The terms of agency recruitment
54 terms, reviewed 30 August 2026
The working vocabulary of the Dutch agency market, defined in one place: the IPMERC method, the sales call, the pipeline, the fee models, and the measurement terms behind the research. Definitions are free; the scripts and scored practice behind them live in the training.
The method
Business development
Process and pipeline
Fees and contracts
The method
The frameworks the IPMERC training is built on. Each name is a fixed sequence, not a slogan.
IPMERC
The six-phase structure for a recruitment sales call: Intro, Probe, Match, Expand, Rules of Engagement, Close. Each phase has its own goal and its own exit condition, so a call can be scored phase by phase instead of judged on gut feel. The method covers both conversations an agency lives on: winning the assignment from the client and closing the candidate.
Intro
The first phase of the IPMERC call. Its goal is permission and direction: say who you are, why you call this person today, and what the call will cover, all inside the first thirty seconds. A strong Intro names a concrete reason for the call. A weak one asks for time without offering anything in return.
Probe
The questioning phase. The consultant maps the real requirement behind the vacancy or the real motive behind a career move: what has to change, by when, and what happens if nothing changes. The Probe earns the right to present anything later. Consultants who skip it end up pitching against a requirement they guessed.
Match
The phase where the consultant connects what was heard in the Probe to what they can deliver: this candidate, this search, this approach, against that stated need. The test of a good Match is that the client recognises their own words in it. It is a claim about fit, made specific, not a list of everything on the CV.
Expand
The phase that manages expectations on both sides before anything is sent or signed: salary range, notice period, other processes running, the counter-offer scenario, who decides and when. Expand is where surprises go to be found early. Most late-stage disasters, a rejected offer or a vanished candidate, trace back to an Expand that never happened.
Rules of Engagement
The process agreements a consultant confirms before work starts: fee percentage, exclusivity or not, feedback within how many days, who interviews, and what happens after a CV is sent. Agreed and confirmed in writing, they turn a vague "send me some people" into a working assignment. Without them the consultant is negotiating terms in the middle of the process, from the weakest position.
Close
The last phase of every call: a confirmed, dated next step. Not "we will be in touch" but "you send the job spec today, I call you Thursday at 4 with two profiles". In Dutch recruitment vernacular the noun is always Close or closing, and the skill applies at every stage, from a first cold call to the signature on an offer.
WRIOC
The objection framework: Welcome, Re-examine, Isolate, Overcome, Close. Instead of arguing with "too expensive" or "we will wait", the consultant welcomes the objection, re-examines what is actually behind it, isolates it as the last remaining issue, resolves it, and closes on the agreed next step. The same five steps handle client objections and candidate doubts.
FAB
Feature, Advantage, Benefit: the argumentation structure that turns a fact into a reason to act. The feature is what something is (8 years of Java), the advantage is what it does (productive from week one), the benefit is what it means for this listener (your release in March holds). A FAB only lands when it is built on a need the other person actually voiced.
Killer Question
A prepared question that cuts through a stalled conversation by making the other side confront their own situation. Asked at the right moment, it does more than ten minutes of pitching, because the answer comes from them rather than from you. Consultants keep a small set ready per phase instead of improvising one under pressure.
Pre-close
Testing the outcome before it is on the table: "if they offer the 75k we discussed, with a start date of 1 October, do you accept?" A pre-close surfaces doubt, competing processes, and counter-offer risk while there is still time to work on them. If the offer conversation is the first real money conversation, the consultant finds out too late.
Practice exercise
A scored working-through of a realistic call situation: a scenario, your response, and feedback against the method, phase by phase. Practice exercises exist because call skills decay without repetition, and because a score per phase shows a consultant exactly where their call leaks. In IPMERC they are the weekly cadence that sits next to the knowledge base.
Business development
The client side of the desk: opening cold, qualifying, and winning the assignment.
Business development (BD)
The client-side sales motion of an agency: finding companies with hiring pain, opening the conversation, qualifying the vacancy, and winning the assignment on workable terms. BD is one of the two tracks every consultant runs; the other is the candidate-side interview process. A desk without steady BD ends up dependent on whatever assignments arrive by themselves.
