In a Dutch job vacancy, a "senior role" is fine and a "senior candidate" is not. A "young, fast-growing company" is fine and a "young" applicant is age discrimination. "Good command of Dutch" is a legitimate requirement; "flawless command of Dutch" is not. Those are the lines the College voor de Rechten van de Mens draws in its guidance on vacancy texts, and they show what is actually hard about learning to post a job vacancy in the Netherlands. Getting a vacancy online takes ten minutes. Writing one that is lawful, that the right candidates can find, and that answers the questions they filter on before they apply takes considerably more — and the rules on pay are about to tighten.
Where to Post a Job Vacancy in the Netherlands
Most vacancies end up in five or six places, but they should start in one.
- Your own careers page. This is the source every other copy is made from, and the only one you control completely. Aggregators and search platforms pick it up from there, so it should be the most complete version of the posting rather than an afterthought.
- werk.nl. UWV's job site, where employers can place a vacancy themselves or through a Werkgeversservicepunt. It matters more than its profile suggests: if you may later need a work permit for a candidate from outside the EU, the vacancy has to have been reported to UWV first.
- The general boards. LinkedIn, Indeed NL and Nationale Vacaturebank, with niche boards and communities beside them for specific fields.
- Recruitment agencies. Useful for hard-to-fill roles, but each agency typically posts its own reworded version of your vacancy, often with your company name removed.
That last point has a consequence most employers never see. One vacancy handled by two or three agencies and syndicated by aggregators becomes a pile of near-identical listings. Candidates read that as noise, and platforms that merge duplicates into one entry per real job have to choose which version to show. The more complete and specific your own posting is, the stronger its claim to be that version — and the less your employer brand depends on how an agency decided to paraphrase it.
Timing still matters
New vacancies are not spread evenly across the week. In SlashHash's June 2026 posting-day run over Dutch tech postings, Monday carries 21.9% of weekly listings, Thursday 19.0% and Friday only 14.7%. It is also the rhythm candidates are advised to follow: instant alerts and early applications are aimed squarely at the start of the week.
Those figures describe when employers publish, not when candidates search, so they do not crown a best day on their own. What they tell you is where your vacancy lands. A Monday posting goes live in the biggest wave of new listings, in the window candidates are told to watch. A Friday posting faces the least competition from other new vacancies but goes live just before the weekend. Choose by which of those matters more for the role — and if you have applicant data per weekday from your own past vacancies, it beats any market average.
What a Dutch Vacancy Must and Must Not Say
Equal treatment applies from the first line
Dutch equal-treatment law covers recruitment as well as employment, and the vacancy text is where most problems start. The College voor de Rechten van de Mens, which rules on discrimination complaints, estimated that between 70,000 and 100,000 online vacancies in 2019 likely contained age discrimination. Its Vacaturecheck guidance is precise about where the lines are:
- Not allowed: describing the person you want by age or career stage — "young", "student", "starter", "recently graduated", or "junior" and "senior" as a description of the candidate — and setting a maximum number of years of experience.
- Allowed: describing the role or the organisation — a "junior role" or "senior role", a "young, fast-growing company", a "dynamic team" — and setting a minimum number of years of experience.
- Not allowed: gendered wording such as "enthusiastic guy", a job title that only exists in one gender, and requiring Dutch nationality.
- Language: "good command of Dutch" is a legitimate requirement where the work needs it; "flawless command of Dutch" is not.
The language point catches tech employers more often than they expect. In a January 2025 ruling (2025-1), the College found that rejecting an applicant because she was not a "Dutch native speaker" was prohibited discrimination on the grounds of nationality. Ask for the level of Dutch or English the work actually requires, and leave out where the candidate learned it.
Pay: the rule that is coming
Dutch law does not currently require a salary in a vacancy, and the coming rules do not either — but they change what you must do before anyone negotiates. The bill implementing the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which the government intends to bring into force on 1 January 2027 subject to parliamentary approval, requires employers to tell applicants the starting pay or pay range for the role before pay negotiations begin. It also bans asking candidates about their current or previous salary.
