Join

Resources

Discover expert tips and insights on hiring talent internationally with our Hire Abroad blog. Stay informed and expand your global team effectively.

Case Study
6 min read

In-House vs. Outsource: Why Outsourcing Recruitment is the Best Way to Save

An in-house recruitment team costs 26% to 140% more per worked hour than working with Hire Abroad. The main reason is simple: you pay an in-house team every month, and you pay Hire Abroad only for the hours that workers work. This article shows how we get to these numbers. We compare two options for a staffing agency: build your own recruitment team, or work with a partner like Hire Abroad. We use one example for both: keeping 100 blue-collar workers at work for one full year. In-House Vs. Outsource Recruitment: Why This Question Matters Filling 100 spots sounds simple: It’s classic high-volume recruitment. But in blue-collar, where workers usually arrive from abroad, high turnover is normal. Workers quit, find other options, get promoted, return home, or stop early. This means you do not hire 100 people once. You hire many more, again and again, through the year. Blue-collar staffing has a high rotation rate. This means that often, you will end up hiring 150-200 people throughout the year to keep those 100 spots filled. This is something you often can’t fully control, and a hidden cost many companies don’t plan for. Have Your Own Recruitment Team Having your own

Market Insights
4 min read

Market Insight Roundup: 3 belangrijke Nederlandse updates voor september 2026

In september gaf de Nederlandse overheid duidelijke signalen af. Er komen nieuwe regels voor vergunningen en huisvesting, en het aantal klachten over uitzendbureaus stijgt. Bureaus en recruiters moeten zich hier nu op voorbereiden. Hier zijn de 3 belangrijkste updates voor de werving van vakkrachten. Bij elke update staat een korte notitie voor uitzendbureaus en voor recruiters. Je leest alle 10 updates in ons volledige overzicht in het Engels. 1. Wtta: Het nieuwe vergunningstelsel komt eraan De Wtta is de nieuwe wet voor uitzendbureaus. De wet gaat in op 1 januari 2027 en de Arbeidsinspectie begint met handhaven op 1 januari 2028. Vanaf dat moment mogen bedrijven alleen nog werken met krachten van bureaus die over de juiste verrgunning beschikken. Bestaande bureaus kunnen gebruikmaken van een overgangsregeling. Hiervoor hebben bureaus een eHerkenning-account op niveau 3 en een Berichtenbox voor Bedrijven nodig. Aanmelden voor de overgangsregeling loopt van 1 november tot en met 31 december 2026. Bureaus met een SNA-keurmerk hebben het een stuk makkelijker. De nieuwe regels bepalen ook dat een compleet personeelsdossier niet meer genoeg is. Bij een Wtta-controle moet u ook kunnen aantonen hoe een contract tot stand is gekomen, is geïdentificeerd, ondertekend en verstrekt. Wat betekent dit voor

Market Insights
10 min read

Market Insight Monthly Roundup: 10 Important Dutch Updates for September 2026

In September, the Dutch government and the sector gave clear signals. Rules for housing, licensing and equal pay are coming. Inspectors are getting more complaints. Courts look closely at contracts. Agencies and recruiters need to prepare now. Here are the 10 updates that matter most for blue-collar recruitment. Each one has a short note for staffing agencies and for recruiters. 1. Housing Costs can no Longer be Deducted from Minimum Wage from 2028 From 1 July 2028, Dutch employers won’t be able to deduct housing costs from the minimum wage of migrant workers. Today, employers can deduct up to 25% of the gross minimum wage for housing. The government wants to stop workers from depending on their employer for housing. The NBBU supports separating housing costs from wages. But it is critical about the plan, as it may cause more additional problems for employees and employers.The ABU isn’t supportive about the plan and is actively looking for ways to make workers find accommodation easier. What does it mean for staffing agencies? Start to look at your housing model now. Check how you charge for housing today. Make the costs clear and separate from the wage. What does it mean for

Industry Knowledge
6 min read

How to Avoid The Trap of Playing Client Recruiter As a Freelancer: The Split-Desk Advantage

Traditional recruitment and staffing has been known to force freelance recruiters into an exhausting trap of doing everything. Like we mentioned in the articles detailing what full-desk agents do, freelancers are also expected to split their time between business development, cold calling, corporate management, contract negotiations, and only then source talent. And when you try to do everything yourself, your talent pipeline suffers, your recruitment strategy becomes useless, and you are bombarded with administrative tasks. You spend half your week chasing clients instead of matching talent. How can you avoid playing recruiter and client recruiter and still remain a freelance agent? The split-desk model can help. What Does a Client Recruiter Do? Before we’d go any further, we need to discuss what a client recruiter is. At its core, a client recruiter (or client-facing recruitment team) is responsible for managing the entire corporate side of staffing. In other words, they don’t split their attention between sourcing candidates and pitching business, focusing only on the latter. They are the one who connect with end employers, onboard them, and negotiate service agreements. IBeyond the sales side of things, client recruiters also connect companies with qualified job candidates. They meet with hiring managers

Industry Knowledge
6 min read

The Evolution of the Modern Recruitment Consultant: From Administrative Bottleneck to High-Value Strategist