Cold call
A first call to a company or candidate who did not ask for it. It remains the fastest route to a new client, because a phone conversation qualifies in minutes what email threads take weeks to establish. The craft is a concrete reason for calling today, a tight Intro, and a Close on a next step. Persistence matters: most connects happen after several attempts, not on the first.
Call list
The prepared list a call block runs on: names, numbers, and a reason per name. The reason is the point. A list of fifty names without a trigger per name produces fifty aimless conversations; twenty names with a concrete reason each produce meetings. Building the list is sourcing work and happens before the block, never during it.
One-liner
The single sentence that says what you do for whom, sharp enough to survive a cold open: "I place senior Java engineers at logistics companies in the Randstad, usually within four weeks." A working one-liner is specific about niche and outcome. "We connect talent with opportunity" is the opposite of one.
Opener
The first sentences of a cold call, before the other side has decided whether to stay on the line. A good opener names the person, the reason for calling them specifically, and a question that starts the conversation. It is written and practised in advance, because the first ten seconds decide whether the rest of the script ever gets used.
Gatekeeper
The person between you and the decision maker: reception, a management assistant, a shared inbox. The working approach is respect plus specificity: use the decision maker's full name, state a concrete reason, and treat the gatekeeper as someone who routes calls professionally all day and recognises a bluff instantly. Tricks get through once; a credible reason gets through repeatedly.
DMU
Decision-making unit: everyone who influences the hiring decision, not just the person you happen to speak to. A typical vacancy involves a hiring manager, HR, a budget holder, and sometimes the team itself. Mapping the DMU early prevents the classic stall where your contact is enthusiastic and powerless. The Probe phase is where you ask who else decides.
Pain point
The concrete cost of the unfilled position or the unresolved career situation: the project slipping, the team doing overtime, the manager interviewing evenings, the salary raise that never comes. Pain is what creates urgency, and urgency is what moves a process. A consultant who cannot name the pain point is selling a service nobody currently needs.
Hot Lead
A client signal with built-in urgency: a company that just lost someone, won a project, raised funding, or had a candidate of yours interview elsewhere. Hot Leads get called the same day, because the value of the signal decays by the hour. They come out of daily work, candidate conversations, and market news, not out of bought lists.
Hot Job
A vacancy worth the desk's full attention: real urgency at the client, a confirmed fee, a reachable candidate market, and a decision process that moves. Consultants grade their assignments because working every vacancy equally means the fillable ones get too little and the unfillable ones too much. A Hot Job earns daily work; a cold one earns a weekly check.
Mailshot
One short, targeted mail to a selected list, usually presenting one strong candidate or one sharp market observation. A mailshot is a door-opener for calls, not a replacement for them: the follow-up call within days is where the return lives. Mass mail without selection or follow-up trains prospects to ignore the sender.
Koffiemail
Dutch trade term for the short, low-threshold mail that proposes a coffee rather than a deal: no pitch, no CV attached, one concrete reason to meet. It works for warming a region, a niche, or a lapsed client, because agreeing to coffee costs the other side nothing. The meeting itself is where the qualifying happens.
Spec Send
Sending a strong candidate profile to a client who has no vacancy open, on the strength of the profile alone. A good Spec Send is rare and deliberate: one exceptional candidate, a handful of carefully chosen companies, and a call to follow. It creates vacancies that were never advertised, which is why niche desks treat it as a core move rather than a last resort.
Objection
Any form of resistance in the conversation: "too expensive", "we have our own recruiter", "send something by email", or a candidate's "I want to think about it". An objection is information about what is still unresolved, not a rejection of you. The trained response is a structure, WRIOC, rather than an improvised counter-argument.
Process and pipeline
The candidate side, from sourcing to placement, and the numbers that show where it leaks.
Sourcing
Building the supply of qualified names before any call is made: searching LinkedIn and the CRM, completing missing data, and attaching a reason to every name. Sourcing is measured in usable records, not in profiles viewed. It is the first phase of the recruitment process, and a thin sourcing week shows up as an empty call list two weeks later.
