Your first senior hires in the Netherlands: What international companies get wrong

This article was written by David Gibbons, Commercial Director at Adams Multilingual Recruitment

The first senior hire a company makes in a new country is the most important one. That person builds the foundation and hires the team that comes after them, which makes the appointment absolutely vital to get right.

This article looks at the most common mistakes we have seen international companies make when hiring their first senior employee in the Netherlands, and what they can do to avoid them.

Starting the search before you have defined the expectations

Most first senior briefs describe a person rather than a job – leadership experience in a relevant industry, commercial mindset, strategic thinking, stakeholder management. Every one of those is true of executives and senior leaders in the Netherlands, but none of them tells you whether the person can do what the first year requires in your specific situation.

If your company is new to the Netherlands, the skill set and experience needed are specific. The first year could include some or all of the following:

• Setting up an entity
• Finding and establishing an office or site
• Putting legal and employment contracts in place
• Establishing a salary structure
• Building compensation and benefits packages
• Setting a recruitment strategy
• Establishing a budget

And that is only the beginning phase. With so much legal and local knowledge needed, your first executive hire is likely to be Dutch, or someone who has spent many years in the Netherlands and knows the market and landscape.

Choosing a job title that promises more than the role delivers

“Managing Director”, “Country Manager”, “General Manager”, “VP Netherlands” and “Commercial Director” do not necessarily mean the same thing in the Dutch market. For a senior candidate, the title is a vital part of the proposition.

If the role is genuinely responsible for establishing the Dutch business, with P&L, people and strategic responsibility, you need to make that clear. A Dutch candidate who hears “Managing Director Netherlands” will assume they have responsibility for:

• P&L and budgets
• Commercial and market strategy
• People and hiring
• Organisational design
• Customers and local partnerships

While HQ may actually mean: “You are responsible for implementing the strategy we develop in New York, Singapore or Tokyo.”

Those are vastly different jobs. If the second is the reality, we suggest you call the function something else — Country Manager, General Manager, or VP Netherlands, for example — rather than creating an MD position that the candidate will later feel has been misrepresented.

Underestimating how much the first executive sets the company culture

This is perhaps the most important strategic consideration, because your first Dutch executive will potentially establish:

• The local culture
• Hiring standards
• Compensation philosophy
• The relationship with HQ
• Dutch employment practices
• Customer relationships
• Office and workplace culture
• The company’s reputation in the Dutch market

The clear message to candidates in the market is: “We are appointing the person who will build our Dutch organisation.” That is an attractive proposition, and it is worth making explicit.

Overlooking the gap between what HQ expects and what a Dutch executive expects

If an international HQ is driving the hiring process, the biggest potential issue is not salary and benefits. It is more likely to be a mismatch between what the Dutch executive believes they are being hired to do and what HQ actually expects them to do.

There is a fairly strong Dutch expectation of autonomy, openness, direct communication, and relatively low hierarchy. Dutch working culture is commonly described as flat, transparent and direct, and work-life balance is an important consideration.

These are obviously cultural tendencies rather than rules, but they become extremely relevant when recruiting the first Dutch executive.

Mistaking visibility for performance

This is a surprisingly common issue. A US or Asian HQ may expect the executive to:

• Be online early
• Communicate constantly
• Attend numerous HQ meetings and travel there frequently
• Send frequent updates
• Be available late in the evening and at weekends

A Dutch executive may be perfectly comfortable doing all of that when there is a business reason, but may question the underlying assumption that constant availability demonstrates commitment. Work-life balance is a recognised feature of Dutch working culture, and an important factor in attracting and retaining international talent.

Running the search from headquarters

The person you want to hire is most probably not reading job adverts. Posting the role reaches candidates who are actively looking, and at this level that is a small and unrepresentative pool. At the same time, cold outreach from a company with no local presence, no local reputation and no mutual connections often gets no response at all from someone comfortable in their current job.

Distance also affects the ability to assess the right candidate. Career journeys in the Netherlands do not always mean what an internal recruiter at headquarters might assume. Titles, for example, do not always map exactly between Dutch and American companies, tenure norms differ by sector, and a CV that looks unsuitable from abroad can describe exactly the person who has already done this job. A career break, for example, can be read positively in Europe and viewed with suspicion elsewhere.

With our executive hiring services, you have access to networks and candidates who are not visible on the open market, and we know how and when to approach them.

What executive candidates expect in the recruitment process

Most companies have a standard recruitment process they apply to the majority of their vacancies. When hiring a senior leader in a new market, you will most likely need to design a different one. Your first executive is evaluating your company as much as you are evaluating them, and anything that reads as unclear or indecisive will need to be reconsidered.

Dutch professional culture is direct and comparatively flat, and senior candidates bring both into the interview. Expect to be asked direct questions upfront and provide frank answers rather than polished ones that evade the subject. Make sure to keep the process short enough that it can conclude while the candidate is still interested and add someone with decision-making authority to the process early. An excessively lengthy interview process signals hesitation, and hesitation about a market you are preparing to enter is not reassuring to the person being asked to build it.

Above all, keep the process moving. A two-week gap between a first and second interview can have negative connotations for a candidate who may be in other recruitment processes.

How we can help

We have worked in the Dutch market for nearly thirty years and helped many international companies build their first teams here. We are here to advise you on the market, the talent availability, and the right locations within the Netherlands for your expansion. Once that decision has been made, we can help you build a job/person profile that is relevant in the Netherlands, and advise you on expected salary and benefits packages.

If you are planning to hire for an executive or leadership role in the Netherlands and would like to talk it through before you begin, you can reach out to David Gibbons, at davidgibbons@adamsrecruitment.com