Region-specific recruitment around shipyards means that you tailor your job vacancy to the labour market within a specific radius of the shipyard, rather than advertising nationwide. Welders, pipe fitters and ship electricians are most likely to apply for jobs close to home. By targeting each region according to job role, commuting distance and local competition, you’ll find the right skilled workers more quickly.
Does this sound familiar? You post a job vacancy for your shipyard online, pay for it to be seen across the whole of the Netherlands, but the applications come from places far removed from where you actually need them. In shipbuilding, that’s a waste of your budget. The skilled workers you’re looking for usually live within a limited radius of the shipyard.
What is region-focused recruitment in the shipbuilding sector?
Region-specific recruitment is a recruitment approach in which you tailor your campaigns and job vacancies to the labour market within a defined area around your workplace. You first determine where suitable candidates live, how far they are willing to travel, and which employers are looking for the same profiles. You then target your adverts, message and budget precisely at that area.
This works because blue-collar workers in the maritime sector rarely relocate for work. In our own campaigns targeting shipyards, we see that the vast majority of applicants live within about 30 to 40 kilometres of the shipyard. A nationwide campaign therefore wastes a large proportion of your reach on people who would never make the journey.
It is precisely this shortage that makes such precision so important. The metalworking and shipbuilding sectors have been grappling with shortages of technical staff for years, and according to the UWV, technical roles are consistently among the hardest vacancies to fill in the Netherlands (UWV, 2025). Every euro spent in the wrong place counts double.
Why doesn’t national advertising work for shipyards?
Nationwide advertising is ineffective for shipyards because your target audience is geographically concentrated and tends to stay in one place. You end up paying for ad impressions in regions without shipyards, whilst the skilled workers you really want to reach remain out of your sight. Region-specific targeting solves this by tailoring your budget and message to people’s place of residence and willingness to travel.
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There’s another factor at play. At every shipyard, you’re competing with a handful of well-known employers for the same welders and pipe fitters. A generic, nationwide job advert won’t stand out. A message that specifically mentions the region, the travelling time and the type of ships, on the other hand, does appeal directly to skilled workers. Without our data-driven approach that choice is often based on a gut feeling rather than evidence.
Moreover, regional labour shortages vary greatly from one area to another. In one province, ship’s electricians are in short supply, whilst in another it is sheet metal workers. If you fail to take this into account, you’ll end up writing a job advert that fits a bit everywhere but doesn’t really hit the mark anywhere.
Which shipbuilding regions require a tailored approach?
The Dutch shipbuilding industry is spread across a few distinct clusters, each with its own labour market. When targeting shipyards on a regional basis, you should not treat them as a single national target group, but as separate areas with their own residential centres, competitors and travel patterns.
Zeeland and Vlissingen
The area around Vlissingen and the Zeeland coast is home to a strong maritime cluster comprising shipyards, offshore operations and supply chains. The labour market here is relatively thin on the ground, so you often have to cast your net wider and face fierce competition for local skilled workers. People moving into the sector from the wider Zeeland industrial sector represent a viable source of candidates here.
Werkendam and the river basin
Werkendam and the surrounding area form a dense cluster of shipyards and maritime suppliers. A relatively high concentration of skilled labour is based here, which makes region-specific targeting particularly efficient: even a small radius yields a surprisingly large pool of suitable candidates.
The North: Groningen and Friesland
In the North, shipbuilding is spread across several smaller shipyards, often in villages and smaller towns. Commuting distances are a sensitive issue here. Skilled workers deliberately choose jobs close to home, so highlighting regional ties and specifying a concrete journey time in your message goes down well. The trade association Netherlands Maritime Technology notes that specialised technical roles, in particular, remain difficult to fill nationwide (Netherlands Maritime Technology, 2025).
How do you set up a region-specific campaign in 5 steps?
You build a region-specific recruitment campaign by progressing from data to message to channel. These five steps form the core of the approach we use for hard-to-find maritime roles.
- Determine the catchment area. Assess where suitable professionals live and what travel distance is realistic for your region. In sparsely populated areas, you should allow for a wider radius than in a densely populated area.
- Identify the local competition. Which recruitment agencies and industrial firms are competing for the same pool of candidates, and on what terms of employment? That way, you’ll know how you stand out from the crowd.
