LAURA BASELAAR — RECRUITMENT & EMPLOYER BRANDING STRATEGIST
Recruitment isn't a vacancy problem.
It's an organisational one.
I build recruitment and employer branding organisations that work. 26 years in the field — from startup to A-brand.
26 years
in recruitment, employer branding and HR
€1.3M
reduction in hiring costs at VUmc
7 teams
led at VUmc, Alliander, KLM and I-SEC
HR MT level
at VUmc, KLM and I-SEC
Working across HR, Marketing, Communications, IT, Legal and the business.
Recruitment has changed. Most recruitment set-ups haven't.
The labour market shifted. Candidates got more critical. AI is changing how the work gets done. And organisations now compete for attention as much as for talent.
Meanwhile a lot of organisations are still running solutions that made sense once and don't anymore.
A hiring process spread thin across the organisation.
An employer brand that sounds like everyone else's.
An EVP that lives in a PowerPoint.
Recruiters measured on filling vacancies rather than building a pipeline.
Hiring managers who were never really brought in.
None of those are recruitment problems. They are structure, positioning and process problems that surface as recruitment problems. That is where my work starts.
Recruitment doesn't stand on its own
A good recruitment approach starts with the organisation. Where are you going? Who do you need to get there? Why would they choose you? And how do you organise recruitment so it actually delivers?
Recruitment strategy
Most recruitment teams are busy with today. Vacancies, candidates, hiring managers, targets — which leaves no time for the question underneath: does our approach still fit the organisation we are now? I analyse where recruitment stands, where it gets stuck and where the opportunities are, then translate that into a strategy and an operating model. Recruitment strategy · Scans and analysis · Talent acquisition · Operating models and governance · Processes and KPIs · Team development
At Ahold Delhaize I designed a centralised Talent Acquisition Centre from scratch: strategy, roles, processes, systems, savings and a phased implementation plan.
Interim management
When you need someone in the department, not next to it. I take over a recruitment, employer branding or HR team for a defined period — building it, restructuring it, or covering an absence without losing ground. At VUmc, KLM and I-SEC I was part of the HR management team. Typical engagement: 8 to 14 months. Interim recruitment management · Interim employer branding · Department build and restructure · Maternity and gap cover · Team leadership
At KLM I managed the Flight Crew recruitment organisation — three teams across Cabin, Cockpit and Cityhopper — as a member of the MT Resourcing & Health Centre.
Employer branding
Why would people choose you? A strong employer brand doesn't start with a campaign. It starts with understanding what actually makes an organisation attractive — what employees experience, where you are different, and which promise you can keep.
No story because it sounds good. A story that holds up.
Employer brand strategy · EVP · Positioning · Labour market communications · Recruitment marketing · Candidate experience · Activation
At Alliander: a new brand model and EVP for the group, a transition strategy, and the rebranding of all internal and external labour market communications.
Return on People — AI in HR and recruitment
Your team is already using AI. Screening is faster, writing is easier, sourcing is smarter. And yet time-to-hire has barely moved. That is not a coincidence. AI on top of a process that doesn't work gives you a faster process that doesn't work. AI in Recruitment training · AI in HR training · Two-day process redesign · AI scan
At I-SEC I implemented AI in a high-volume selection process — not as a pilot, in production. Read more →
I don't hand over a report.
I hand over a team that can run it.
First get it sharp. Then build it.
I don't believe in thick reports that end up in a drawer. A strategy nobody uses changes nothing.
Understand
What is actually happening? Where does it get stuck, and what already works? What do candidates, recruiters and hiring managers say — and what does the business need?
01
Focus
What is the real question here? This is where the choices get made, and where we decide what not to work on.
02
Build
From insight to something people can use. A recruitment model. An EVP. An employer story. A roadmap. A team that works differently.
03
Activate
Real change starts when people begin using it, so I work with the people who have to make it work. Not for the organisation. With it.
04
Who I work with
Sectors
Healthcare and academic hospitals. Aviation and transport. Retail and food. Energy and utilities. Technology and industry. Education and public sector. Security and facility services.
Types of organisation
Large corporates and A-brands, where the challenge is structure, scale and internal politics. Scale-ups, where it is building something that doesn't exist yet. Mid-sized organisations, where one person covers the whole field.What they have in common: a hiring or employer branding question that has outgrown the current set-up.
KLM · Ahold Delhaize · Albert Heijn · Alliander · VUmc · Amsterdam UMC · IKEA · Vodafone · NS · AkzoNobel · Efteling · RET · TU Delft · I-SEC · ACT Commodities · BrabantZorg · Topaz · Exact · Neste · UMCG
Published work
My work has been documented in the Dutch HR and recruitment press since 2011 — in Werf&, Skipr and elsewhere.
