Interview: An affordable and modern way to recruit

Original ways to recruit staff are in demand in this tight labour market. Many companies need new staff quickly to keep production running or to realise their growth ambitions. And in the east of the Netherlands that may be even more challenging than in more densely populated areas. How do you find those top people? Where in the past you had to fire a scattershot, today recruitment can be highly targeted with the right recruitment strategy: right down to postcode and work experience level. As an employer, that gets you round the table with your ideal applicant much faster. This is exactly what Pro Contact does: they attract candidates with online job marketing campaigns. Their interim recruiter then selects the very best for the client. Owner Martijn van Steenbeek explains how it works.

‘To start right at the beginning: Pro Contact has been around for 9 years. Back then we started out in sales with real cold calling. Headset on and working through call lists, that kind of thing. The marketing side was added when I joined. I’m now co-owner together with founder Noud Baijens. At the time we focused on bringing in leads, but we got more and more requests about filling vacancies. We thought: why not? We have plenty of people in our office who are on the phone all day anyway, so we might as well call and screen (potential) candidates too. That became the basis of the current Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) model, in which we use targeted online marketing campaigns combined with an interim recruiter.

The recruiter makes an initial selection and checks whether that applicant for the lorry driver job holds the right licence and whether that IT specialist masters the right programs. So you know they are qualified, suitable candidates, which saves a lot of time. Our revenue model isn’t based on the placement, but on the campaign. That makes us attractive to a great many companies, because we’ve made the recruitment process cheaper and more modern.’

More touchpoints

‘We do everything in the client’s name. For example, we communicate via the managing director’s LinkedIn page. That’s why we make sure we leave a good impression. With a team of copywriters, designers, creatives, advertising specialists, recruiters and recruitment consultants, we make sure the first contact is right, and everything the target group sees after that too. We see that multiple touchpoints lead to better-quality candidates. An example of the ideal process: touchpoint one is when someone sees your online recruitment campaign. He or she takes a quick look at your website and your vacancy page. Later that day or that week, that person sees your vacancy again through a retargeting campaign, for example while scrolling through social media.

That’s already three touchpoints. By now that person ‘knows’ your organisation quite well. There is trust and recognition. The step to applying has become a whole lot smaller. That approach is becoming increasingly important for many sectors, IT for example. There, it’s truly essential to actively attract people. For that industry we have a separate IT team of people who speak the same language. That’s one of the more specific ways to recruit staff.’

Attractive employer

‘We also work on ‘employer branding’, the feeling you create as an employer. A simple vacancy page alone won’t cut it anymore. Show that you’re an attractive company, for example with a careers page that is entirely aimed at new candidates. We take care of that environment too. We look at what makes you unique as an employer, write blogs, make videos and interview your employees. We want candidates to think only one thing: wow, I want to work here! That way our clients can realise their growth ambitions.

Fortunately, despite the recent COVID blow, we ourselves are also growing enormously. There is (even) more focus on online now, and there is huge demand for good employees. We’re ready to help companies in the east of the Netherlands find those perfect candidates!’

Source: innterregio.eu