De Ondernemer interviews Noud

Nieuws · June 4, 2019 · 4 min read

Black and white portrait of a smiling man in a blazer, labelled Interview

De Ondernemer grilled our director Noud Baijens about our online recruitment campaigns. How do we help entrepreneurs find staff in an overheated labour market?

Black and white portrait of a smiling man in a blazer, sitting in a hall with blossom branches

Hiring good staff, preferably as quickly and cheaply as possible. That's what every entrepreneur wants when a vacancy opens up. Today's labour market, however, shows that things work differently. In some industries, the search for suitable staff is simply a hellish job. Noud Baijens is someone who cleverly responds to that with Pro Contact and saves companies a lot of blood, sweat and tears. "We reach the lorry driver, carpenter and mechanic who never look at Monsterboard or Nationale Vacaturebank."

People with a job are generally not very active on channels that might help them find a better one. They are, however, on Facebook and Instagram day and night. Of course you have traditional recruiters who try to land their dream candidate via LinkedIn, but in transport, logistics or construction that's practically impossible. Simply because many drivers, construction workers and machine operators don't have a LinkedIn account.

Reaching latent jobseekers

"So the trick is to find out where your candidate actually is," says Noud Baijens. "And that's exactly what we do. A lorry driver never looks at Monsterboard or Nationale Vacaturebank. He's at home chilling on the sofa, scrolling through Facebook and Instagram. We know that, and that's how we reach latent jobseekers. It's also known that staff officers, IT professionals and HR managers pretty much all have a LinkedIn profile, and young people are generally active on Instagram and Snapchat."

A 3D tour of your future workplace

"The next step in scoring your new employee is translating the client's job ad into compelling content for the specific platform where the candidate can be found. We collect those vacancies from our clients ourselves, by the way. We employ copywriters, designers and advertising specialists who create exactly the right copy and visuals to spark someone's interest. That could also be a 3D tour of your future workplace on a brand-new careers website."

"Pro Contact targets on demographic data, does remarketing and checks interaction on social. If someone watches your video for more than a few seconds, likes something or tags someone, they enter the recruitment funnel. These are sponsored ad campaigns that let you reach the right people while also building brand awareness among the target group."

Multiple potential candidates for the client

The Amsterdam company proves its approach is paying off by reaching eighth place in the FD Gazellen 2018 election, a ranking by Het Financieele Dagblad of the fastest-growing companies in the Netherlands. One reason was revenue growth of exactly 200 percent. The company had also been nominated in 2017. At the time, it turned over 1 million. For 2019 it expects a turnover of 3 million euros.

With the tactics used by Pro Contact, which is mainly active in transport, logistics, construction, industry, automotive, customer contact and infrastructure, multiple potential candidates are attracted for the client. Handy if a company is looking for several people for a particular role.

"If someone is looking for five electricians, you might well pay a tenth of what you'd otherwise spend at a traditional temp agency. In that respect we work differently from a secondment or recruitment and selection agency. There, the client pays for every vacancy filled, whereas we charge an hourly rate for creating the content, reaching the right target group and the first contact with a candidate. Different approach, different price tag. Worked back, a lorry driver costs around 1,000 euros with us, a carpenter 1,250 euros and an installation engineer 3,000 euros."

Automatically filled in for the applicant

Once enough people have fallen for the charms of Pro Contact (also active in Germany, Belgium and France), the company takes care of the first telephone screening on behalf of its client. After all, names, email addresses and mobile numbers are easy to retrieve because they were once entered when creating a social media account. They're even filled in automatically for the applicant. The company checks whether the person in question meets the right criteria for the role and, if so, a face-to-face interview with the client is scheduled.

You can also read this interview on deondernemer.nl.