Most employers are a long way from publishing pay today. In the 57,486 AI-related postings behind SlashHash's career guides, published in the Netherlands and Australia between March and September 2026, only 4,631 — 8% — quote a salary. That makes a range in the vacancy itself one of the cheapest ways to stand out, and setting one is easier than it looks: enough Dutch employers publish pay that benchmarks per role and seniority are available. If you will have to disclose the range before negotiating from 2027 anyway, there is little reason to hide it from the people deciding whether to apply.
Hiring from outside the EU
If the right candidate might need a visa, the vacancy and the route you take have to fit together, and there are two very different routes.
- Highly skilled migrants. An employer recognised by the IND as a sponsor can hire a kennismigrant without a work permit, and therefore without a labour-market test. A salary threshold applies, and the recognised-sponsor route is covered in detail in our guide to Dutch work visas.
- A regular work permit (TWV). Here UWV checks that no suitable candidate is available from the Netherlands, the EU, the EEA or Switzerland. You must report the vacancy to UWV at least five weeks before applying, search intensively for at least three months, and be able to show that search with copies of the advertisements and invoices from the channels you used.
If you do sponsor, say so in the vacancy. In SlashHash's employer-level analysis, 46 of 3,964 companies in the Q1 2026 cohort — about 1.2% — had listings that explicitly mentioned visa sponsorship. That measures wording in job ads rather than which companies are recognised sponsors, but it is the wording international candidates search for, and very few employers use it.
What Candidates Filter On — and Most Postings Leave Out
Search that runs on constraints rather than keywords — a salary floor, a work model, sponsorship, a maximum commute — treats a missing fact very differently from a weak one. A posting that leaves one of those out does not lose a few points in a ranking. It drops out of the filter entirely, and the candidate never sees it.
- Pay. Covered above; in the postings behind our career guides, 92% leave it out.
- Work model, in days. "Hybrid" covers anything from one office day to four. In SlashHash's Q1 2026 stable cohort of Dutch tech product companies, 33.5% of classified IT-function roles offered hybrid work and 3.8% were fully remote, counting only roles where a work model could be identified. With hybrid that common, the number of office days is the detail that actually separates one vacancy from another.
- Benefits, concretely. In SlashHash's June 2026 benefits run, across IT & Tech listings that spell out at least three benefits, professional development appears in 73.8%, a pension scheme in 46.5%, vacation days in 43.0% and a travel allowance in 28.8%. Among employers who list benefits at all, those are table stakes. "Excellent secondary conditions" tells a candidate nothing; a training budget, a pension contribution and a number of days tell them what the offer is worth.
- Company facts. Size, whether you are a product company or a consultancy that places people at clients, and who the person will work with. These are the facts candidates use to judge fit, and the ones a vacancy written from the inside tends to assume the reader already knows.
- Required versus nice-to-have. Split them explicitly. A single list of eleven "requirements" makes a constraint and a preference look the same, both to a candidate deciding whether to apply and to a system deciding whether to show them your vacancy.
Write for the Role It Is Becoming
Most vacancy texts start as a copy of the previous one, and roles are changing faster than templates. In SlashHash's September 2026 careers snapshot, which covers AI-related postings in the Netherlands and Australia from March to September 2026, AI Tools Literacy appears in 36% of postings and Prompt Engineering in 34%, and Prompt Engineering is the skill gap employers flag most often. When employers ask for AI skills, it is rarely about building models: these are the AI skills employers ask for across fields, from project management to finance.
Two things follow for the vacancy. First, name what the person will actually do with AI and which tools they will use, rather than adding "affinity with AI" to the bottom of a list. Second, check the rest of the text against the role as it works today, not as it worked when the template was written. A vacancy that describes last year's job attracts last year's candidates.
A Checklist Before You Publish
- Read the text against the Vacaturecheck. Describe the role, not the person; ask for a minimum, never a maximum, of experience; ask for a language level, not native status.
- Put a pay range in. At the very least, be ready to give it before any pay conversation, and stop asking candidates what they earn now.
