Successful entry into the Dutch tech market with a local recruitment partner

WeAreKeen partnered with Box to facilitate the company’s entry into the Dutch technology market and help build its Center of Excellence, hiring key engineering roles and providing key market insights.

We get results

Top talent acquisition for senior engineering roles

Strategic insights and market research

Support in building the Engineering Center of Excellence

Katrina Georgiou
Head of Global Tech Recruiting at Box

We really appreciated the WeAreKeen embedded recruitment model: their talent partners integrated quickly and fully into our team, and their knowledge and advice were critical for our successful market entry. They were able to quickly build stakeholder relationships, adhere to team processes and tools, guarantee an outstanding candidate experience, and share insights that brought real value for future hiring. WeAreKeen is a great local tech recruitment partner that cares deeply about the candidate experience as well as representing your brand and company culture when entering a new market.

About Box

Box is a leading Cloud Content Management company that empowers enterprises to be productive, competitive, and collaborative.

Founded in 2005, Box powers more than 97,000 businesses globally and counts 68% of the Fortune 500 among its clients, including AstraZeneca, General Electric, P&G, and The GAP. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Box is expanding its Center of Excellence in Amsterdam.

Find open engineering roles here

Main objectives

Advisory to successfully navigate the Dutch and Northern European tech markets
Hiring of engineering roles to support the build of its Center of Excellence
Representation of Box in the new market, serving as a loyal brand ambassador

The challenge

In recent years, Box has been rapidly growing its talent footprint across EMEA, beginning with the opening of its European headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, which now employs more than 200 engineers. The internal team faced the challenge of breaking into the Dutch market to build out its Engineering Center of Excellence (CoE) around its e-signature tool, Box Sign.

To achieve these ambitious goals, Box wanted the support of a local recruitment partner to share knowledge and expertise on the Dutch tech market and help identify and hire top talent for engineering roles.

Community is one of the Box core values, extending to its developer and engineering communities. The company also has a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Box sought a local partner that would reflect these fundamental values and serve as a true brand ambassador in its entry into new markets. It was important for Box that its partner would be truly embedded in the organisation to effectively manage stakeholder relationships, adhere to internal processes and tools, guarantee an outstanding candidate experience, and ultimately help establish Box as a desirable employer in the new market.

The solution

WeAreKeen embedded a dedicated team of two talent partners to support the Box internal recruitment teams based in the US and European headquarters. Due to their robust onboarding processes and close cooperation, the WeAreKeen talent partners integrated quickly and seamlessly into the Box team and brand.

The WeAreKeen talent team performed all duties expected from a permanent recruiter and also supported Box in an advisory capacity with:

End-to-end recruitment for engineering roles to help Box build its Center of Excellence in Amsterdam.
Sharing of research and insights into the Dutch tech hiring market to ensure Box attracted and hired top tech talent and established itself as a leading tech employer in the region.

The results

The partnership between Box and WeAreKeen demonstrates the benefits of working with a local recruitment partner to help break into new markets. In addition to supporting the Box team with the hiring of engineering roles, WeAreKeen provided knowledge and insight to acquire outstanding tech talent for its Center of Excellence in Amsterdam, specifically on various methods of interviewing, where to find and how to hire ideal candidates, employment benefits, and more.

As part of this close collaboration, WeAreKeen also served as a loyal Box brand ambassador in the market, meeting high expectations from the candidate experience perspective.

Finally, WeAreKeen provided the Box leadership team with an analysis of the Dutch market to better understand the landscape, including the competition, various value proposition offerings for tech talent pools, and other relevant data to help the company best position itself in the region. These insights brought real value to future hiring efforts and helped to establish Box as an attractive employer in the Dutch market for outstanding tech talent.

- Successful entry into the Dutch tech market

- Establishment of the Center of Excellence

- Support in the acquisition of top talent for senior engineering roles