Intake
The structured first conversation with a candidate or the deep qualification of a vacancy with a client. A candidate intake covers motive, salary, notice period, other processes, and what a real step forward looks like. A vacancy intake covers the requirement behind the job text, the DMU, and the process agreements. Everything sent later is built on what the intake surfaced.
Shortlist
The two or three candidates presented for a vacancy, each with a written case for why this person fits this requirement. A shortlist is a selection, which is the service the client pays for. Sending every near-match in the system is the opposite of a shortlist and teaches the client to treat CVs as free samples.
CV Send
The formal presentation of a candidate to a client for an open vacancy: profile written against the stated requirement, candidate briefed and committed, and a follow-up call within 24 hours. The follow-up is part of the definition, not an optional extra. A CV that is sent and then waited on loses its candidate to whoever calls first.
Interview debrief
The two calls made directly after an interview: candidate first, then client. The candidate call surfaces doubt while it is still small and gauges real interest; the client call collects concrete feedback and pushes the process to the next dated step. Debriefing only the client is the common mistake: candidate doubt discovered a week late is usually fatal.
Counter-offer
The improved package a current employer puts on the table when a candidate resigns. It is predictable, which makes it manageable: name the scenario in the Expand phase, ask what the candidate will do when it comes, and revisit it in the pre-close. Counter-offers accepted in the moment mostly resolve none of the reasons the candidate wanted to leave.
Placement
The completed deal: candidate signed, start date agreed, fee invoiced. The placement is the unit an agency's month is measured in, and the end point every pipeline metric counts toward. In Dutch the word is plaatsing, used for the discrete event: a desk does not sell placements, it makes them, one closed process at a time.
Funnel
The pipeline read as a series of conversions: calls to vacancies, vacancies to CV Sends, CV Sends to interviews, interviews to offers, offers to placements. The funnel exists to locate the leak. A consultant with plenty of interviews and few offers has a different problem, and needs different training, than one who cannot get the first interview booked.
Conversion rate
The percentage that survives a funnel step: what share of CV Sends becomes an interview, what share of offers becomes a placement. Conversion rates make performance discussable per phase instead of per person. They only mean something when the steps are defined consistently, which is why the process definitions in this glossary are strict.
KPI
Key performance indicator: the counted activity or outcome a desk steers on, per phase of the process. Useful KPIs measure what a consultant controls (calls made, CV Sends, interviews booked) alongside what the business needs (placements, fee billed). A KPI set that only counts outcomes tells you something went wrong a month after it did.
Follow-up
The planned next contact after any send or conversation: the call after a mailshot, the check-in after a CV Send, the chaser when agreed feedback does not arrive. Follow-up is where most of the return on earlier work is collected, and it runs on the agreements made in the call, which is why every call closes on a dated next step.
Fees and contracts
The commercial terms of the Dutch agency market: how the work is paid and under what conditions.
Werving en selectie
The Dutch term for permanent-placement recruitment: the agency searches and selects, the candidate signs a contract with the client, and the agency invoices a one-off fee. It is distinct from uitzenden and detachering, where the worker stays on the agency's payroll. Most of the vocabulary in this glossary belongs to this segment of the market.
NCNP
No cure, no pay: the client owes nothing until a placement happens. It is the default model in Dutch contingency recruitment and the reason a client can brief three agencies at once. The flip side is that work on unfilled assignments is unpaid, which is what exclusivity and retained models exist to repair.
Contingency recruitment
The NCNP model as a way of working: the agency invests search time at its own risk and gets paid only on success, typically 22% to 32% of gross annual salary in the Dutch market. It suits vacancies with a reachable candidate pool and a client who moves. On genuinely scarce profiles the risk model breaks down, which is where retained search starts.
Retained search
An exclusive search assignment paid in parts, with the first part up front: commonly a third on start, a third on shortlist, a third on placement, at 20% to 30% of gross annual salary in total. The retainer buys the client committed capacity and buys the agency the certainty to invest properly. It is the standard model for senior, scarce, or confidential positions.
