How do you hire a highly skilled migrant in the Netherlands?

It is a residence permit, not a job title. A highly skilled migrant is an employee from outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland who works for an employer recognised by the IND, the Dutch immigration service, at a salary above a fixed amount. There is no list of eligible professions and, for the national scheme, no diploma requirement. The salary and your recognition as a sponsor decide.

That has a practical upside. Because the permit covers the work, you do not need a separate work permit from UWV, and you skip the test that comes with one, where UWV checks whether the job could have been filled from the Dutch or European labour market. If your candidate holds an EU passport, none of this applies at all. How the two routes compare is set out in our article on hiring staff from abroad.

Recognition comes first. Your organisation must be registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, and the IND checks whether its continuity and solvency are sufficiently guaranteed. The legal decision period is three months. According to the IND fee table, recognition costs 5,080 euros, or 2,539 euros for an organisation with no more than 50 employees. Once granted, it stays in place until you cancel it or stop meeting the conditions. One exception: for a highly skilled migrant with Turkish nationality, the employer does not need to be recognised.

The IND uses three amounts, all gross per month and without holiday allowance:

5,942 euros from age 30, 4,357 euros under 30, and a reduced amount of 3,122 euros.

The reduced amount applies to graduates who start during or straight after the Dutch orientation year, or within three years of graduating, completing a PhD or ending a research permit. The EU Blue Card is a separate permit with its own figures: 5,942 euros, or 4,754 euros under its reduced criterion.

What counts towards the threshold is narrower than many candidates expect. Gross salary must be paid every month into a bank account in the employee's name. Fixed allowances count only if they are in the employment contract and paid monthly. Holiday allowance, payment in kind and uncertain pay such as overtime or tips do not count. The IND also requires the salary to be in line with the market rate, so an offer that scrapes past the threshold while sitting well below what the role normally pays can still fail.

Age works in your favour if you hire young. Someone who starts with you before turning 30 keeps the lower threshold for as long as they stay with you, even after their thirtieth birthday. If they move to another employer, the threshold for their age at that point applies.

The amounts are reset every year on 1 January. The IND published the 2026 figures on 24 December 2025, and on 30 October 2026 it had not yet published the amounts for 2027. If you make an offer now for someone starting in January, leave some headroom. And check the net side too: many offers lean on the 30% ruling, which has its own salary threshold and drops to 27 per cent for most new recruits in 2027.

As the recognised sponsor, you file the application, not the employee. The fee is 423 euros. The IND has 90 days to decide by law but aims for two weeks, provided the application is complete. In practice the speed is in your hands: a missing contract or a salary that does not match the threshold stops the clock.

If the candidate needs an entry visa, the provisional residence permit known as an mvv, you apply for it at the same time. They then have 90 days to collect it at the Dutch embassy and another 90 days to travel. After a positive decision, the IND aims to have the residence card ready within two weeks. From signed contract to first working day, plan in weeks rather than days.

The permit runs for the length of the contract, up to five years. From day one you carry a duty that employers often overlook: report changes that affect residence to the IND within four weeks, such as the employee leaving, a new role or a salary that drops below the threshold. That last one can cost the employee the permit. If they lose their job, they get three months to find another recognised employer, or six months if they have held the permit for two years or more.

Do I need a work permit on top of the residence permit?

Not for the job you hire them for. The residence card states that work as a highly skilled migrant and as a self-employed person is allowed, and that other work requires a work permit. So if the employee wants to take on a different kind of job alongside, that is a separate question for UWV. For the role itself, the IND permit is all you need.

Which roles is this realistic for?

Mostly roles where the salary already sits above the threshold: experienced specialists in engineering, IT, finance and research. For roles paid around the Dutch average, the threshold for a candidate aged 30 or over is often out of reach. What such a specialist weighs besides salary is covered in employment terms that count, and how we fill specialist and office roles is on that page.

What changes for highly skilled migrants in 2027?

Two things are certain: the thresholds will be indexed as every year, and the 30% ruling moves to 27 per cent. The Dutch cabinet has also proposed raising the salary threshold further and testing recognised sponsors more strictly. According to the government's business portal Ondernemersplein, that proposal is still before both houses of parliament and no start date has been set.

Can a recruitment agency file the application for me?

The application belongs to the recognised sponsor, which is the employer who puts the migrant on the payroll. An agency can find the candidate and prepare the paperwork, but the recognition, the contract and the reporting duty stay with you. The different ways of working with an agency are explained in our recruitment glossary.

SocialFind wrote this article from the pages and publications of the IND and Ondernemersplein, checked on 30 October 2026. This is not legal advice. To get articles like this by email, sign up for our newsletter.