Global M’s Post

Transcript

Thank you for joining us and for a little bit about yourself and your story. And of course, we love to learn more about people from our industry and to share it with our network. First question that I would like to start with is, of course, like if you can tell us a little bit about yourself and what do you currently do? My name is Joan. I'm a Dutch, as you can probably pick up by the way, I speak English. Uh, I live in Amsterdam, a proud Amsterdammer. In my personal life, I'm a passionate about cycling, about cooking, about being the best father and husband that I, that I can be. On the professional side, I'm the owner of an executive search label, which is called IT leaders. I focus on IT leaders. That's pretty much as it explains. So yeah, that's what keeps me busy most of the days. OK, OK. And what is your background? How did you get? Into the industry and how did you end up doing recruitment? That's kind of a funny story, actually. So I, I studied sociology because I was interested in in people. It's a great study. It's very fascinating, but it's not really a career. There's not a lot of job ads out there. Sociologist wanted. So during my studies, I figured I, I might need some help and I knew a friend of a friend was the owner of a recruitment agency, so I asked him for advice. Uh, and he said, you know, why don't you come work for me for the summer during your studies, just part time, uh, do some work here and then, then you'll learn a bit more about different industries, different companies, different jobs, and that should help you with getting a better view of the market. And uh, yeah, while I was there, I realized that they actually, this recruitment world is also people focused, but it's also very results oriented, very pragmatic, which were things that I was missing in my studies. So that summer job, this was, I mean, we're talking about 2008. Yeah, that's sort of escalated. Uh, and, uh, what was supposed to be some months turned out to be freer in recruitment. So I worked at that agency for five years and then moved on to do something else. And now since 1 1/2 year, I'm back at that agency, but now out of my own company to the, to the recruitment group. So I'm now back as, as a partner at the place where I initially started. That's nice. So is it your, your partner at your old company? Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. And you leave like an executive search then I guess you're all changed a little bit. So how does your typical day look like now you don't only do recruitment then or how do how does it look your typical day typical work that I'm very focused on the Canada side. So I speak to a lot of people and they also reach out to me because they know me from from shared history. So I've worked 10 years in house as a recruiter. So I've built quite a big network. Um, so I speak a lot with candidates about potential roles. I do a lot of market research just reading about what's going on where, what company, because I just want to be completely up to date with the industry trends that when a company calls me for a search that I can exactly tell them, well, in that scenario, these companies are interesting, you know, these people, this is what they cost, etcetera. So yeah, most of my days are focused on on that side. I don't do much. Salesman, I don't do any sales actually. Which is kind of nice because that also doesn't really suit my personality. And yeah, you kind of mentioned what types of project you currently work with, but maybe you can tell a little bit more like you do the search only for the senior roles then or how do you work with what I call leadership roles? So that could be like the staff, principal engineer, architects, the the highest individual contributor roles. At this moment, I've got like a VP engineering for a big deck. Company I'm working with kind of a cool assignment for a CTO type of job. OK, yeah, like very confidential, secretive so that the client. Wanted to meet me but not at their office because in that industry I'm well known as a headhunter, so he didn't. No, we did the whole thing of calling each other and meeting at neutral ground, and I had to sign an NDA before I even got to learn about the job. So I think that's the closest I've ever been called to be, to be a secret agent. Ohh. Wow. No, that's, yeah, those type of roles is what I'm working at at the moment. OK. And maybe you can tell them a little bit about trends that you notice now and how is it going in, in Netherlands in the market in general, the job market, but also specifically in it is very different than it was let's say 2-3 years ago. Everything was about growth, hiring more. Those days are gone there. The free market, the free money is out of the market. So nowadays companies are a lot more conscious about. Um, hiring about do we really need someone? Um, so I do have a lot of work, but it's, it's in a different setting. It's never in the next year. We want to grow X. Therefore we need 20 of this. It's very step by step. We have this one specific position for, to prepare us for the next phase of the company. Like I said, I've been doing this for 16 years now. You know, I've I've, I've, I know this market, but from a bit longer ago. It's it's. Very different than three years ago, but, well, it's still nice. Yeah, OK. OK. That's, that's good to know. Yeah. I also like to ask people what their biggest achievement is workwise and maybe personal wise. Do you have anything to share about this? Achievement. I think I, I really still am very passionate about recruitment, which is not an achievement, but it's something I'm very happy about. So like almost everybody else, I just locked into the recruitment world and a lot of people do that for, I don't know, three years, five years and then then they move on, which is fine, of course, you know, follow your dreams. I'm just very. Happy that after all these years I'm still very passionate about the recruitment job. This is what I do. I've tried to keep it fresh for myself. So I've pivoted a couple times from agency to in house to freelancing and our executive search myself challenged to make sure that I grow. But the fact that they're really still love recruitment is also, I think people in my network recognize that like, like I said, I, I don't do sales. They, they, they come to me. And I think that's because the people in the network see that you really love the job. So that's more lucky, I suppose that achievement. But I think that's the thing that I'm, I'm happiest about in my career.