Talent Netwerk Nederland runs recruitment campaigns for Dutch employers at a fixed fee: a website for each vacancy, social media campaigns, and candidate search through LinkedIn Recruiter. Michiel van Gemert and his co-founder, Bas, started it in Enschede in 2019, and it has run more than 400 recruitment campaigns across the Netherlands since.

Its LinkedIn network is its lead generation platform: most of its new leads come from LinkedIn. Both founders run their own profile on Expandi, Michiel with about 11,000 connections and his co-founder with 14,000 to 15,000.

Company	Talent Netwerk Nederland, founded 2019, Enschede
Industry	Recruitment marketing: vacancy websites, social media campaigns and LinkedIn search, at a fixed fee
Market	Employers across the Netherlands; 400+ recruitment campaigns
On Expandi	2 founder profiles, about 11,000 and 14,000 to 15,000 connections
Since	Early 2024
Role of LinkedIn	The firm’s main lead generation platform

Winning clients isn’t the hard part, Michiel says. What they are always working on is scaling it up and automating it: a funnel that tells them how many people to add to their network each year or each month, and a way to do that automatically.

Before Expandi, they tried three things:

• Email: they bought address lists and mailed them. From what they hear, most clients hate getting emails from firms like theirs, so four or five years ago they moved to LinkedIn.
• Manual LinkedIn: writing down names, clicking, typing. Michiel calls it “mind-killing”, so it never took hold.
• Meet Alfred: they used it for about two years. They kept hitting their limits, and their accounts got kicked out.

For this business, losing a LinkedIn account means more than losing a lead source. The LinkedIn Recruiter seat they use to find candidates for clients is connected to the account.

“We have to have LinkedIn up and running. We can’t have violations on our account, because our LinkedIn Recruiter seat is connected to it. If we can’t use the Recruiter seat, a big part of our business goes down, because we’ve promised clients recruitment. So we’re very skeptical about switching, because we don’t want to violate LinkedIn’s policies.”

Not another platform, ever

They moved to Expandi in early 2024. Asked whether they had thought about switching since, Michiel answered: “Not another platform ever.” The reason is the one above: the accounts have to stay safe.

Most of the time we’re really happy, because the other tools we used before always got kicked out of LinkedIn. With Expandi, I think nothing real has happened between Expandi and LinkedIn since early 2024.

Three jobs for two profiles

The two founder profiles do three jobs on Expandi:

• Grow the network: Michiel’s co-founder builds Sales Navigator lists of 1,500 to 2,000 people, which run steadily over a week. They invite only second-degree contacts, so there is always a shared connection.
• Nurture the network: this is where they are focusing now.
• Activate the network for clients: when they post a client’s vacancy, they ask their connections in that region, through Expandi, to like and share it.

For campaigns to people already in their network, Michiel builds lists of first-degree contacts in LinkedIn Recruiter.

The profiles carry the message: both say they are recruiters who do it differently. Michiel has a background in finance and talks to finance and management people, with a business proposal. His co-founder comes from HR and talks to HR people. Neither pushes.

“Our main message is: yes, we are recruiters, but we do it differently. That resonates, because there are a lot of negative feelings about agencies: they’re too expensive, they deliver you candidates and on the other side they hunt your own colleagues away. It’s like a black box.”

Timing is everything

For sales messages, they wait for a trigger. Asking cold whether someone has a vacancy, when they don’t, starts what Michiel calls “a negative spiral”. So their own tool flags when a first-degree connection posts a job, and only then do they send a message.

“Timing is everything. When we offer something, it has to be a problem for the client at that stage. And our tone of voice isn’t ‘we have the best solution for you’. It’s just: ‘I see you have a vacancy at the moment.’”

Before	Now
Emails to bought lists, which most clients hate	Connection requests to second-degree contacts with a shared connection
Manual connecting and typing: “mind-killing”	Expandi works through Sales Navigator lists of 1,500 to 2,000 over a week
An automation tool that hit limits and got their accounts kicked out	No restricted account in the last 12 months
Cold “do you have any vacancies?” messages: “a negative spiral”	A message when a first-degree connection posts a job

Over the 90 days to 7 October 2026, the two profiles sent 1,329 connection requests, and 418 were accepted, or 31% (median Expandi account: 25%). In the same period they logged 358 replies, a reply-to-acceptance ratio of 86% (median Expandi account: 22%). That puts them in the top 2% of Expandi workspaces with 200+ requests in 90 days. The ratio is not a cohort: replies also come from people already in their network, whom they nurture through Expandi.

2	founder profiles on Expandi
1,329	connection requests in 90 days
31%	accepted (median Expandi account: 25%)
358	replies in the same 90 days
86%	reply-to-acceptance ratio, top 2% of Expandi workspaces
0	restricted accounts in the last 12 months

Michiel estimates that about half of their new clients come from LinkedIn. Other new campaigns come from existing clients, with a new vacancy or a rerun, and from referrals, which often start with a LinkedIn post about a similar company.

I think roughly 50% of our new clients, not new campaigns but really new clients, come from our LinkedIn activities. Mostly it starts with Expandi getting the first connection, then maybe some use cases, plus our own tool that sends specific messages to people when they post a job. I think that combination helped.

LinkedIn is where most of their new business starts, and Michiel wants to get more out of it by using more of Expandi’s capabilities.

“We want to use more of the capabilities within Expandi. I think we’re driving, I hope, a Ferrari, but we drive it like a Ford.”