Graduate recruitment is a cohort exercise rather than a series of searches. You hire several people at once, compare them against each other, start them together, and find out two years later whether it worked. In Belgium the instrument that lets you train someone before committing is regional, and it is not the same one in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.
Of the candidates we place are promoted within eighteen months. On early careers hiring that number matters more than time to fill does.
IBO in Flanders, PFI in Wallonia, FPIE in Brussels. You can only use the one for your region.
Where the Belgian first-employment regime ends, at the close of that quarter.
Cohort and intake planning
How many, from where, starting when.
Campus and school relations
Built before the season, not during it.
Assessment centres
Candidates compared against each other.
Regional training schemes
IBO, PFI or FPIE, depending on the site.
Synchronised intake
One start date and one onboarding.
Progression path design
Because retention is the real measure.
Retention tracking
At twelve, eighteen and twenty-four months.
Cohort logic
Six graduates hired one at a time across a year produce six onboardings, six sets of expectations and no peer group. Hired together, they compare themselves to each other rather than to a senior colleague, which is most of what keeps them.
Comparable candidates
With no work history to read, a CV tells you where someone studied and very little else. An assessment centre puts candidates in the same exercise on the same day, which is the only way to compare people who have not worked yet.
Retention you can measure
Tracked at twelve, eighteen and twenty-four months rather than declared at the start date. A graduate intake that looks successful in month three and empty in month twenty was not successful.
Cheaper intake
Regional training schemes let you train someone on the job before the employment contract starts, with the public employment service carrying part of the cost. Most foreign-owned subsidiaries we work with have never used the one available to them.
Cohort with us | In-house campus | Job boards | Interns first | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How you find them | Campus, schools and direct approach | Your own school relationships | Whoever applies to the advert | People who found you already |
| How you compare | One assessment centre, side by side | Interviews, role by role | Screening on where they studied | On the job, over months |
| Start dates | One intake wave | Whenever each one is ready | Scattered across the year | Tied to the academic year |
| Cost structure | Per cohort, schemes applied | Your team's time | Cheap per post, costly in time | Low, but slow to convert |
| Fits when | Three or more juniors in a year | You already have the relationships | One junior role, no cohort | You can wait a full cycle |
Below three, hire them one at a time. From three up, a cohort is cheaper and holds better.
Cohort and scheme planning
How many people, which profiles, which site, and which regional training scheme is available there.
Sourcing and campus work
School and university channels, direct approach, and a process built for people with no work history.
Assessment centre
Candidates in the same exercises on the same day, scored against the same criteria by the same people.
Intake and first two years
One start date, one onboarding, and a progression path agreed before anyone arrives. We check in at twelve, eighteen and twenty-four months, because a cohort that empties in year two tells you something the start date never did.
Of the candidates we place are promoted within eighteen months. On early careers hiring that number matters more than time to fill does.
IBO in Flanders, PFI in Wallonia, FPIE in Brussels. You can only use the one for your region.
Where the Belgian first-employment regime ends, at the close of that quarter.
Software and application
Deep graduate supply, and skills that develop fast enough to justify the investment.
Data and business intelligence
A field young enough that a graduate is not automatically behind an experienced hire.
Business analysis
Trainable from a standing start, and a good route into the rest of the organisation.
Finance and controlling
Structured enough to teach, with a clear progression ladder graduates can see.
Mechanical and structural
Where training schemes pay for themselves fastest, because ramp-up is long.
Customer operations
High cohort volumes, where the peer group is what stops first-year attrition.
Technology and innovation
Where graduates expect a visible path, and leave quickly when they cannot see one.
Financial services
Long-established graduate programmes, competing against each other for the same shortlists.
Automotive and manufacturing
Where a training scheme covers a genuinely long ramp-up rather than a formality.
Tell us how many juniors you need this year, for which teams and at which sites. You get a written view of the cohort, the schemes available to you, and whether the progression path holds.
Driving business success with expert solutions.
.png)
