We close the gap between unfilled vacancies and untapped potential.
The problem is not a shortage of people — it is a shortage of routes between those two numbers.
Behind that 1.25 million are three groups:
In the Netherlands there are around 375,000 open vacancies, against some 1.25 million people with untapped labour potential. That is not a shortage of people. It is a shortage of routes between those two numbers.
Behind that 1.25 million are three groups: some 396,000 unemployed, 287,000 semi-unemployed and 568,000 part-timers who want to work more hours. And demand is not going away. Up to 2030 some 2.3 million job openings will arise, more than nine in ten of them to replace people who leave. School leavers fill only part of that; people who switch professions become indispensable.
Not out of unwillingness. The reason is that the costs of inflow fall up front and the returns come much later. Finding someone who is not actively looking costs reach. Retraining someone costs time and money. Supporting someone on the job costs the attention of your best people. And you carry the risk that it does not work yourself.
For a single company with fifty employees, that calculation is almost always negative. Not because it would not work, but because there is not the volume to spread the fixed costs. That is why inflow in this market stays a project: a pilot, a subsidy scheme, a well-meant initiative that stalls as soon as attention fades.
Then there is the lens. Traditional recruitment matches on CV and job title, and so sees a diploma instead of what someone can already do. Career switchers fall outside the search filters.
Thinking about inflow often focuses only on groups the market passes over: older workers, refugees with residence status, neurodivergent professionals, returners. Rightly so, because that is where untapped supply lies. But the gain is broader. Build a learning infrastructure, and you also make the professionals who are already there deployable in sectors where they never used to get a seat at the table. The same engine, two sources of supply.
At sufficient volume, the sums tip. Outreach, training and support become fixed costs spread over many placements, and the risk of a single mismatch is absorbed by the whole. At that point inflow is no longer a cost item but a supply strategy — access to people your competitors simply cannot reach.
That is why we build this in as an engine rather than running it as a side project. Not because it looks good, but because the numbers add up.