Martijn van Steenbeek: successful companies look beyond a CV

Martijn van Steenbeek has worked at Pro Contact for years. A few years ago he moved from an online marketing agency to Pro Contact, where he became co-owner. Switching from marketing to job marketing went pretty well for Martijn, and he quickly felt at home in his new field. He also experienced the transition from sales agency to RPO agency. Pro Contact keeps growing in its services too: alongside job marketing and employer branding campaigns, the agency now also offers interim recruitment, SEO services, landing pages, careers websites and photo and video shoots.

Recruitment made simple

Making recruitment as simple as possible: that was the goal. Pro Contact keeps the investment clear and shares campaigns in the client's name. That way the campaigns also achieve enormous reach among the ideal target group. What makes recruitment through Pro Contact especially simple is that the company gives its clients the option to hand everything over. From finding and approaching candidates online on LinkedIn to creating and launching campaigns, landing pages and complete careers websites: it all takes a lot of time and energy. "Our team is happy to take it over and use its expertise to recruit new staff for our clients as successfully as possible."

Martijn van Steenbeek's golden tip: drop that CV

"Don't fixate on finding the perfect candidate who ticks every box," says Martijn. "Look a bit wider than that. The clients who have the most success with us are the ones who look beyond just a CV." A CV can be a handy overview of someone's experience and knowledge, but whether it's all accurate and whether someone's personality fits your company, you just don't know. A cover letter offers just as little certainty, by the way. Someone can come across as very enthusiastic and driven in it, but do they really mean it all? Did they actually put time into the letter, or are they just copying a standard template?

As far as your recruitment is concerned, you're often better off leaving out the CV and cover letter. That's why Pro Contact chooses to let people apply to its online recruitment campaigns without them. "We ask for the information we need later, when we phone a candidate," says Martijn. "That way we shorten and simplify the process for potential candidates. And it works: people want things made as easy as possible for them."

The future of Pro Contact: Recruitment Consultants

Martijn's goal for the near future is hiring new staff. Pro Contact is currently mainly looking for Recruitment Consultants: people with commercial and social skills, and ideally some knowledge of HR or recruitment. They can also learn the latter at Pro Contact. At Pro Contact these Consultants can work across the board, but they can also focus on a single industry, such as the IT sector. "They work with Creatives, Designers, Advertising Specialists, Copywriters... Sometimes they naturally develop more of an affinity with marketing, while at first they had little experience with it." This way, Martijn often sees colleagues go through a steep growth curve in no time.

Also important: in this role you can create your own job. You choose entirely for yourself which type of client or industry suits you. On top of that, management thinks it's important to (keep) investing in staff development. That's why training is made available. Martijn concludes: "we want Pro Contact to go through a certain amount of growth, but of course you simply need good people for that."

Has this article sparked your interest and do you want to know more? Then also read the article written by Werf&.