- Collect target audience data. Find out what matters most to local welders, pipeworkers or marine electricians: commute time, shift work, the type of work or job security. Employers often discover, through data, that these preferences differ from what they expected.
- Write a regional message. Specify the region, journey time and type of vessel in concrete terms. A job advert that feels ‘local’ is more likely to attract applicants than a generic job listing.
- Set a target for each channel and adjust it based on the figures. Run campaigns on the channels where your regional target audience is active, and optimise them weekly in terms of cost per applicant and quality.
This approach is based on data from hundreds of recruitment campaigns, as well as public labour market data. This enables you to make choices on a region-by-region basis based on evidence rather than gut feeling.
Which channels work best for each region and profile?
Not every channel is suitable for every profile or area. The table below will help you determine where your regional budget will deliver the best return on investment for maritime roles.
| Channel | Strong for | Regional deployment |
|---|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook/Instagram) | Skilled workers who are passively looking for work but are not actively seeking it | Precise targeting within a radius around the shipyard |
| Google search campaigns | Candidates who are actively looking for work (“welders wanted + location”) | Combine region and job title in the search term |
| Google for Jobs | How visible is your job advert in local searches? | Ensure the location is correctly entered in the vacancy structure |
| TikTok | Younger career changers and trainees | Regional reach for employer branding |
The right mix varies from region to region. In a sparse cluster such as Zeeland, a campaign often relies more heavily on Meta to reach latent talent, whilst in a dense cluster with many active jobseekers, you’ll get more out of Google. Would you like to see how such a choice works out in practice? Then take a look at our achievements in the maritime sector.
What are the benefits of region-specific recruitment in terms of time and quality?
Region-specific recruitment delivers, above all, speed and precision: less wasted reach, more relevant applicants and a shorter turnaround time. Using a data-driven approach, we fill vacancies within 3 to 8 weeks on average, and as an employer, you’ll only interview the 2 to 4 best candidates per month, as the entire pre-selection process has already been completed.
That’s where the benefit lies. When your adverts reach exactly those skilled professionals who are keen to make the move, your cost per high-quality application falls and the likelihood that a candidate will actually stay increases. For a sector where every unfilled vacancy slows down production on site, this makes an immediate difference. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the labour market in industry and engineering remains as tight as ever, with a persistently high number of unfilled vacancies (CBS, 2025).
Region-specific recruitment is therefore not just a one-off tactic, but part of a structured process for attracting skilled workers. Are you looking for specific profiles for your recruitment drive? Then take a look at our current technical vacancies to see which top performers we connect with the maritime sector.
Frequently asked questions about region-specific recruitment in the shipbuilding sector
How much does regional recruitment cost compared with national advertising?
Region-specific recruitment wastes less of your budget on irrelevant reach, meaning your cost per high-quality applicant is usually lower than with a national campaign. It is generally more cost-effective than traditional recruitment and selection or secondment. Would you like a bespoke calculation? Book a no-obligation strategy meeting.
How large should the radius around a shipyard be?
That depends on the region. In densely populated areas such as Werkendam, a small radius is often sufficient, whilst in less densely populated areas such as Zeeland or the North, you need to target a wider area. In our campaigns, the distance that tradespeople are willing to travel is often around 30 to 40 kilometres.
Does region-specific recruitment also work for people changing careers?
Yes. A regional message is particularly effective for attracting people from local industry. You’re targeting skilled workers who already live in the area and want to apply their existing experience in metalwork or engineering to shipbuilding. Target audience data helps determine which arguments will win this group over.
Which maritime roles are the most difficult to fill at a regional level?
Specialised roles such as ship’s electricians, pipe fitters and certified welders are the most difficult to fill, as the pool of candidates is small and they tend to stay in one place. A region-specific campaign with a clear message about journey times and the nature of the work increases the likelihood that these scarce skilled workers will respond.
Can I edit several shipbuilding regions at the same time?
That’s possible, but treat each region as a separate campaign with its own target audience data and message. Vlissingen, Werkendam and the North each have different competitors, travel patterns and bottleneck functions. A single, generic national campaign lacks that nuance and therefore attracts fewer relevant applicants.
Would you like to know what a region-specific approach would look like for your site? Find out from data to the right candidate how we systematically connect skilled workers with shipyards, or get in touch for a specific plan for each region.