Around 2 million people in the Netherlands have an office job — which means roughly 8 million people do not. But how do you reach those who aren’t behind a computer or on their phone all day?
For those who spend their days working in an office, it can sometimes feel as if everyone else does too. But a closer look at the numbers quickly shows this is a major misconception. Only one in five workers in the Netherlands has what we call an office job, which means four out of five do not. They work in shops, hospitality, factories, logistics, cleaning and countless other sectors. In other words, in everything that keeps the economy running.
In labour market communication, however, much of the effort seems focused on office-based employees. People who sit behind a screen all day. Whether through social media, LinkedIn or email, office workers are generally easy to reach. Their behaviour is well mapped out, as nearly every online action can be tracked today.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of workers are not found there at all. And that often seems to be forgotten. What drives people who do not sit behind a screen? Which channels do they actually use? What would convince them to consider changing jobs? Which pull factors matter most? These are questions that platforms like LinkedIn cannot answer, simply because these audiences are rarely present there.
These questions are also highly relevant, especially in technical professions where labour shortages remain significant. More and more technical companies are discovering that the way they have been trying to attract people is becoming less and less effective.
They seemed to be doing everything right: strong job descriptions, a competitive salary, weekly social media posts. Yet they received barely any high-quality applications from technical professionals. After some analysis, the reason quickly became clear. Their technical recruitment efforts were a collection of isolated actions without a cohesive story. Nowhere did they explain why a technician should choose to join their company. Internal communication between HR, operations and marketing was sluggish, resulting in an inconsistent employer branding message. In other words, they were busy recruiting technicians, but not attracting them. And that is exactly what you need to succeed in today’s labour market.
In practice, many organisations struggle with what Van Woezik calls “the touchpoint maze.” Candidates for technical roles encounter a confusing mix of contact moments that make the application process frustrating. For example: they find a technical vacancy on LinkedIn, but the link directs them to a general careers page instead of the specific job. Or they have to navigate complex menus with too many buttons and options. They run into an extensive application form that asks for too much information upfront. Or they are forced to go through far too many steps. “Our recruitment scan shows that candidates for technical roles drop off after an average of three touchpoints if they do not feel personally addressed. Yet many organisations use processes with seven to ten contact moments before a candidate even gets a realistic impression of the actual technical work they might be doing.”
So what is the solution, according to Van Woezik? Among other things, stopping the chase for actively searching candidates by simply pushing out vacancies. Instead, focus more on community building and relationship development. Open the doors of your organisation more widely. And look for the true differentiating strengths of your company. “At an industrial installation company, for example, we discovered that the real differentiator was not the so-called family culture (everyone claims that), but the exceptional technical autonomy. Technicians decide for themselves which methods and materials to use when solving complex problems. By making this technical autonomy the heart of their employer branding, the conversion from interview to hire for technical roles improved from one in four to one in two.”
What also helps, she says, is working in a more data-driven way.
According to Stand van Werven, a study by Intelligence Group, the so-called blue-collar workforce is now officially more difficult to recruit than the white-collar workforce, in other words: office staff. Practically trained workers have become not only the most scarce and in demand, but also the hardest to reach.
In addition, many large employers have almost completely outsourced the recruitment of blue collar workers to staffing and temp agencies in recent years. They barely know how to reach them anymore and often have fewer resources available for it. Agencies not only have richer talent pools, they also tend to know better what works when recruiting blue collar workers. They know the job boards, CV databases and social media channels where this group can be found, and rely far less on LinkedIn or Indeed, which are more focused on sourcing and recruiting white collar workers.
Agencies are also often better automated, understand the business case for good employment practices for this group, have more experience with international recruitment and increasingly use AI. They also know that recruiting blue collar workers requires a completely different approach. For example, with shorter job descriptions, multilingual vacancies, more use of video and the option to apply without a CV or motivation letter. And always mobile first, supported by clear information about salary and payment terms, which is often decisive for this audience.
The rules for recruiting blue collar workers are therefore different, but not necessarily more difficult. The key, once again, is understanding and acknowledging the needs of the target group.
“A few days of working alongside them yourself, from cleaning to cable pulling, is a must for recruiters in all these sectors. You need to understand what is happening on the ground, what motivates people and how to engage this target group. One thing is certain: blue collar workers, as long as they are in the right place, are more loyal and less actively or passively searching for a new job than white collar workers. And that is of course one of the reasons why it is more difficult to recruit blue collar workers… they move far less within the labour market. They are also approached less often by employers, partly because they are less active on LinkedIn. Nearly one in four from this group is never approached at all. And that is not because they lack talent, but because they are simply not approached through the right channels and in the right ways.”
Do you want to know exactly where your blue collar target group is, what drives them and which channels actually work? In the Giant-dashboard, you get immediate insight into their media behaviour, pull factors, scarcity, expected search duration and reachability. This helps you avoid recruiting blindly or relying on channels that mainly work for office staff. Giant shows you at a glance which strategy delivers the best results for practically trained talent, from technical and logistics roles to production and hospitality.
