This is how ABF brings in young talent

Being able to find the right people and especially experienced people is a challenge for many managers. Such is the case for Peter Ahsmann, IT engineering lead at Asset Based Finance (ABF), a subsidiary of ABN AMRO. Six years ago Peter first hired a young professional from Solid Professionals and it has since grown into a close collaboration.

The challenge

For his Software Engineering / Generic department (28 FTE), it is difficult to attract experienced people who want to work on a permanent basis. And that affects the steps Peter had already wanted to take with his department: "External staff is easy to find, but I can't build a team with just externals." When the job is done, the knowledge disappears with it and for the next project I have to build it up again, I miss the continuity in this. With the traineeship of Solid Professionals, the goal is that the young professionals join ABF after this trajectory and continue to work here."

The trajectory

Fortunately, Solid Professionals' trajectory is well designed and allows me to recruit and retain young talent. "Both the candidate and the manager are guided by a talent manager. This is in the beginning in determining whether there is a match or not, but especially after someone is hired. Solid Professionals has experience with this. They know where the needs of the young professionals lie and guide them in this. This means that I can focus more on the harder side and look at the personal growth and development in cooperation with the talent managers. We then tailor a pathway to this."

"Learning to work after training and in a large organization, that's not my expertise, nor is it the organization's. But Solid Professionals' does, in addition to their professional training. And for young candidates, this guidance is so necessary. I have very close contact with the individual's talent manager. Together we determine the strategy on which he or she should develop. Based on that, we dot the path together with the candidate."

Customization and training

One young professional is a high-flyer while with another the start is a bit more difficult. Peter explains: "Still, they all need guidance and that involves customization. We now have a young professional in our employ who is very ambitious and immediately set to work. His pitfall was only that he thought he could handle the whole world right away, but actually still had to learn his position within a large organization. On our advice he took the Solid Professionals Stakeholder Management training to find out how you influence your environment. This has benefited him a lot for his personal growth."

"This is someone who easily gets you started, but this is not always the case. In the middle of corona time, after mutual consultation, it came out that a young professional was struggling. Both I and his talent manager from Solid Professionals then moved closer to him. Contacts every other day to ask how things were going and give hands-on advice - and it worked! So this is also the reason we don't hire starters directly, but I always go for this route."

➡️ Ferdi Leenders also chose our young professionals 10 years ago. Curious as to why? Check out his experience.

Preferred supplier

"There are more than enough parties to work with, but I find the contact with Solid Professionals more pleasant and natural. I have a talent manager with whom I have direct contact for all the young professionals in my team. At other agencies I have to pull much harder to achieve the same result and way of working. Also, the training package we can choose from is broader; it consists not only of guidance on social communication, but also professional subjects. This also allows me to deposit broader profiles with Solid Professionals than with other parties."

"50% of the people proposed by Solid Professionals actually start with us in the team. During the interviews, I particularly look at the personal click and whether we feel that someone is socially communicative and strong enough for the role. Especially in specialized IT roles, I see a big difference with other agencies. This selection process not only costs the agencies effort, but also requires a lot of my time. So for myself I have made the choice to no longer work with parties that cannot deliver this quality. Fortunately, Solid Professionals actually takes this work away from me."