Jeroen Fikkers

Jeroen Fikkers has spent more than fifteen years in the recruitment world and is now working on his second company. He started at twenty-two as an account manager at the Nationale Vacaturebank, then spent nine years growing into a co-owner at IT recruitment agency YouChoose, and finally took the plunge with his own company Booming. After a costly false start, in which an outsourced first version of the platform made almost everything go wrong, he rebuilt Booming Jobs with an in-house tech team. Today the platform focuses on blue and grey collar work and wants to put every employer in the world on one complete map, with unique, AI-rewritten content and hyperlocal recruitment campaigns. In this episode of Selection Talks he speaks openly about his lessons as an entrepreneur, the power of in-house technology and his ambition to knock Indeed off its throne.

Q: How did Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs begin his career in the recruitment world?

A: At the Nationale Vacaturebank, where he landed at the age of twenty-two through a former colleague from the Groningen bar where he worked. He rolled almost straight out of student life into the job and stayed for nearly three years as an account manager, from 2008 to 2011. For him it was mainly a first real job that laid the foundation, but he immediately noticed what did not suit him. The nine-to-five mentality, with colleagues shutting down their computers at a quarter to five and feeling little passion for the work, clashed with his own drive. On top of that there was a cap on the bonuses, so extra revenue above a certain amount earned nothing more, and it was precisely that which fuelled his hunger to get more out of his work.

Q: What did Jeroen Fikkers learn during his nine years at recruitment agency YouChoose?

A: That you can grow considerably within a safe environment, but that growth ultimately has its limits. At YouChoose, an IT recruitment agency in Amsterdam that counted around twelve people at the time, he grew internally from consultant to senior, team leader and manager, until he held a fifty-fifty company together with the owner. His focus was on the engineering side, with mechanical, PLC and software engineers. He calls it fairly safe entrepreneurship with little risk, and after nine years he had learned all he could. He sold his share after nine difficult months of negotiating with a lawyer, secured a good deal and then put that money into his own company Booming.

Q: Why did almost everything go wrong with the first version of Jeroen Fikkers' Booming?

A: Because he wanted to build a career platform that could take on Indeed, but outsourced the technology entirely to an external party. That proved an expensive lesson. Building it cost him around eighty thousand euros, a large part of the money he had taken out of YouChoose, and in the end an external party in Serbia more or less finished the platform. They went live in January 2021, but it was a struggle. As early as April his business partner said he no longer had the energy for it and wanted to go back to recruitment, because that brings in money faster. According to Jeroen that is exactly where the difference lies: you start a recruitment agency with a laptop and LinkedIn Recruiter, whereas with a platform you first have to build and invest heavily before you deliver value.

Q: What is, according to Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs, the most important lesson for entrepreneurs who want to build something technical?

A: That you have to bring the technology in-house and, if you are not a techie yourself, find a technical co-founder. Jeroen learned the hard way that outsourcing to an external party means you never know exactly how long something will take and quickly pay eighty to a hundred euros an hour without any grip on the result. Since 2024 Booming Jobs has its own CTO and a team of four in-house developers, largely working remotely across the Netherlands. That step gave him far more control, more frequent contact and the feeling that he was no longer, in his own words, occasionally taken for a ride. For starters this is, in his view, the most important advice.

Q: What makes Jeroen Fikkers' Booming Jobs different from platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn?

A: Its focus on blue and grey collar work and the idea of putting every employer and vacancy on one complete map. Jeroen compares it to Funda: people go there because all the houses are on it and it is easy to use. In the same way Booming Jobs wants to become the most complete map of employers in the world, where a small company of five gets just as big a dot on the map as a Heineken. This works especially well for blue and grey collar work, because those jobs are location-bound and people therefore search locally. In addition the platform runs on a subscription model in which companies place all their vacancies worldwide at once through a single integration, via an ATS or XML feed, something that is far from always possible on Indeed or LinkedIn.

Q: How does Booming Jobs create unique content and drive more traffic to the platform?

