The executive director of one of the largest personnel companies in Europe is to talk about ice hockey. “As they say in Canada, Skate where the album is going to be,” says Sander van ‘t noordende de Randstad. “If the work moves there, we must make sure we are there.”
Van ‘T Noordende has led Randstad, one of the largest recruitment and personnel businesses, since 2022, after the superior work was lost in Accenture. He is now trying to navigate in a labor market in agitation.
Employers face obstacles that find personnel in an era of low post-pandemic unemployment. However, the uncertainty linked to political and economic agitation is leaving many applicants who fight to find work. Artificial intelligence is configured to reduce the demand for human workers and is already making hiring difficult. Van ‘t noordande says that your company needs to stay at the forefront. “I am in the business of listening to the market, the client … we point out our efforts where the demand is and will be.”
Randstad has identified growth areas in fields, including biotechnology, logistics and medical care. When focusing on these, he hopes that the supply of workers can better match what employers need.
For now, however, the game seems to have stagnated. “Things are, let’s say, somewhat stuck,” says Van ‘t noordende. The hiring is silenced; The quarrel rates are low. “Customers say … ‘I’m going to sit in the fence for a while’, [they] They are reluctant to invest. “In quarterly results at the end of April, Randstad reported a 5 percent drop in revenues, year after year, not different from colleagues in international recruitment.
The Dutchman points out that Randstad is partly protected by his long history and size, in a “sticky” industry where reputation is important and customer relationships tend to last. Founded in 1960, the income of 2024 of the company that is quoted in Amsterdam was € 24 billion and helped 1.7 million people find work.
But it also emphasizes that the company is looking for innovative ways to find people’s jobs. Last year, Randstad acquired TORC, a platform for technological workers that uses AI to review possible hiring and combine them with jobs; and Zorgwerk, which operates an application for health workers to find temporary work.
These have raided the way for a hiring application to go “You go to the application, you register, they validate you … and you are basically ready to work in the next 24 hours,” he says. “It is really a model that is not a human intervention at all … it takes care of itself.” Since it was launched last year in the US, the platform has attracted 500,000 users, says the company.
Its digital rehealth is first happening as recruitment, such as the industries it serves, is being interrupted by technology. Employment applicants who use AI to apply for roles make it more difficult for notices to identify the right people. Platforms such as LinkedIn or Freelance Marketplace Upwork are invading the territory of traditional recruiters with new features that can examine, attract or administer potential candidates.
Is greater automation a sign that all workers should be worried about their work? Van ‘t noordende says he is an “ai optimistic”; The works will change, they will not disappear. “Talent is scarce, unemployment is at low record levels in most western countries … The world needs a promotion of productivity and AI can help with that.”
Use the industry research example. “You ask 10 questions, press the button and [the AI tool] He says: ‘I’m looking for 150 websites for you’. You get a very orderly report. It is amazing. When he was younger he was a consultant and would have done it. . . It took me weeks. “But that means more productivity, no less workers.
Will the agents ever appear among the staff of Randstad’s books? “There may be a somewhat distant future.” But the company attaches to its main business for now. The services and technology “do not gela well” because “services are people, technology is about developing something and selling it,” he says.
Van ‘t Noordende spent more than 30 years at the Professional Services Accenture. He began his working life as a consultant there, when Andersen Consulting, he held divisional CEO positions in resources, management and product consulting, and only left after the role of the CEO of the group to Julie Sweet in 2019 was lost in 2019.
“I found myself in a situation in which the only work I still aspired, I was not going to get,” he says. After leaving, she traveled with her husband. He sat in together, including those of Randstad, and when the position of Executive Director emerged: “I did the interview, and I obtained the work,” he says in a characteristically direct way.
He describes with enthusiasm how recruitment overlaps with traditional consulting. Randstad services include Cyber Security Management, for example, as well as providing customers for consultants with human resources problems and helping companies manage layoffs.
Van ‘t Noordende has a house in Miami, but it passes much of its time in the Netherlands, where Randstad is headquarters. It is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, which perhaps reflects its distance from the most feverish atmosphere of the cultural wars of the United States, but also their personal experience.
The executive director has described as gay at work as “one of the best decisions I have made” and has sat at the Out and equal Board, the global organization for LGBT+ representation in the workplace. His biography of LinkedIn is concentrated in his “particular passion for advocating equity in the workplace with a strong approach to supporting the LGBTQI+community.”
“When you want to recruit the right people, you need to recruit everyone, from the widest pool you can find,” he says. Even Trump’s threats to DEI’s policies of European companies have not damping that successful hiring is diverse, he adds. “The whole situation is settling.”
However, Flip-Flop in Trump tariffs has brought a new uncertainty. Van ‘T Noordende says that customers are “managing their short -term options … but they still don’t press the trigger in long -term changes” in manufacturing locations or supply chains.
He acknowledges that there are limits to how much can influence the labor market. “For that to change, we need an economy that flourishes a little more than today,” he says. “Customers can’t do anything forever.”