Noud Baijens: ‘We provide a complete recruitment department’

Started as a job marketing agency, grown into an RPO organisation: meet Pro Contact. How does it stand out from the traditional agencies? Founder and managing director Noud Baijens explains.

‘I always say: wherever Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are used, we can reach the target group.’ Ask Noud Baijens, founder and managing director of Pro Contact, what exactly his agency does, and this answer gets you a long way in the right direction.

‘Wherever Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are used, we can reach the target group.’

The agency was founded in 2013 as a specialist in job marketing. Initially, the company specialised in running sponsored campaigns on social media and Google. But in recent years Pro Contact has grown into a fully fledged Recruitment Process Outsourcing firm, Baijens adds. ‘RPO is a robust and future-proof model. For our clients it is literally an alternative to the traditional recruitment organisations. The big difference is that we are more affordable and more modern, and everything is done in the client’s name.’

Two offices

There are currently two offices, one in Amsterdam and one in Antwerp. The company has 45 employees and keeps growing. ‘It took us time to build a great team’, says Baijens. ‘Now we hire about two people a month. For our clients in Belgium we run the same job marketing campaigns as for clients in the Netherlands. We do add specific Belgian job sites, such as Jobat and VDAB. We also run campaigns in Romania, Poland, Germany and France, among others.’

The basic RPO process at Pro Contact:

• Creating job marketing campaigns and publishing them online in the client’s name
• Screening the online applicants (by phone and/or at the client’s location)
• Actively searching various job boards and LinkedIn from the client’s account
• Hiring and onboarding at the client’s location

A complete recruitment department

‘We provide a complete recruitment department’, says Baijens, when asked what makes his agency so different. ‘A large part of that consists of job marketing campaigns on social media, Google and the job boards. The recruiter carries out a quality check on the candidates who apply and actively searches job boards and LinkedIn for suitable candidates. Our clients pay a fixed monthly fee for this. Most of them are looking for larger numbers of candidates, so the cost per hire ends up much lower than with more traditional agencies.’

‘We win candidates over together with the client.’

‘We win candidates over together with the client. We are actively involved in the employer branding strategy and the EVP (Employee Value Proposition). We do much more than just run campaigns. Nine times out of ten, for example, we rewrite the job ads to make them more attractive and SEO-proof. We build and optimise the careers pages for higher conversion and better findability. That way our clients’ vacancies automatically rank higher in Google’s search results.’

‘A low cost per hire is our goal’

‘We notice that our clients understand why changes are needed: low-threshold conversion on the website, being properly indexed by Google, Indeed and other job boards, and winning candidates over with fun vacancy videos. These are just a few examples of optimisations with a big impact. In job marketing it doesn’t have to cost much to achieve a lot. In the end, it’s about getting as many good candidates as possible for the lowest possible budget. A low cost per hire is our goal, and that is where we want to stand out from the traditional agencies.’

‘Job marketing doesn’t have to cost much to achieve a lot.’

‘We notice, for example, that clients who are unsure about a candidate, say because extra schooling or training is needed, are still more likely to hire that candidate than in a traditional process. That’s down to our pricing model. Our clients don’t have to pay an additional fee for that candidate. If they did, they would let the candidate go sooner. And that’s a shame, because with a bit of guidance a candidate like that can perform brilliantly in practice.’

This article can also be read on Werf&.

‘Everything in the client’s name’

‘Ultimately we do everything in our client’s interest, which is why we also do everything in the client’s name’, says Baijens. ‘We don’t polish up CVs and we don’t push companies to hire candidates. We have no incentive to make things look better than they are. Our clients value us for that. We keep them informed in real time with reports, and they receive management information on which candidates were not put forward and why. For some clients we even handle the contracts. In that case we act as an in-house adviser and make sure new employees are onboarded properly.’

‘We don’t polish up CVs and we don’t push companies to hire candidates.’

‘At heart we were an online marketing agency specialising in vacancies. That makes us very good at reaching and converting candidates at all job levels: blue collar, white collar, old, young. Each time we use different strategies and adjust the channels. With white collar the role of the recruiter becomes more important, with blue collar we launch the campaign and the applications pour in. We started out with vacancies for mechanics and drivers, among others. For the past 2 years we have also been active in IT, business services and government. The RPO model means we can take on any profile. Job marketing alone is too thin for the more senior roles. For those you need an experienced recruiter.’

Reaching people in a scarce market

‘For a role such as a hard-to-find municipal civil servant, we usually add Google Advertising to the social campaigns to reach both passive and active jobseekers. And our recruiters then search extra actively on the job boards and LinkedIn. What works well is searching LinkedIn for profiles using a municipal civil servant’s account, so you can approach fellow professionals. Many municipalities, by the way, work with career switchers so they don’t poach candidates from neighbouring municipalities. We then draw up a detailed candidate profile: which kinds of professionals are eligible for this vacancy? One question always takes centre stage: how do we maximise the chance of success? Especially in today’s labour market it helps to look at all the profiles that could be a fit.’

‘We draw up a detailed candidate profile.’

‘So the key question is: can we make candidates professionally competent relatively easily with some schooling and training? Based on certifications, diplomas and work experience we can make matches. We also interview the client’s colleagues to flesh out the profile further. Together we look at how we can reach people, convert them, appeal to them and spark their interest in applying to the client at all. It starts with the vacancies a company has, which we need to make visible online. I still sometimes hear HR managers talk about newspapers. In that respect there is still a lot to gain in writing, posting and promoting vacancies.’

Where is it heading?

Where does Baijens think the recruitment market is heading? ‘First of all, online marketing has finally earned a permanent place in recruitment. Online marketing and recruitment really go hand in hand now. Job marketing is a very friendly process: you offer someone a job and you can position a company in an appealing way. That also makes it harder for us to stand out in job marketing. Everything is moving online, and we are no longer the only ones doing it. That’s why we have developed our services further into RPO.’

‘Online marketing and recruitment go hand in hand.’

‘Our services are doing well in Belgium, where years ago job marketing was still very quiet’, he says. ‘That made it extra fun to be in that market, we were really telling people something new. We dissected the entire recruitment process so everyone understands it. For business owners it has always been hard to understand what exactly a recruitment agency does. Business owners and managers chose the agency they knew, but didn’t know exactly what that agency did. Everyone accepted that the fee had to be paid, while employees regularly had to be replaced after a short time, so companies paid the fee several times over.’

RPO as the model of the future

‘In terms of pricing, our job marketing and RPO have become very accessible, including for SMEs. For a relatively small amount you fill your open vacancies and your company keeps appearing on the most important channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google and the job boards. Adding new channels such as Snapchat, TikTok and Reddit is also relatively easy.’

‘Adding new channels such as Snapchat, TikTok and Reddit is relatively easy.’

‘I think the traditional agencies will increasingly adapt to the RPO agencies. You can already see that happening in various places’, says Baijens. ‘The industry is constantly changing, but I think the RPO market can easily carry us another 10 years. Executive search, temping and secondment really do serve a purpose, but there is an alternative and that is RPO. That’s why I expect we will keep growing strongly with RPO in the coming years compared with the traditional forms. Some things are simply outdated. I have my doubts about traditional pricing in particular. We do exactly the same things as the traditional agencies, but with us a new employee easily costs 30 to 40% less. And on top of that our clients get an awesome job marketing campaign. They really get more for less.’

About Noud Baijens

Baijens’ roots are in Brabant. He currently lives in Bloemendaal. He comes from a true entrepreneurial family. He started his first business at 25, after a final push and some good advice from his father. He and his wife have two young children, ‘a busy household’ alongside running a company, as he puts it himself.