A: By subtly rewriting every incoming vacancy with AI, so that unique content is created that scores well in SEO. Where an employer such as Securitas has the exact same vacancy text everywhere on other platforms, Booming Jobs turns it into its own version through fine-tuning. Because every affiliated company automatically posts all vacancies through the subscription, the amount of unique content grows along with the number of employers. Companies can also link their own themes, with their house style, photos and colours, to vacancies, so that each job group gets its own look and feel. That makes it more attractive for candidates and immediately gives them a better picture of the employer.

Q: How does Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs view the use of AI in recruitment?

A: As a form of automation that unburdens candidates and small HR departments, provided you apply it subtly and fine-tune it well. At Booming Jobs the rewriting of vacancies happens automatically, so someone who lacks the time or knowledge does not have to do anything for it. He always mentions the use of AI to companies, because he thinks it is important that they know about it, even though the average candidate sees nothing of it. Anyone who wants to take a first step themselves can, according to Jeroen, have ChatGPT create a vacancy text by letting it read the website and the LinkedIn profile, although that text will then be the same everywhere and Booming Jobs would still fine-tune it into unique content.

Q: What growth is Jeroen Fikkers' platform showing?

A: A considerable leap in a short time. In December Booming Jobs had seventeen thousand unique visitors, and by May that had already risen to 82,500. For a platform that has only been live for about a year, that is strong growth which, according to Jeroen, mainly stems from the economies of scale of unique content. The more employers sign up, the more vacancies come in, the more unique content is created and the more traffic the platform attracts. That effect reinforces itself, and that is precisely where he finds the proof that the approach works.

Q: What does Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs see happening internationally with vacancies and costs?

A: That costs and dynamics differ considerably per country. Booming Jobs has clients in twenty European countries, including Securitas, which achieves a cost per applicant of around one euro sixty-eight in countries such as Austria, France, Germany, England, Sweden and Norway. The Netherlands has the most vacancies so far, followed by Belgium and Germany. In Italy candidates come in by themselves because there are few jobs and many candidates, while Belgium is cheaper and Germany is slowly tilting towards more supply. In England people switch jobs for as little as ten cents more per hour, which creates a good flow but also means you have to keep the back door closed when it comes to turnover.

Q: What tips does Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs give for a vacancy that generates more applicants?

A: State a salary, keep the text short and put what the candidate gains first. Jeroen sees an immediate difference in the number and quality of applicants depending on whether or not a salary appears in a vacancy, and he finds terms such as market-based or according to the collective agreement too vague. Especially for blue and grey collar work a vacancy should be concise and not contain the company's entire life story. The what's in it for them belongs at the top to trigger people and warm them up, while the story about the company fits better on a separate page. That way you deliberately choose what you put where.

Q: Which roles are, according to Jeroen Fikkers of Booming Jobs, the scarcest right now?

A: Mainly technical and healthcare-related roles. Think of installation technology, infrastructure and construction with jobs such as carpenters and welders, and of healthcare and the pharmaceutical world, where the shortage is rising sharply. Jeroen points out that precisely these people are indispensable, from security and retail to public transport, postal delivery and street cleaning, while more than half of the Dutch population is now higher educated. He argues for reskilling and enthusiasm for technical work, and sees potential in labour migrants who can fill these roles, because the Netherlands cannot solve the shortage on its own. At the same time he feels that the Dutch themselves could roll up their sleeves a little more often.

Q: Where does Jeroen Fikkers want to be with Booming Jobs in three to five years?

A: With an office in America and a solid European base. Jeroen wants to live and work in the United States within three years to make Booming Jobs big there, while also being present in at least five European countries with more than five hundred clients per country. He deliberately takes a step-by-step approach, because a platform costs a lot of time and money and the Netherlands, together with Belgium, forms a good home base. So far the company has been bootstrapped, but for the step to America he does not rule out a funding round if that can accelerate growth. His big dream is to one day be a sponsor of the Champions League, with a Booming Jobs advertisement along the pitch.