Sometimes it's positioning. Sometimes it's access. Sometimes it's confidence. The work is finding which one, and fixing it. Coaching for senior professionals moving to or building careers across Europe, and search for the companies trying to hire them. By Alon Gildoni, Amsterdam.
ALON GILDONI / FOUNDERI work with a small number of professionals who have meaningful experience, and I do not take everyone on. Here is how it has gone so far.
About half of the people I work with come from non-tech roles: HR, project management, finance, legal, and more.
I work with a small number of people who have real experience, so each one gets genuine attention.
The numbers are strong, but there is no promise or guarantee of a job. Demand, industry, and luck all play a part.
Do not look for jobs. Hunt companies. A posted role is often an arbitrary definition written by an HR department. A company, by contrast, is a living thing with problems you can find and solve.
Recruitment in the Netherlands is nationally synchronised to a degree that surprises almost everyone I work with. Counting backwards from these dates is usually the difference between starting in February and starting in May.
31 AugustThe entire country comes back to the desk at once, and September is the busiest month of the year for applications.
19 DecemberThe country is off. It returns slowly in mid January, and processes only really start moving again in February.
After you signUnder Dutch law a resignation takes effect on the first of the following month, and senior notice is usually two months.
Start sharp in mid August and you are in conversations by September and closing in November. Start organising in September and you reach interviews in November and run into December. The difference between them is not a month. It is a whole quarter.
Most career help comes from one side only: a coach who has never hired, or a recruiter who has never coached. I have spent years doing both. That is the difference between advice that sounds right and advice that actually works.
Coach and headhunter, in one person.Since 2018, TechExpats has grown into one of Europe's most connected communities of professionals. Introductions happen because the relationships are real, not because a tool scraped a profile.
Doors that open through trust.Building a career or a team across borders is its own skill: the unwritten rules of Dutch directness, the gap between one country's CV and another's, the things nobody tells you. That fluency is built in.
Local fluency, international reach.
An evening of the Israeli tech community in the Netherlands, which I have been running since 2014. Most of what I know about how people actually find work here, I learned in rooms like this one.
Two decades of my career were spent on the side that decides: building and leading product and technology organisations, and hiring for them. Companies come to me for two things, and both come out of the same place.
Retained search for senior, specialist and confidential roles. A small number at a time. Built for the seats that do not close through a job board, and for the ones that are never posted at all.
Hands-on programmes for leaders and teams, run in English for the international workforce that Dutch-language enablement leaves out. Working sessions and sprints, not lectures.
A focused set of services for individuals building careers and companies building teams, all centred on one thing: the right match.
One-to-one coaching for professionals who want a sharper strategy, a stronger position in the market, and a plan that actually moves.
Preparation that goes past rehearsed answers: how to tell your story, handle the hard questions, and read a Dutch or European interview room.
For senior leaders facing a new role, a new country, or a difficult decision. A discreet sounding board, not a script.
Senior and specialist recruitment for companies. I reach the people who are not applying and present a short, properly vetted list.
Help for companies hiring into Europe: where the talent is, what it costs, how to position the role, and how to win the candidate.
For professionals moving to the Netherlands or across Europe: the market, the cultural code, and the practical path to the right role.
No volume, no spray and pray. Every engagement, whether I am coaching a person or running a search for a company, starts the same way: by understanding what success actually looks like, then working back from there.
We start with the honest conversation. For a professional: what do you actually want, and what is holding it back? For a company: what is the real problem behind the hire? This is where the work is won.
Then we use the network and the method. For individuals, that means positioning, introductions, and preparation that lands. For companies, it means reaching the people who are not on the market and approaching them properly.
A great outcome is not a fast one, it is one that still looks right twelve months later. I stay close through the offer, the start, and the first hard decisions, on both sides.
The moment you are turned down you are flagged in the hiring system as rejected, and in the Netherlands, precisely because equal opportunity is taken so seriously, the recruiter's hands are tied from then on, even if someone senior wants to help. You burned a bridge before you crossed it.
