International recruitment - Why the Netherlands has become an employer brand of its own, and what that means for your intake

The Dutch labour market has cooled, but it has not loosened. At the end of March 2026, Statistics Netherlands counted 378,000 open vacancies and 91 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people, including 29,300 in industry and 28,200 in construction. Anyone looking for fitters, welders or process operators notices very little of that cooling. Which is why international recruitment keeps landing on the management agenda: if the pond is empty here, you fish further away.

It rarely plays out the way it looks on paper, though. A bus from Bucharest does not fill your shifts by itself, and an ad in Polish is no answer to a problem you have not defined yet. This piece is about what does work.

Why does international recruitment deliver less automatically than it did five years ago?

Because the Netherlands now has competition of its own. Research by Intelligence Group, based on a multi-year sample of more than 250,000 Europeans, showed that the number of Europeans who want to live and work in the Netherlands fell from roughly 623,000 in 2018 to roughly 457,000 in 2025, a drop of 27 percent. On the ranking of preferred destination countries, the Netherlands slipped from eleventh to thirteenth place.

The CBS migration figures point the same way. The balance with the classic source countries has been falling for years, and more people now leave Poland for elsewhere than arrive there. Part of that is the economy at home doing better. Part of it is how the Netherlands looks from outside: a gridlocked housing market, a sharp migration debate and a steady stream of stories about poor housing and dubious agency constructions.

The country itself has become an employer brand that people have opinions about. You are not only competing with the workshop down the road, but with Germany, Scandinavia and with staying put.

Which problem are you actually solving?

At MonFri every project starts with the same question: what problem are we really solving? Is your production stuck on unfilled shifts? Or is your intake large enough but three quarters of it gone within the first year? Those two call for very different answers. Only the first is a volume problem that recruiting across the border addresses. The second is a selection and onboarding problem, and international intake tends to make it worse rather than better if you change nothing.

So agree in advance which number has to move. How many shifts filled, within what lead time, at what first-year attrition and at what cost per filled seat. Without that baseline you cannot tell afterwards whether it worked, and you cannot explain internally why it was worth the money. We follow the same order in our piece on recruiting technicians in a tight labour market.

What does it mean that a job comes home with you?

Employer branding is not product marketing. You buy a product and put it on a shelf. A job becomes part of your life: your colleagues, your rhythm, your evenings. For someone moving 1,800 kilometres, that is doubly true. They do not just take a job home, they take their home to the job.

Which is why your promise weighs more here. A Dutch candidate who gets it wrong simply switches employers. A Romanian operator who gets it wrong is in a country where he knows nobody, in a room he did not choose, with a contract he does not fully understand. The cost of a broken promise is far higher for him, and therefore for you.

What you show has to be delivered by real people. The foreman who says on camera that he takes time for new colleagues needs that time in his planning too. Otherwise your campaign is not a promise but an invoice that arrives later.

What does a proposition look like that convinces someone to move countries?

Our employee value proposition rests on three pillars: image, internal and market. What the outside world says about you, what your own people say, and what your sector offers. International recruitment adds a fourth dimension: how all of that looks from the country of origin, in the candidate’s language, on the platform where he is actually looking.

So do not start with values. “Driven” and “family business” sit on every competitor’s site and translate badly on top of that. What does set you apart is concrete: how many hours a week, what lands in the bank account after tax, who arranges housing and what it costs, what happens if you fall ill, whether you can go home at Christmas, and whether your partner can work here. Those are not secondary terms. That is the proposition.

And have it told by people who know. Research by Earnest, Allen and Landis into realistic job previews found that an oral, face-to-face version reduces turnover more than a written or filmed one. A video call with a compatriot who has worked there for three years does more than a translated brochure.

What determines what is practically possible?

The rules. Workers from the EEA and Switzerland need no permit. For people from outside it, you have to search within the EEA first unless you are a recognised sponsor. A contract shorter than three months requires a work permit, from three months a combined residence and work permit. Becoming a recognised sponsor with the Dutch immigration service means faster procedures and is almost always worth it if you recruit outside the EU structurally.

If you work with posted workers, the notification in the Posted Workers portal has to be filed before arrival, and you have to check it as the hiring party. Keep an eye on the new Dutch admission scheme for staffing suppliers as well: it starts on 1 January 2027, from 1 July 2027 you have to check the public register to see whether your supplier is admitted, and from 1 January 2028 the labour inspectorate enforces it. Your choice of partner becomes a brand choice.

At European level, Parliament backed the EU Talent Pool on 11 March 2026, a platform matching vacancies in shortage occupations with jobseekers from outside the EU. Registration grants no permit and member states decide for themselves whether to join, so expect no miracles. It is an extra channel, and channels are only worth something once your story is ready.

How do you stop international recruitment from becoming a revolving door?

By recruiting in order to keep. The candidate journey does not stop at the signature, and with international intake it arguably starts there. The first weeks decide most of your attrition: whether someone understands what is expected, whether he has a name to walk towards when something goes wrong, and whether his housing matches what he was promised.

So we would rather build a slightly smaller campaign with a solid landing than a big one with a thin landing. That means material in the candidate’s own language all the way through to the work instructions, a buddy from the same group who started six months earlier, a supervisor trained to run a mixed team, and a moment in week six where someone genuinely asks how it is going. None of that is exciting. All of it cuts attrition. And someone who has worked for you for three years and explains in his own language why he stayed is the strongest recruitment asset you have. It is the same reason we start on the shop floor rather than in the boardroom in employer branding for manufacturing.

Why does an honest picture beat a flattering one here?

Because your brand has to be both magnet and filter. You want to attract people, but mainly the right ones. An honest picture of the work, the shift pattern, the housing and the Dutch weather makes candidates drop out who would not have lasted anyway. That feels like a loss in your funnel and is a gain in your staffing.

That picture also travels faster than your campaign. People who came through you call home. Within months, a village in northern Romania knows exactly what it is like at your company. You cannot steer that channel with media spend, only by making sure the story is true. And not every problem is a campaign: sometimes the win sits in a shorter application process, a careers page that loads in four languages, or a referral scheme that pays better than your media budget.

How does MonFri approach this?

We start with your problem. Which seats stay empty, what does that cost per week, what is first-year attrition, and is recruiting across the border genuinely the answer to it? Then we research: inside your own organisation, among the target group in the country of origin, and in the market where you compete for the same people. Only after that come the proposition, the footage with your own people, the multilingual landing environment and the campaign. And we agree in advance which number has to move.

Curious what that would look like for your organisation? Have a look at our services or call us on 020 23 38 587. You can also email hi@mon-fri.com.