Quality applicants in abundance:
our secret during labour market tightness

On average once every two months a serious applicant walks in who fills in the assessment so well that we immediately schedule an introduction talk. Since early 2023 that suddenly became five per month. Really fantastic, but we quickly wondered where that sudden influx came from. What had we actually approached differently?

1. The location of vacancies

We are actually constantly hunting for new talent to strengthen the team and you will find our vacancies in several places. Our careers site runs, we have a collaboration with jouwICTvacature.nl and occasionally put something on Indeed and LinkedIn via an ad. Only we quickly noticed that the increase did not run through those paid channels at all. The real rise came via direct emails from new candidates and that told us nothing about the cause.

2. The time of year

Normally around summer we always see a surge once students finish their studies and apply en masse for a "grown-up job". That peak always actually starts with the summer holiday, but this year that wave rolled in much earlier than expected and the pattern also did not match only recent graduates. There were notably many switchers among them. That too pointed totally not in the direction of what the real cause was.

3. Office dog got a LinkedIn profile

However strange it sounds: the only thing we really did differently from the years before was creating a LinkedIn account for our office dog Pippa the office dog. Pippa, a Golden Retriever, has been roaming our office since April 2021 (read here the blog with our experiences) and we found it a playful idea to share a peek behind the scenes now and then via her profile. Someone from the developers then grabs their phone, takes a photo and we write a short text with it. Done. The results do not lie. Ordinary posts from our company page on LinkedIn draw on average about 200 impressions. A post from Pippa averages 1500, and the nice thing is that those mainly land with people from our field, software developers then.

Why do cute dog photos actually lead to more applicants?

That a photo of a dog simply does better than a story about a new frameworkGlossary · In briefframeworkA framework is a coherent foundation for software development, providing reusable code, a defined structure and conventions for building an application.Read more⁠ we understand well enough. Still that impression is of course only one side of the coin. The action that follows counts. What we have a strong suspicion about? Web development companies seem deep down enormously alike. Everyone pays more or less fine, does their best for a few extras and the work itself in essence also does not differ all that much from what a competitor offers. That Golden Retriever in our office distinguishes us. Such a dog tells the story of our company culture and the atmosphere that hangs here, something a collective labour agreement table with days off silently passes by. New colleagues that way get almost unfiltered whether they fit here, quite apart from the project work waiting.

Is an office dog the only way to attract more applicants?

With a large grain of salt you might think that every company with a staff shortage should therefore hire a four-legged friend with a LinkedIn profile on the spot. That conclusion is short-sighted and for a great many companies also completely unfeasible. What can be copied is the formula we use: not the dog itself, but exposing your daily culture and the informal life behind the laptops is the real mechanism. What makes your company unique? Why would someone want to work with you? How do you let future colleagues know what culture they land in? Once you know how to answer, and actively put that unique atmosphere image with your target group, candidates get a much clearer picture of your organisation.

Why do you work where you work?

Is there a dog on the work floor, are games evenings organised, or is there regularly a team outing on the planning? In other words: which things outside work lift your company above a simple place to collect a salary?