For decades, the standard textbook answer to the question "What does a recruitment consultant do?" involved an exhaustive checklist. A traditional recruitment consultant was expected to balance two different acts. One one hand they had to handle clients, cold-call businesses, negotiate service agreements, post vacancies, source the candidates, manage their pipelines, manage compliance checks, and chase their own invoices. This was the reality until digital talent marketplaces showed up and created infrastructures that rewrote the roles for the modern recruitment consultant. Recruiting Consultants and the Flaws of the 360 System This all-encompassing operational style we just mentioned is known as the traditional 360-degree or full desk recruiting model. It is sometimes still perceived as the top of recruiting excellence as it requires professionals to have a lot of experience, patience, and work dedication. Still, the 360 model forces independent operators and agency staff to act as sales development reps, account managers, headhunters, and compliance officers all at once. And let’s face it, with more and more blue-collar jobs being in high demand, while finding the right people for the roles becomes increasingly difficult, working with the full desk 360 system will only lead to recruiter burnout. When professionals spend up

Market Insights
8 min read

The Full Desk Recruitment Dilemma: Avoiding the Burnout of the Traditional 360 Model

In the recruitment industry, the term “full desk” may sound like a privilege or a badge of honour. Full desk recruiters, or 360 recruiters manage the entire hiring lifecycle single-handedly from start to finish. This includes cold-calling staffing agencies or employers, negotiating fees, writing vacancies, sourcing candidates, doing interviews, checking references, handling onboarding… In short, everything. Even today, the 360-degree model is often seen as the ultimate test for a recruiter. And while it does take a massive amount of experience and knowledge to do all that, it only leads to one thing: chronic burnout, which translates into diminishing productivity and returns over time. Simply put, when you negotiate sales on one end and sourcing on the other, something has to give or slow down. Usually, what suffers is candidate care and the recruiter’s mental health. Fortunately, the evolution of modern talent marketplaces is proving that recruiters no longer need to carry the crushing weight of the entire desk alone to achieve financial freedom and professional autonomy. What Is Full Desk Recruiting? To understand why the traditional 360 model is flawed, we first need to understand how the actual full-desk workflow looks like. A successful full desk operation relies on

Industry Knowledge
8 min read

How to Win Over a Candidate with Multiple Job Offers

The dynamics of the European blue-collar labor market today are moving at a much faster pace like they did only a decade and a half ago. The huge shortages, the aging workforce and emergence of new technologies in blue-collar roles means that often, you actually have to hunt for the right fits instead of just posting a vacancy and waiting for people to give you a call. This also means that truly skilled tradespeople, like welders, electricians, plumbers, or drivers, are often actively fielding two, three, or even more job offers. That said, if your hiring processes are slow, vacancies bland, and operate in a highly bureaucratic fashion, chances are, you will lose these candidates to faster and more flexible recruiters. In this article, we'll give you tips on how to outmaneuver your competition and close the deal with top-performing candidates. 1. Speed As The Ultimate Advantage Speed is probably the most important advantage you can have in all of blue-collar recruiting. This is especially true when a technician has several offers on the table. Experts say that expert tradespeople (like mechanics), won’t stay longer between jobs than 18 to 35 days. However, this may even be shorter if they

Industry Knowledge
11 min read

The Essentials: Blue-Collar Talent Acquisition Specialist Skills

Addressing the modern talent shortage and placing people in hard-to-fill blue-collar positions, such as structural welders, cold storage warehouse operatives, long-haul truck drivers, city bus operators, and industrial electricians often requires a different mindset. For starters, you need to shift from the traditional white-collar way of hiring, that’s returning less and less results. The current demographic shows that a large percentage of talented workers will retire soon, meaning that the way you are sourcing and placing also needs to change. Talent acquisition (TA) professionals cannot rely on passive job board postings anymore. To place these people, you need to have a good technical understanding of the roles you hire for, you need to be authentic and honest, and be able to be flexible in your full-cycle recruitment processes. The Practicality of Right Talent Acquisition Competencies: Preventing Costly Mis-Hires Hiring the wrong person isn’t just something that can slow down the production line or delay the completion of a project. If you place the wrong worker in a safety-sensitive position, not only does the project slow down, but lives are being put at risk. In addition to these massive operational and human risks, employers may also have to face legal battles

Industry Knowledge
8 min read

What Blue-Collar Jobs Are In Demand: Understanding The EU’s Labor Shortage

Europe has been experiencing an ongoing demographic change, which, coupled with industrial transformation created increasingly crucial labor shortages. In other words, blue-collar jobs and talent have never been more important in the continent. The old stereotypes surrounding these jobs are now gone. They offer good salaries, residency pathways, career growth options, and stability, especially for skilled foreign workers who come from the EU’s less developed areas. But, what blue collar jobs are in demand? In this article, we’ll take a closer look at those roles and positions that are most crucial in keeping the EU’s economy going. We’ll also touch base on emerging technologies that will require current tradespeople to learn new skills to remain competitive and talk about general practical tips recruiters can use to get a hold of these experts. In-Demand Blue-Collar Jobs: The Stigma Disappears In a traditional sense, blue-collar jobs involved manual or technical work, typically in construction, transportation, manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, and maintenance. Most of these jobs don’t require a university degree but do need people to have experience or undergo vocational and specialized training. As mentioned, the stigma surrounding blue collar jobs is disappearing, and most people argue that these jobs won’t be replaced

83 articles found.

Get in touch

Leave your contact details below and we will get back to you!

Would you like to reach us?

Leave your contact details below and we will get back to you!

Get in touch

Leave your contact details below and we will get back to you!

Would you like to reach us?

Leave your contact details below and we will get back to you!