Defense turns to outside agencies for hard to fill support jobs

Vacancies for army support staff such as cooks, mechanics and logistics workers have gone up by 60% in the last year, according to figures from the national Vacaturebank jobs agency quoted by the Telegraaf.

The army itself is advertising 10,000 extra posts. “For every soldier on the frontline, we need perhaps 10 people in supporting roles,” a defence ministry spokesman told the paper.

“We do most of the recruitment ourselves, using ads on radio and tv and in cinemas. But vacancies in logistics and technical jobs are hard to fill and for that we need external parties such as jobs agencies and specialised intermediaries,” he said.

“The National Vacarurebank currently has some 1,500 army support jobs on offer but they are usually for more than one mechanic, for example. That means the real number of vacancies is much higher,” Nationale Vacaturebank director Sharita Boon said.

The site does not keep a record of how many of the vacancies are being filled, Boon said but more than one employer is looking for youngsters with an MBO trade school diploma in a tight labour market.

Candidates must also be willing to undergo military training. “Cooks and mechanics may be called on to fight if necessary. This has happened several times in Uruzgan,” the spokesman said.

The Dutch armed forces are looking to increase personnel numbers by 10,000 a year in order to reach a total of  100,000 by 2030.The army currently employs 79,000 people, including professional soldiers, reservists and civilians working in non-military functions for the defense ministry.

The ministry is “cautiously optimistic” that the recruitment efforts will be successful, the spokesman said, but much still needs to be done to undo the shrinkage of the last few years.

Waiting lists for potential staff can be long due to security checks and lack of training capacity, he said, but traffic on the army recruitment site is “fairly heavy”.