Finding staff
Vacancy open for months? Or twenty to fill at once? This is the honest guide: seven routes to finding staff, when each one fits and how the costs work. Even if that means you do not need us.
How do you find staff in 2026?
In 2026, finding staff rarely works by just posting a vacancy: most suitable candidates are not actively looking. You have seven routes: temp agency, recruitment agency, job boards, in-house hiring, recruitment marketing, sourcing and RPO. Which one fits depends on the role, scarcity, number of hires and time pressure. SocialFind makes that choice per vacancy.
See how SocialFind determines what worksWhat type of role are you hiring for?
Every type of role calls for its own approach. Pick your situation and see how we reach that audience.
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Practical and operational roles
Technicians, operators, production, logistics and field staff. Audiences you reach with the right campaigns, a frictionless application and lightning-fast follow-up.You don't need to know which recruitment solution you need
Most employers don't think in solutions. They think: my vacancies have been open for five months. Or: I need twenty people. Or: my recruiters can't reach this audience. Sound familiar? Then you're in the right place.
Meta Ads, LinkedIn, job boards, sourcing, employer branding, an interim recruiter or no cure no pay are tools and models. The right choice differs per role. SocialFind investigates where your candidates are, what makes them move and where the funnel gets stuck. Then we build and run the approach that's needed, as one integrated partnership through Recruitment Process Outsourcing, entirely under your own name.
Want to know first how that compares to your current way of recruiting? See how RPO stacks up against other recruitment solutions, or read what's involved in outsourcing your recruitment.
Besides the approach, a few Dutch rules that affect every hire change in 2027, from the youth minimum wage to hiring through a staffing agency. What changes is set out in Dutch Budget Day 2026: what changes in 2027 for employers who are hiring?
How do you recruit staff who are not looking?
You recruit staff by moving towards candidates yourself: you find them, approach them and give them a reason to respond, instead of waiting for someone to stumble across your vacancy.
The difference between recruiting staff, searching for staff and finding staff is not word play. It says who moves. Searching means looking through what already exists: the applications you received, a CV database, a listing on a job board. Finding describes the outcome, as if it happens to you. Recruiting is the only one of the three that describes an action on your side, and that is exactly what is needed once the people you want already have a job and expect nothing from you.
Active recruiting runs along a handful of routes. Which one fits depends on your audience and on how many people you need:
- Campaigns on the channels where your audience already is. Fits large practical audiences such as technicians, drivers and operators, who are not on job boards but are on social media. That is how recruitment marketing works.
- Approaching candidates personally, one by one. Fits scarce specialists who never apply on their own: engineers, IT and experienced office professionals. That is active sourcing.
- Letting your own people recruit. Fits if your network is strong and your colleagues are happy. Cheap per hire, but it does not scale beyond your network.
- Several routes at once, steered as one whole. Fits volume recruitment and hard-to-fill vacancies, where no single route delivers enough on its own.
And then the honest part: recruiting does not solve every staffing problem. If you do get applicants but not the right ones, the bottleneck sits in your proposition, your targeting or your follow-up, and recruiting harder mainly produces more of the wrong conversations. If as many people leave at the back as come in at the front, more inflow is a plaster. In that case, first look at why too few applicants come in and why people go, before you put budget into new channels. The terms that come with all of this, from sourcing to employer branding, are explained in the glossary.
If it is not one role but several vacancies at once, the approach changes: you plan on capacity instead of on a single search.
Whichever approach it becomes, every vacancy starts from the same document: the profile you will be rejecting on later. What belongs in it and what is better left out is set out in How do you write a role profile that works?.
- STEP 1
We analyze your vacancies
Role, target audience, labor market and your current situation: we map out where your candidates are and where things are stuck right now.
See our approach.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
- STEP 2
We determine the recruitment mix
For each role we choose the combination of channels, content, sourcing and funnel that fits. No standard package, but an approach that follows from the analysis.
How RPO works at SocialFind.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
- STEP 3
We run the entire funnel
From campaign to hire, under your name and with your employer brand. We focus on hires, measure everything and keep sharpening as we go.
Read about white-label recruitment.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
Even then, we start with the cause
Sometimes the starting point isn't the type of role, but the problem itself. Understand the cause first, then choose the tools.
- Applicants, but not the right ones
- Then the problem usually sits in the proposition, the targeting, or screening and follow-up. We adjust the approach until the quality is right.
- Your target audience isn't responding
- Then we look at channels, content and visibility: from recruitment marketing to active sourcing and personal outreach.
- Your recruitment team is stuck
- Then we strengthen your team instead of replacing it. Extra capacity, campaigns and tooling, alongside your own recruiters.
- You don't know where to start
- That's what the recruitment diagnosis is for: you tell us who you need and where things are stuck, we show you which approach fits.
Let us determine what your vacancies need
Tell us who you need. We determine how to find, convince and hire them.
Frequently asked questions about finding staff
You don't have to. Start the recruitment diagnosis: you tell us which roles are open, how many people you're looking for and where things are getting stuck. We show you what type of recruitment challenge you have and which approach is likely to fit, before a meeting is even needed.
Fastest are the routes you can start today: a temp agency for temporary hands, asking your own employees for introductions, and a social media campaign aimed at a target group that is large enough. Expect responses within days, not hours. Scarce specialists and management roles cannot be sped up with more budget; there only personal outreach works, and that takes weeks. So when it is urgent: take the fastest route now and start the structural route at the same time.
Through werk.nl, the Dutch UWV job site, you can post vacancies and search candidate profiles for free, and through your own LinkedIn company page and network you can share vacancies at no cost. Some job sites offer a free basic listing. Free channels only reach people who are actively looking, so for roles with little supply you will rarely get enough responses. Combine them with referrals from your own people.
There is no single best way for all roles. For temporary production workers a temp agency works, for technicians and care workers recruitment marketing, for specialists sourcing and for executives discreet outreach. The best way follows from four questions: how scarce is the profile, how many people do you need, how fast, and how well known are you as an employer. Whoever skips that analysis usually picks the channel they already knew.
Because the labour market has been tight for years: according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), many sectors have more open vacancies than unemployed people, and an ageing population will not improve that in the coming years. The people you are looking for already work somewhere and are not actively searching. Finding staff therefore increasingly means reaching and convincing latent talent, instead of waiting for applications.