Recruiters is the recruitment, selection & executive search agency for staff positions in, among others, Finance, ICT, Sales & Marketing, Recruitment, Purchasing and HRM. Together with our labels; Independent Engineering, Independent Hospitality, Independent Facility, Independent Professionals, Independent Public, Independent Retail and Independent Life Sciences, we have helped hundreds of professionals find permanent or temporary jobs since 2003

Since 2020 we have been part of the Talentor. com network. An international recruitment network with more than 250 consultants in more than 30 countries on 4 continents.