This edition: Forum Jobs CEO Marjolein Geens on winning Temp Staffing Agency of the Year at the 2025 Talent Business Awards by scrapping individual bonuses. Belgian AI challenger Spott plants a flag in New York. A hard-nosed recap of what our March Recruitment Tech Talks panel said about why tools go unused. Plus two things you can act on today — the awards deadline has been extended to 13 May, and our next French Recruitment Tech Talks webinar airs live on 23 April.

AGENCY SPOTLIGHT

It’s Never I, It’s Always a Team

Forum Jobs CEO Marjolein Geens took home Temp Staffing Agency of the Year at the 2025 Talent Business Awards by doing the opposite of what most Belgian temp agencies reward: she scrapped individual bonuses, opened the candidate database across all Belgian offices, and refused to let any single consultant own a client relationship.

In our last conversation, she talks about repositioning Forum Jobs from classic blue-collar temping into international technical scouting, the cross-border reality of French-speaking Belgium, and why — in a market where 86% of buyers struggle to tell agencies apart — an independent jury saying “this one is doing something different” is a credential no sales pitch can buy.

TALENT BUSINESS AWARDS

Awards Deadline Extended to 13 May — Plus a New Category: Career Mobility Partner of the Year

Good news if you haven’t submitted yet: the Talent Business Awards 2026 deadline has been extended to 13 May. We’ve also added a ninth category — Career Mobility Partner of the Year.

If your agency delivered standout results this year — whether through innovation, client impact, growth, or leadership — this is your moment. Last year’s winners proved that you don’t need to be the biggest agency to win. You need to be the best at what you do.

The entry kit lays out all nine categories, the jury’s criteria, and practical tips from last year’s winners. Entries close 13 May — roughly four weeks to pull together a submission that could change how the market sees your agency.

RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY

Spott Plants a Flag in New York

The US recruitment tech stack is dominated by legacy incumbents. Belgian challenger Spott has just made its move: it has appointed former McKinsey consultant Tycho De Saeytyd to lead its US push, with a target of roughly ten staff in New York by the end of the year.

We interviewed Tycho on how they plan to tackle this. Our take: European firms typically favour long-term annual subscriptions; US agencies prefer short-term trials and often run multiple systems in parallel. That’s a fragmented, competitive field — but it also lowers the barrier to entry for a vendor willing to be tested against the incumbents. Backed by Y Combinator and arriving on the back of organic US referrals, Spott is betting that architecture beats bolted-on AI.

RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY - WEBINAR RECAP

Your Agency Doesn’t Have a Tech Problem. It Has an Adoption Problem.

Our 26 March panel — Marco (Bullhorn), Karel (Digital Staffing Experts), Floriant (daidalo) and Frederic (Inguz) — kept returning to one theme: most agencies already own the tools they need. An ATS, a CRM, maybe a job board integration. The problem is that they’re getting a fraction of the value from what’s already on the shelf.

The recap pulls out the practical plays the panel said actually work: map your process before you talk to any vendor; test every tool against Frederic’s three criteria — time savings, frequency of use, ease of implementation; treat data quality as a revenue driver (clean internal data can roughly double placement speed); and remember that go-live is not adoption. As Marco put it: recruiters won’t be replaced by AI — recruiters who can’t work with AI and automation will be.

NEXT WEBINAR ON RECRUITMENT TECH — 23 APRIL

A 45-minute peer discussion (in French) for agency leaders drowning in applications. In 2026, a recruiter handles 2.7× the candidate volume of 2021, time-to-hire has stretched to 41 days, and candidate ghosting has become systemic. The panel asks whether industrialising recruitment can actually make it more human — not less.

Speakers: Paul Lagrange (Omogen) and David Kieffer (Collectif Achil). Thursday 23 April, 12:00–12:45 CET. Language: French. Free.

Thanks for reading Talent Business Insights. Hit reply and tell us — what topics should we cover next? What's keeping you up at night? Your answers shape future editions.

Jeroen Van Ermen
Founder, Talent Business Partners

P.S. Know an agency that deserves recognition? Share the Talent Business Awards entry kit with them. Submissions close 13 May.