Today’s Financieele Dagblad looks at the experiences of several foreigners who have come to work at Dutch companies as the ‘battle for brains’ and ‘war for talent’ heats up.

Once it was the employers who sent expats to foreign climes, today it is well-educated workers themselves who opt to go abroad and apply for jobs all over the world.
In practice, it’s the major internationally-orientated firms that succeed in bringing in foreign talent, the paper says.
ABN Amro, for example, gets its interns through the international student organisation Aiesec ‘where they want to learn and work hard,’ says human resources manager Robert Charlier.
But even at these firms, language is still a barrier, says Brit Russell Cook who works at ABN Amro. ‘You miss the little conversations by the coffee machine and the jokes,’ he tells the paper.
He is also surprised by the balance between work and play. ‘A four-day week, that just does not exist in the UK.’