Historic performance

The story of Randstad is also the story of the continuing evolution in the world of work. Back in 1960, the European economies were still recovering from the Second World War.

Ideas about how the European labor markets should function in the future were unclear. Most ideas still revolved around the collectivist thinking that had its roots in the late 19th century.

In Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, young economics graduate Frits Goldschmeding was working on his Master's thesis. Frits saw a future where much greater flexibility in labor markets would be needed in order to foster economic growth. He also proposed that there should be private firms intermediating between supply and demand in the European labor markets of the future.

Although there were a few examples, principally in the USA, of commercial staffing firms beginning to provide industrial personnel, these two ideas were not common at all in those days. Frits was challenged by some of his fellow students, who did not believe his vision was realistic. Nevertheless, together with a close friend, Frits decided to start such a firm himself, in their student dorms.

The story about the first order they received is still told in our company: Frits managed to get an assignment for an experienced multilingual secretary who could also write shorthand - almost at the same time as when his partner was interviewing a candidate with exactly those qualifications.

Legend has it that Frits immediately took the candidate to the offices of the prospective employer - on the back of his bicycle.

Initially named 'Uitzendbureau Amstelveen' (staffing agency Amstelveen), the new firm soon outgrew the suburb it was named after, quickly covering the Amsterdam metropolitan area. That was when the name was changed to Randstad - the Dutch name for the conurbation of cities in the west of the Netherlands, a first demonstration of the company's great ambition.

Frits' example was widely followed, and the Netherlands became one of the primary countries responsible for developing the HR services industry as we know it today.

Apart from Randstad, and later Tempo-Team, there were firms such as ASB that would later merge to form the Vedior group. Today's global top 6 HR service companies still contains three major Dutch groups.

Compound average growth rate

Randstad was listed in 1990. Since 1991, the compound average growth rate of revenue is 14% (almost all by organic growth).

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