Schouten & Nelissen: Attracting 37 Qualified Applicants For An Average Cost-per-Applicant Of 45 Euro

Schouten & Nelissen, a Dutch company specialised in training and coaching solutions for businesses and corporations, was creating great value for its customers at home (the Netherlands) when it started to face difficulties with finding qualified candidates in new foreign markets.

Recently, as part of the company’s expansion in new foreign markets, Schouten & Nelissen were busy with a project on recruiting skilled facilitators for conducting training for store personnel on dealing with violence at the workplace. The customer was a major international retailer in Germany. We spoke with Hariette Voortman, recruiter at Schouten & Nelissen, to learn how they managed to get 37 qualified applications within a period of one month.

“University level, highly-skilled trainers, with at least 1 year of experience as a freelance trainer, preferably with extra capacity of providing training on dealing with violence at the workplace.”. Finding the right candidates for such a specific target group was not a challenge for Schouten & Nelissen back at home – the Netherlands, where the company relied mainly on their extensive network. It was the international markets (Germany, Poland, Austria, France and Belgium), where due to the lack of existing network, Schouten & Nelissen started to face a whole new nature of challenges.

Based on the level of complexity of their recruitment challenge, Schouten & Nelissen were advised to focus on increasing the number of qualified applicants by selecting the best mix of online media channels to target their desired audience.

Hariette, a recruiter at Schouten & Nelissen, explains how this affected their talent targeting efforts at the German market:

“In Germany, we don’t have the same network (yet) as we do in the Netherlands. That’s why we needed extra support on figuring out ways to target relevant candidates via the most suitable online media channels. This is where VONQ’s job marketing technology came into play. It helped us fill in our knowledge gap on selecting the right media channels in this new foreign market for us.”.

“In addition we didn’t have to worry about not having any media channel contracts in Germany because all media channels within VONQ’s Job Marketing are already pre-contracted.”, Hariette further adds.

37 qualified applicants within a month and counting

Thanks to using the right mix of online media channels (e.g. Xing and StepStone Germany), together with skilfully creating the right messaging, Schouten & Nelissen managed to generate 37 qualified applicants within a month:

“All the 37 applicants that came through the Job Marketing were a good fit for the position. After an initial pre-screening interview via Skype, we ended up inviting half of them for a final assessment at our location in Hannover, Germany.”, Hariette adds, “We couldn’t be happier with the results. With an investment of EUR 1.655 we managed to get 37 qualified applicants!”.

“Today, when we need to look for candidates outside of the Netherlands, we go straight to the Job Marketing. It just works very well! Ever since we’ve started working with VONQ, the chance that someone who applies would not be the right fit became way lower. So, for us VONQ’s Job Marketing is a great solution for finding qualified candidates within a short period of time.”, adds Hariette.

Recruiting in new foreign markets is no longer a challenge

Hariette shares her enthusiasm about what the future holds for Schouten & Nelissen: “We’ve managed to find a way to be successful in new foreign markets, outside the Netherlands, and this makes me confident that we’ll be able to facilitate the needs of our customers for qualified candidates when they decide to expand to new markets in the future, too.”.

Did you get inspired by the great results that Schouten & Nelissen realized in a month? Are you curious to hear more about how VONQ’s Job Marketing can help you solve your recruitment challenges?