How Houthoff has structurally strengthened staff teams with working students since 2018

Since 2018, Talent Sourcing Partner has worked with Houthoff as a talent partner for staff and support roles outside the firm’s legal core business. While Houthoff primarily sources legal talent through its academic network, we support the firm in attracting and guiding proactive, professional working students for teams such as Compliance, Know Your Client (KYC), Data & IT, HR, Marketing, Communications, CRM, and other critical support functions.

Houthoff’s challenge

As a leading law firm, Houthoff operates in an environment where quality, discretion, and process reliability are paramount. This standard applies just as strongly to staff teams: support functions must be dependable, able to move quickly, and operate with a high degree of care and precision.

This is particularly true for Compliance and KYC. These processes are central to risk management and reputational protection and require people who work accurately, take responsibility, and can quickly familiarize themselves with complex files and systems.

At the same time, corporate recruitment quite logically focuses on legal positions. For staff roles, Houthoff therefore needs a partner who can:

• Identify the right candidates outside traditional legal pipelines
• Select talent based on attitude, professionalism, and cultural fit
• Ensure continuity in teams that rely on long-term support

Our approach

Selection based on character and cultural fit

Talent Sourcing Partner deliberately prioritizes quality over volume. Before a candidate is introduced to Houthoff, we conduct at least three in-depth interviews to assess whether someone fits within a professional, high-performance environment.

In both selection and feedback, behavior is central. Houthoff consistently highlights that our working students stand out for:

• Creativity identifying work independently and taking ownership)
• Curiosity (learning quickly and asking the right questions)
• Professionalism (serious and culturally aligned, without being rigid)

This results in a highly targeted shortlist: not a large number of introductions, but candidates who can immediately contribute in roles that require autonomy and responsibility.

One central process, broad deployment across teams

The collaboration is centrally coordinated through HR Recruitment, with an intake involving the hiring manager for each new request. This ensures a consistent process while allowing Talent Sourcing Partner to receive direct input from the business.

In practice, Talent Sourcing Partner supports Houthoff across a wide range of teams, including Data, IT, KYC, Compliance, HR, Marketing, Learning & Development, CRM data, internal legal support, the Language Services team, and, when needed, secretarial support roles.

We also take care of operational execution: guiding candidates during onboarding and facilitating administrative requirements (such as background checks), ensuring working students can start compliant, prepared, and confident.

Our approach

Selection based on character and cultural fit

Talent Sourcing Partner deliberately prioritizes quality over volume. Before a candidate is introduced to Houthoff, we conduct at least three in-depth interviews to assess whether someone fits within a professional, high-performance environment.

In both selection and feedback, behavior is central. Houthoff consistently highlights that our working students stand out for:

• proactivity (identifying work independently and taking ownership)
• curiosity (earning quickly and asking the right questions)
• professionalism (serious and culturally aligned, without being rigid)

The results

The collaboration between Uber and Talent Sourcing Partner has grown into a sustainable partnership spanning more than a decade.

The collaboration between Houthoff and Talent Sourcing Partner has been stable and structural since 2018. During this period, 27 staff roles have been successfully filled through Talent Sourcing Partner. At any given time, approximately five working students are active across multiple staff teams, providing continuity in processes that are essential to the organization.

The focus on quality also leads to sustainable placements. One clear example is Hester, who started in a support role within the KYC team and, within three to four months, made such an impact that she quickly took on additional responsibilities and received a permanent contract. This type of trajectory illustrates the value of selecting on behavior and cultural fit: working students who do not merely support, but actively contribute to performance and quality.

Looking ahead, this partnership remains highly relevant. Houthoff continues to invest in automation and process optimization, while recognizing that in compliance, people-related, and quality-critical processes, human judgment and care remain indispensable. Talent Sourcing Partner therefore continues to support Houthoff with proactive, curious, and professional working students who add value from day one.

The partnership also provides Uber with a flexible talent strategy that scales with market demands, changing priorities and peak workload periods. Whether building new teams or supporting ongoing operations, Talent Sourcing Partner consistently delivers entrepreneurial junior talent that is ready to make an immediate impact.

The outcome is a partnership where quality, speed and adaptability come together, and in which Talent Sourcing Partner has contributed to Uber’s scalability and operational strength for more than ten years.

Does your organization also want to structurally deploy strong working students in support roles?

Talent Sourcing Partner helps growing organizations attract entrepreneurial junior talent that takes responsibility, learns quickly, and delivers immediate value within teams and processes. With our character-first approach, we create sustainable matches that drive growth, agility, and continuity.

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