The recruitment industry offers a world of excitement and opportunity, no two days are the same. Our Huxley and Global Enterprise Partners teams in Belgium and The Netherlands respectively know all too well the passion and purpose that comes with working in recruitment.
Recently, we sat down with Alix Van Langendonck, Recruitment Consultant with SThree brand Huxley in Brussels, and Maik Aarts, Sales Team Manager at Global Enterprise Partners (GEP) in Amsterdam, to talk about the highs and lows of their job and what it means to change the lives of the customers they work with every day.
A rewarding challenge
Maik Aarts, Sales Team Manager, Global Enterprise Partners (GEP), Amsterdam
Maik made the move from Huxley to GEP early on in his career and is now actively recruiting a new team in Hamburg, Germany alongside our SThree Talent Acquisition Team to build a new team of specialist IT recruiters.
“We’re looking for people who like to work in an international environment, who like to deal with multinationals and who want to play an important role in their international IT programmes."
"This can be challenging though as I’m looking for a unique combination of skills, including business administration or a similar background who speak German, have a commercial mind-set, sales experience and willingness to start in Amsterdam and then move to Hamburg at a later stage,” says Maik.
Every day is different
Maik says that being external, on the road, meeting clients and candidates makes every day different, "you meet different people from different companies, cultures and industries which gives me a lot of energy, I learn something new every day.”
Alix Van Langendonck, Recruitment Consultant, Huxley, Brussels
“Reading the news these days, it’s all about mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures that companies are investing in. We are specialised in the supply of experts for the international IT programmes that are the result of these mergers and acquisitions,” says Maik.
Alix loves the excitement about the job, “the contact with our customers and mostly the fact that you get the chance to interact with people at many levels quite early on is great. As a Consultant, you learn something new every day.”
“You become stronger and more confident. When you place people in the right place and job, they are so grateful for what you’ve done. It is inspiring to see people are happy because of you, because of your effort and involvement,” she says.
To be successful
Recruitment is the best place to develop your skills, says Maik. “It asks for resilience, control and structured processes. If you are successful in recruitment and you manage to establish strong relationships with different clients you will see that you add a lot of value and that your customers value you for what you do. You play a very important role in their success,” says Maik.
If you want to work at one of our specialist SThree brands in Amsterdam or Brussels and have a career with purpose, then browse our most recent jobs there.