People type it into Google. How to get a job in the Netherlands. Fine. I live here. Haarlem. The work I actually got is klantenservice. Customer service. Polish and English.
I will not sell you a trick. There is no secret vacature that only I found. There is a person on the other side of the sollicitatiegesprek. They can hear if you are performing.
Wanna know more. Fine.
The Dutch words you will actually meet
I am writing this in English, because that is how people search it. The words on the paper here are Dutch. You will see them on the vacature. You will see them in the mail. You will hear them in the room. I am not stuffing them. I am naming the things by the names they have. And I will tell you what they mean, because nobody handed me a list either.
Klantenservice. Customer service. The desk. The phone. The mail. Someone is tired and you stay. That is the work I actually got.
A vacature is the job posting. The ad. Sometimes it sits on the company site. Sometimes a friend sent it. Read it like a person wrote it, because someone did.
An uitzendbureau is an agency. They hire you, then they send you to a desk that is not theirs. Randstad. Tempo-Team. That kind of door. It is not lesser work. It is still a person on the other end of the line.
A sollicitatie is the application. You. Applying. The mail, the form, the CV. An open sollicitatie is you writing even when they did not post a vacature. That is allowed. It is not magic. It is a letter to a person.
A sollicitatiegesprek is the interview. The conversation in the room, or on a call. Not a performance. They will ask what you did. They will hear how you talk when it gets a bit loud. If you freeze into a brochure, they hear that too. People also just say gesprek. Same thing. The talk.
An arbeidscontract is the employment contract. The paper you sign. Sometimes it says bepaalde tijd: for a set time. A year. Two. Not forever. That is normal here. It is not a trick they invented for you. Read it. If you do not understand a line, ask. I would rather you ask than smile and sign a sentence you cannot defend later.
What they are actually hiring
I have loved customer service for a long time. I always did. That is the work. Not a slogan. Someone is tired. Someone is late. Someone already explained this twice. You stay. You listen. You own the outcome. You come back.
If you want klantenservice in the Netherlands, say the languages you can actually work in. I say Polish and English. I do not invent Dutch I cannot hold on a call when someone is shouting. If your Dutch is enough for the desk, say so. If it is not, do not decorate the CV with it. The first angry customer will find you.
Haarlem is a real place. People work here. Amsterdam is twenty minutes and a whole other mood. You can live in Haarlem and still do the work. I do. Put the city. Put the desk. Do not write “open to opportunities worldwide” on a vacature for a team that sits in Hoofddorp.
They are not hiring a poem. They are hiring someone who can take a messy sentence and turn it into the next step. Late is late. Then we fix Friday. Panic does not move a backorder. A pretty cover letter does not either, if you cannot stay when it gets loud.
The sollicitatie, without the theatre
Your CV. Short. True. The languages you work in. The jobs you can defend in a sollicitatiegesprek. I already wrote how I write a CV for this job. Same person. If a line sounds like a brochure, it goes out.
The mail. You do not need a subject that sounds like a ticket. You can say: I saw the vacature. I do this work. I am in Haarlem. Polish and English. Here is the CV. That is enough. They are tired too.
The uitzendbureau — the agency — sometimes that is the door. It is not lesser work. It is a desk with a clock. You still stay calm. You still own the outcome. If they send you, go as yourself. Not as a temp who is allowed to care less.
The gesprek. Let there be a pause. Do not fill it with a speech. If you do not know, say you do not know, and say what you would check. That is the job. I do that on the line every day. They can tell.
If they speak Dutch and you answer in English, that is fine if the vacature asked for English. If they start in Polish, I stay in Polish. I do not drag anyone into a language because it is prettier on paper. Same rule in the room.
What I will not tell you
I will not tell you there is a shortcut. I will not tell you to pay someone to rewrite you into a person you are not. I will not tell you that LinkedIn is the whole country. Some desks still open because someone forwarded a mail.
I will not pretend I hired you. I can tell you how the work sounds from this side of the table, in Haarlem, in klantenservice. That is it.
If you want the rest of the desk, it is here. How a first week starts with a person. What Polish and English at the desk actually means. How an order moves when someone is waiting.
I’m Patrycja Kozdrach. Nice to meet you. If you write, write like a person.
Pick the desk that feels closest to you
I wrote one guide for each kind of desk, so you can read what the work really asks of you in bank customer service, fashion customer service or electronics customer service.
How can I help you today?
I won’t sell you a poem. Customer service is hard. If you want someone who stays calm when it gets loud, and still treats the person like a person — write to info@kozdrach.com. I am in Haarlem. I reply.
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