Agencies

First wider, then the agency

August 2026

5 min read

Of Dutch employers with external vacancies, 65% made extra recruitment efforts in autumn 2025 because of labour market tightness. The order forms a ladder. At the top sit the cheap rungs: spreading vacancies across more channels (54%), recruiting through the employer's own network (52%), and hiring candidates who still need training (52%). Better terms of employment follow at 34%. Only then comes the outside door: 22% hired more temporary, seconded, or freelance staff, and 21% deployed a recruiter, recruitment agency, or headhunter more often. In manufacturing, both external routes sit above average. At the peak of the shortage, in autumn 2021, half of employers with hard-to-fill vacancies engaged a temp agency, recruitment agency, or headhunter. An agency that wins a mandate therefore receives, on average, a vacancy the market has already rejected: 87% of employers with recruitment problems reported too few applications.

The in-house recruiter only pays off above five to seven placements

August 2026

6 min read

A Dutch recruitment agency typically charges 22 to 32% of gross annual salary per placement on a contingency basis; retained search runs at 20 to 30%, with part of the fee paid up front. On a €55,000 salary at a 25% fee that is €13,750. An in-house corporate recruiter costs €65,000 to €80,000 a year, built from an average salary of roughly €41,000 to €55,000 (consulted August 2026), about 30% in employer charges, and several thousand euros in systems and job boards. That fixed cost only pays for itself from about five to seven placements a year that would otherwise have gone through an agency. Above that volume the in-house recruiter wins comfortably: the most recent Dutch benchmark (measured in 2020) put corporate cost per hire at €3,818, with recruiters carrying an average portfolio of 20 vacancies. Below that volume, a company pays more for its own recruiter than it would have paid in fees. And for scarce technical profiles the most expensive outcome looms: months of internal effort first, then the agency fee anyway.