Exclusivity
The agreement that one agency works the vacancy, usually for a fixed period such as four weeks. For the client it means committed effort and a coordinated process instead of three agencies racing to send CVs first. For the agency it makes real search time defensible. Asking for exclusivity is a standard part of the Rules of Engagement conversation, with arguments the client actually benefits from.
Terugbetalingsregeling
The Dutch rebate or guarantee clause: if the placed candidate leaves within an agreed period, often two to three months, the agency refunds part of the fee or searches again without charge. Usually staggered, with the refundable share falling per month in service. Agreeing it up front, in writing, prevents the far more expensive discussion after an early departure.
Recruitment fee
The agency's invoice for a placement, in the Dutch market almost always a percentage of the candidate's gross annual salary, sometimes including holiday allowance and guaranteed bonus in the base. The percentage moves with scarcity, seniority, and the service level agreed. Defending the fee is an objection conversation, and the strongest defence is a process the client can see the value of.
Detachering
The Dutch secondment model: the professional is employed by the agency and works at the client on an hourly rate, typically for months to years. The agency earns a margin on every hour worked instead of a one-off fee. It dominates parts of the IT and engineering market, and it changes the sales conversation from one placement to an ongoing capacity relationship.
Uitzenden
Dutch temporary staffing: flexible work through an agency under the uitzend regime, with its own collective agreements and phase system. It serves volume and flexibility rather than selection, and it is a different business from werving en selectie: different margins, different compliance, different conversations. Most permanent-placement desks meet it mainly as a competing offer at the client.
ZZP
Zelfstandige zonder personeel: the Dutch independent contractor. In recruitment the ZZP'er appears twice, as a candidate who prefers interim assignments over employment, and as a delivery model next to detachering, with the agency brokering the contract. Dutch rules on labour relations (the DBA framework) make the contracting side compliance-sensitive, which the desk has to manage.
RPO
Recruitment process outsourcing: a client hands part or all of its hiring process to an external partner for a period, often with recruiters working in-house under the client's brand. RPO is a volume and process business, priced per hire or per month rather than per placement fee. Agency desks meet it as a competitor for large accounts and occasionally as a client.
Market and data
The measurement vocabulary behind the IPMERC research and Futures pages.
Krapte
The Dutch word for labour market tightness: more demand for people than reachable supply. Tightness is measured, not felt, through vacancy rates, unfilled shares, and time to hire, and it differs sharply per job family and region. For an agency, tightness cuts both ways: harder searches, but also the scarcity that justifies the fee.
Vacancy rate
Open vacancies as a share of total jobs in a sector, the standard tightness measure published by Eurostat and CBS. It makes sectors and countries comparable: a construction vacancy rate near three times the European average says more than any anecdote about scarcity. Several IPMERC Futures cells are built directly on this figure.
Time to hire
The days between the start of a search and a signed candidate. It is a friction measure: rising time to hire with stable demand means the matching itself is getting harder. For a desk it is also a sales argument, because every week a role stays open has a cost the client can put a number on.
Hard-to-fill vacancy
A vacancy open longer than normal for its market, usually because the requirement, the salary, and the available supply do not meet. Statistics agencies track the share of employers reporting them, which makes it a usable friction signal. For an agency these vacancies are the business case: they are exactly the searches a client will pay a specialist for.
Signal (IPMERC Futures)
The atomic unit of IPMERC Futures: one measured claim about one job family in one region for one period, from one named source. Research papers contribute signals; a published formula weighs them into the market outlook per cell. Because every number traces to a signal and every signal to a source, a reader can recompute any cell by hand.
Job family
A group of related roles treated as one market: software engineering, healthcare and care, construction trades. IPMERC Futures scores the market per job family per region, with each family mapped to the ISCO and NACE codes the official statistics use, so a recruiter's everyday label joins cleanly onto Eurostat and CBS data.
The definitions stop where the method starts. How to run a Probe, what to say when the fee objection comes, and how a scored practice exercise grades your Close all live in the training programs.
Terms last reviewed 30 August 2026. The set is capped at roughly 50 terms and edited by hand; the review date changes only when a definition does.