The Netherlands talent market for Business Development
In March 2022, TalentUp published the report “The Netherlands: Digital Talent Analysis” in collaboration with The BD School. Data analyzed in this report comes from 1,774 job offers and 8,682 professionals. Data was collected in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. These are the three biggest cities in the Netherlands. It studies 4 different BD positions:
- Business Developer
- Business Development Manager
- Partnerships Manager
- Business Development Representative
The report takes into account supply and demand, average salaries and benefits, differences by sector or position and diversity variables. This article will focus on
- the sectors affected,
- the offer and demand differences for each job position,
- salaries and benefits by position and location, and, in addition,
- the diversity among business development professionals.
General overview of BD in the Netherlands
BD offer and demand
Starting the analysis with the supply and demand by position, there are from 5 to 6 candidates for each job opening. Nevertheless, this tendency is broken by business development representatives. For this role there is more demand than professionals willing to fulfil these job offers.
From the four positions analyzed, two of them are very popular, and two of them are really scarce. There are more than 4.3k professional business developers in these 3 cities, and more than 3.7k business development managers. However, there are less than 500 partnerships managers and business development representatives.
Amsterdam has more candidates and job openings than the values in Rotterdam and The Hague jointly. All cities have more supply than demand. This situation is outstanding in The Hague. In that city, there are more than 15 BD professionals for each job opening.
The report also includes a ratio computed by (candidates*1000)/population. The city with the higher number of candidates in relation to its population in Amsterdam. Amsterdam’s ratio is more than two times the ratio in Rotterdam and more than 3 times the ratio in The Hague.
Amsterdam also holds nearly two times the number of companies in Rotterdam and in The Hague together.
Most job openings are found in companies with less than 1000 employees. This trend is applicable in all three cities.
In fact, the most popular kind of companies that employ BD is small companies (from 1 to 10 workers). Moreover, companies with funding of less than 100k€ are the more common in the BD labour market. Still, the average company funding is 5M€ in Rotterdam and the Hague, and around 2-3M in Amsterdam.
Salaries of business development
| Position | Amsterdam | Rotterdam | The Hague |
| Business Development Manager | 76,200 | 66,000 | 64,400 |
| Partnerships Manager | 60,000 | 59,400 | 57,700 |
| Business Developer | 44,000 | 37,000 | 35,900 |
| Business Development Representative | 33,900 | 30,100 | 29,500 |
The rank of better-paid positions is the same in all cities. The lowest salaries are for BD Representatives, with less than 35,000€/year. After them, come the business developers and then the partnerships managers. The best-paid are BD managers, earning more than 64,000€/year.
In addition, the bigger a city in the Netherlands, the higher the salaries it offers. The median salaries in each city are
- Amsterdam: 52,000€.
- Rotterdam: 48,200€.
- The Hague: 46,800€.
More detailed information of salaries by position in each city are shown by percentiles, is presented in the report.
Diversity in Business Development positions
In all three locations, the ethnicity of BD employees is more than 75% white. The three other ethnicities represented (by order of most presence) are Asian, black and Latino.
The common age of business development workers is between 25 and 30 years old.
In terms of gender, Amsterdam and The Hague both have 39% of the labour force made up of women. Rotterdam has slightly better results when talking about parity. 43% of BD employees in Rotterdam are women.
Business Development market in Amsterdam
To analyze the presence of BD positions in different sectors, we will do it by ratios of candidates/job openings. In Amsterdam, there are high ratios in manufacturing, accounting&legal, telecommunications. And low ratios on business services and education (having said that, they are still more than 1.5). We conclude that in Amsterdam there are much more candidates than job openings.
Business Development market in Rotterdam
In Rotterdam, the sectors with more BD candidates per job opening are transportation & logistics, oil, gas, energies & utilities and health care.
By the number of companies, Rotterdam is the only city that has more companies in business services that employ BD. In the other locations, the most popular sector is IT.
Rotterdam is the city where it is more common to offer health insurance. 7.7% of BD employees benefit from it, while in other cities is just 6%. Other common benefits are disability leave and professional development. Less popular but also usual are 401(k) plan and equal opportunity employer. However, the other locations offer 5% of the time competitive salary and flexible working hours. These benefits are not present in Rotterdam.
Business Development market in The Hague
The Hague is the only city where the demand for BD representatives does not exceed supply. However, all other positions have much more supply compared to demand than Amsterdam or Rotterdam. A clear example is that there are 30 BD manager professionals, for every job offer in The Hague.
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