AI and WhatsApp automation in high-volume recruitment I-SEC. My initiative, design and implementation. Werf&
2025
A serious game that cut time-to-hire Albert Heijn.
The traineeship case won the audience award at the Werf& Awards. I ran the campaign and sourcing; the serious game used in selection was my idea. Werf&
2017
2016
A VR game on a truck: recruiting IT professionals Alliander. Target-group campaign with guerrilla marketing elements. Werf&
One Alliander employer brand that fits like a glove.
Brand architecture and rebranding across employer branding and labour market communications. For work @ Alliander and 13 co-brands. Design, production and implementation.
2015
2011-14
Centralising recruitment at VUmc Covered in Skipr, Werf& and the HR trade press, and selected for the Werf& Top 11 of 2011. Skipr (Springer) · Werf& · HR-Communicatie
Also: an interview on the changing role of the recruiter (2019), a profile (2013), and announcements for the nine training cycles I taught at the Academie voor Arbeidsmarktcommunicatie between 2015 and 2018.
About LAURA.
For 26 years I have been fascinated by one question: how do you get the right people and the right organisation to find each other?
My career started in recruitment, where I discovered quickly that recruitment is never only about vacancies and candidates. It is about organisations. Culture. Leadership. Positioning. How you are seen as an employer. And ultimately about why anyone would want to work for you. That wider view never left.
I am a builder
I get energy from situations where something isn't standing yet. A recruitment organisation that needs professionalising. A team that needs a new direction. Or an organisation that senses something has to change but doesn't yet know what.
Twelve of my 26 years were spent in employment, fourteen independent — always in the same field. At VUmc I stayed five years. Every engagement came to me directly: no agency, no intermediary.
And I am a connector
Good solutions rarely come from one department, so I work with HR, Recruitment, Marketing, Communications, IT, Legal and the business itself. Every discipline has its own expertise, and I believe in that strongly. I don't need to be an IT specialist to involve IT properly in a recruitment question. My role is to bring that expertise together and make sure we actually move.
I have nerve. I also have patience.
I am curious, an early adopter, and if I think something could be better I will say so. But change doesn't happen in a vacuum. Organisations have their history, interests, systems, people and pace, and I respect that. Sometimes the moment is right to kick a door open. Sometimes it is smarter to bring a few people along first.
HR and recruitment exist for the business
Not as a goal in themselves — which doesn't mean simply executing what the business asks. The opposite. It is precisely from our expertise that we should challenge, advise and sometimes contradict. A good HR or recruitment professional is a serious business partner.
Strategic enough to see the whole picture. Practical enough to build it.
Corporate Communication & Digital Media, Tilburg University
World Class Employer Branding, Employer Branding Academy / Universum
Based in Hilversum. Working across the Netherlands.
Questions I get asked
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An interim recruitment manager takes over a department for a defined period — to build it, restructure it, or cover an absence. Unlike an adviser, they sit in the line: managing the team, owning the results, making the decisions. My interim engagements typically run 8 to 14 months, and at VUmc, KLM and I-SEC I was part of the HR management team.
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Centralisation usually pays off when recruitment is spread across departments with no shared process, no shared data and no shared employer story, and when hiring volume is high enough to justify dedicated roles. At VUmc, centralising a decentralised organisation reduced hiring costs by €1.3 million within eight months of go-live. It is less useful where hiring is low-volume and highly specialised per unit — there, centralising adds a layer without removing work.
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No. AI accelerates parts of the process and makes room for the parts that need a person: a real conversation, a proper answer, attention for the candidate. The common mistake is layering AI on top of a process that doesn't work, which gives you a faster process that still doesn't work. The delay is rarely in the writing — it is in approval loops, waiting for hiring managers, and interview rounds nobody can explain.
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An EVP track typically runs three to six months from research to a validated proposition and creative concept, depending on the size of the organisation and how many employee groups need researching. Activation across labour market communications, career site and campaigns runs longer, and continues after the strategy is delivered.
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Across the Netherlands, most often in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Amersfoort and Hilversum. Sectors: healthcare and academic hospitals, aviation and transport, retail and food, energy and utilities, technology and industry, education and public sector, and security and facility services.
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Both. Dutch is my native language; a large share of senior talent acquisition work in the Amsterdam region runs in English, and I have worked internationally at KLM, ACT Commodities, Upperdeck and Ahold Delhaize.
Let’s talk
Do you have a HR, recruitment or employer branding question you have been circling for a while? Or do you know something has to change, but not yet exactly how?
Tell me what is stuck and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Laura Baselaar
LAURA.RecruitmentSolutions / L.RS
Hilversum, the Netherlands