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Leiden University Career Zone

Recruitment

Recruitment

During the search for your (first) job, you may have come across it once already; various labour market agencies that want to help you get a job through secondment or recruitment. But how does that actually work? And what are the differences and the advantages and disadvantages? We will explain this further below.

Temporary employment agency
A temporary employment agency is focused on temporary work. The employment of a temporary employee is often flexible, which can vary from one day or a few days to a few months. As a temporary employee you have a temporary employment contract with the temporary employment agency, not with the organisation where you perform the work. This temporary employment agency "lends" you to the company where you are going to work (the hirer). This gives you different rights than when you are directly employed by the company (the hirer). For example, it is possible for the user company to stop hiring you as a temporary employee at any time. In addition, you will usually receive a contract in phases.

Secondment
Secondment means that someone works for the hirer for a certain period of time. The big difference between an temporary agency work employment contract and a secondment agreement is the difference in security. Are you being seconded? Then the secondment organisation is your employer, so you have a contract with them. The duration of the contract is often longer. Sometimes, for example, you get an immediate one-year contract, in which case you also have a notice period even if the assignment does not last the full year. Permanent employment is also possible. As a seconded employee you have many of the same certainties as with a permanent job and often also attractive fringe benefits.

The difference in security between temporary employment and secondment is mainly in the temporary employment clause you are dealing with as a starting temporary employee. For a first period of time that you start working as a temporary agency worker, you have little certainty and your contract usually contains a temporary employment clause. This means that the end of the assignment you are working on is also the end of the agency work employment contract. The temporary employment agency then does not have to pay you if there is no work. No work means no pay. But it also works the other way around: as a temporary agency worker you can decide at any time to stop working. The more weeks you work through the same temporary employment agency, the more rights you accrue.

Source: Brunel.nl

Recruitment and selection
Recruitment and selection (recruitment) means that the employment agency does the recruitment of personnel to be hired for another organisation (their client). This client then selects a number of candidates they consider interesting to meet. As an applicant you will conduct (application) interviews with the recruiter working at the recruitment agency as well as with the organisation to which you are applying. Recruitment and selection has two important advantages for you as an applicant: first of all you will be screened and supervised by the recruiter of the recruitment agency throughout the entire application process and secondly you will be employed directly by the organisation you are applying to.

Source: Recruitment.nl

 

Information above is general information, read more about specific information as an international student or employee via 'Working in the Netherlands'.

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