- State the work model in days. "Hybrid" alone is not information.
- Split required from nice-to-have skills, and name AI tools and their use concretely.
- Decide on sponsorship before you publish. If you sponsor, say so. If you may need a work permit, report the vacancy to UWV first and keep a record of your search.
- Publish on your careers page first, then distribute — and give agencies the same text rather than letting each write its own.
- Pick the publishing day deliberately. Monday lands in the biggest wave of new listings; Friday faces less competition but goes live just before the weekend.
A vacancy is the first evidence a candidate sees of how you hire: whether you know what the role pays, what it requires and how it is changing. Get those facts into the posting, and the right candidates can find it, filter for it and trust it enough to apply. SlashHash's Workforce AI Readiness check helps with the last of those, scoring how each role is changing and rewriting the listing for the role as it will exist.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Where can I post a job vacancy in the Netherlands? Start with your own careers page, because every other copy is made from it and it is the only version you fully control. From there, most employers use werk.nl, UWV's job site, and general boards such as LinkedIn, Indeed NL and Nationale Vacaturebank, plus niche boards for specific fields. If recruitment agencies are involved, give them the same text, so the vacancy does not turn into several reworded versions competing with each other.
Do I have to include a salary in a Dutch job vacancy? Not at the moment, and the coming rules do not require it in the vacancy itself either. Under the bill implementing the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which the government intends to bring into force on 1 January 2027 subject to parliamentary approval, employers must tell applicants the starting pay or pay range before pay negotiations begin, and may not ask about current or previous salary. Publishing a range anyway is one of the easiest ways to stand out: in the AI-related postings behind SlashHash's career guides, only 8% quote a salary.
What is not allowed in a Dutch vacancy text? Anything that selects on a protected ground rather than on the job. According to the Vacaturecheck guidance of the College voor de Rechten van de Mens, that includes describing the candidate as young, a student, a starter, recently graduated, junior or senior; setting a maximum number of years of experience; gendered wording; requiring Dutch nationality; and asking for flawless Dutch. Describing the role as junior or senior, the company as young and fast-growing, or asking for a minimum number of years of experience and a good command of Dutch is allowed.
Can I ask for a native Dutch speaker in a job advert? No. In a January 2025 ruling, the College voor de Rechten van de Mens found that rejecting an applicant because she was not a Dutch native speaker was prohibited discrimination on the grounds of nationality. You can ask for the level of Dutch or English the work genuinely requires, such as a good command of Dutch, but not for native status or for flawless Dutch.
Do I need to report a vacancy to UWV before hiring someone from outside the EU? It depends on the route. An employer recognised by the IND as a sponsor can hire a highly skilled migrant without a work permit, so no labour-market test applies, although a salary threshold does. For a regular work permit, the vacancy must be reported to UWV at least five weeks before you apply, and you must be able to show an intensive search of at least three months for candidates from the EU, the EEA or Switzerland, for example with copies of advertisements and invoices.
What is the best day to post a job vacancy in the Netherlands? There is no single best day, but there is a clear pattern to choose against. In SlashHash's June 2026 posting-day run over Dutch tech postings, Monday carries 21.9% of weekly listings, Thursday 19.0% and Friday only 14.7%. That measures when employers publish rather than when candidates search: a Monday vacancy lands in the busiest wave of new listings, while a Friday vacancy faces less competition from other new postings but goes live just before the weekend.
Which benefits should a Dutch tech vacancy mention? The ones candidates compare on, stated concretely. In SlashHash's June 2026 benefits run, across IT & Tech listings that spell out at least three benefits, professional development appears in 73.8%, a pension scheme in 46.5%, vacation days in 43.0% and a travel allowance in 28.8%. A training budget, a pension contribution and a number of vacation days tell a candidate far more than a phrase like excellent secondary conditions.
Before you publish, read the vacancy once as the candidate you want to hire: if they cannot tell what it pays, where the work happens and what it requires, they will not apply — and a constraint-based search will not show it to them in the first place.