I ran out of tokens in the middle of the night, and while I waited for them to come back I realised I do to recruiters exactly what I had just done to the machine: pile on cognitive load for no reason. One suggestion. Not six.
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Every open role now draws hundreds of applications, sometimes thousands, and the instinct is to apply more, and wider. That is exactly the mistake. Three questions most people answer in the wrong order, and what happens when you start with the last one.
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There is no eternal truth in job hunting, but there are patterns that repeat again and again. Nine points I see working, from 'stop spraying' to 'you are salespeople' to why remote is actually easier.
Read →Reviews from professionals I have coached and companies I have hired for, shared from the TechExpats community.
I came to Alon when my job search had been going on longer than I wanted it to. Today I'm in a role I'm genuinely happy with. Those two facts are connected, and I'd rather lead with them than with compliments. There's a difference between good advice and a better way to think. Alon gave me the second one. He has a clear-eyed read on the Dutch tech market, and he can sit with a half-formed idea for an hour and hand it back standing up on its own. The honest part: I came in wanting a formula. Alon didn't have one for me. He told me to stop chasing roles because they paid well and more or less fit, and to start from what I actually like doing, so that the interest would be real. And he told me there's no trick to the interview either: it's storytelling about what you actually did, not a description of the kind of person you are. Neither of those was what I wanted to hear from someone I'd come to for help getting hired faster. Both are what moved the search, and they're why the prep made me sharper rather than just more rehearsed.
Alon recently helped me prepare for a set of interview processes. A mensch and a real professional. On top of which he is an institution in the Israeli community in the Netherlands, for everything he does there and everything he has given it. Whether you are looking for your first role in the Netherlands, trying to move up, or need to think through something complicated, Alon is the person to go to.
I don't want to embarrass him, but credit where it's due. Alon offers a mentoring and guidance program for finding work in the Dutch market, which we all know is tough right now. Personally I started the process long before we moved here (almost a year before, I think), mainly to understand how the market behaves. Alon reads where the market is going before it even gets there, so the tips he gave me a year before I moved worked again and again. Alon's guidance is of the highest level, so it demands maximum investment from the participant, but the results speak for themselves. Very warmly recommended!
I warmly recommend Alon Gildoni, who guided me through a meaningful process of professional focus and direction. Alon helped me ask the right questions, define the requirements of my next role, understand which industries interest me most, and sharpen all the considerations and conditions that matter to me in choosing what comes next. The process was personal, professional, to the point, and very useful. Beyond that, he gave me tools and insights about the Dutch job market, the cultural differences, and what really matters to employers here. In my view this is an important process not only for someone job hunting, but also for someone already working who is wondering whether they are in the right place and wants more clarity, focus, and direction for the rest of their career. I warmly recommend Alon to anyone who wants to approach their job search, or their career planning, in a more focused, deliberate, and effective way.
I came to my last job search with significant professional experience, but at some point I felt that the usual approach of sending out CVs simply was not producing the result I hoped for. I came to Alon on a recommendation, and it was a turning point. I am used to working with AI tools and refining processes myself, but the methodology Alon developed completely changed the way I approached the search. It was not a magic solution, but an orderly process that required work from both sides, and what stood out in particular was his availability, the personal attention, and the ability to tailor the process to my needs. In the end I landed an excellent role here in Amsterdam, one that fits exactly the professional stage I am at. Alon is a true professional, and for anyone who feels their job search is not progressing the way it should, it is well worth talking to him.
I just signed a contract with Miro, against all odds and a week before our planned move. A lot of it is thanks to your support and guidance. Thank you so much!
Messages, recommendations and rooms, as they arrived.
My expertise is the European job market, and the Netherlands in particular. I help people find work here, mostly in tech but not only. A paid consultation hour ends with a written summary and a proposed next step.
