Brussels

Brussels companies trust Pickr for recruiting intelligence

Pickr gives recruitment agencies and in-house hiring teams in Brussels a scored shortlist in minutes, structured interviews for every role, and match reasoning you can put in front of a client or a hiring manager, in whichever language the CV arrived in.

Brussels is a capital three times over: of Belgium, of the European Union and, for most practical purposes, of European public affairs. The EU institutions and the agencies around them anchor an ecosystem of public affairs consultancies, trade associations, law firms, think tanks and NGOs that all hire policy advisers, lawyers and communications people from the same pool. NATO and the diplomatic community add another layer of international employers. Alongside that sits the Belgian corporate economy: the head offices of banks, insurers, telecoms and energy companies, a pharma and life-sciences cluster stretching south into Walloon Brabant, the university hospitals, logistics operators around the airport, and a growing set of IT services firms and scaleups. Federal, regional and communal government all hire in the city as well.

What makes hiring in Brussels hard is language before anything else. The region is officially bilingual in French and Dutch, the EU quarter works in English, and a large share of roles ask for two of those languages and prefer all three. The candidates who have them are the scarcest profile in the market, and every employer knows it. The talent pool is deeply international, since EU citizens can move to Brussels without a permit, but it is also fragmented: commuters from Flanders and Wallonia, expatriates on fixed-term contracts, and locals who may not want to work in a second language every day. Recruitment agencies and interim firms are a long-established part of how the city hires, briefs regularly go out to several of them at once, and the agency that returns a shortlist the client can actually act on, with the language requirements checked, tends to win the mandate.

Market snapshot

Hiring in Brussels at a glance

Key sectors
EU affairs and public policy, law and professional services, banking and insurance, pharma and life sciences, healthcare, telecoms and energy, logistics and aviation, IT services and technology, public administration at federal, regional and communal level.
Typical employers
EU institutions and agencies, public affairs consultancies, trade associations and NGOs, international law firms, Belgian and international banks and insurers, pharma and biotech companies, university hospitals, NATO and embassies, IT consultancies and scaleups, government departments and their suppliers.
Talent pool
International and multilingual: graduates from the universities in and around Brussels, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, experienced professionals from across the EU drawn by the institutions, and daily commuters from Flanders and Wallonia. Deep in policy, law, finance and languages; thin for profiles that combine French, Dutch and technical skills.
Languages of business
French, Dutch and English. The EU quarter and most international employers work in English, Belgian companies and the public sector expect French and Dutch, and many roles require two or all three.
Hiring dynamics
Agency and interim firms are well established, and multi-agency briefs are common for permanent roles. The EU institutions hire on their own timetable and set a benchmark for stability that private employers compete against. Candidates with the right language mix are usually in more than one process.
Remote and relocation
Hybrid is the norm in the EU quarter, finance and consulting. Relocation from elsewhere in the EU is straightforward for candidates and common for policy, legal and finance roles; hiring from outside the EU requires a work permit and takes longer. Fully remote roles compete for the same people with employers across Europe.

How Pickr helps

What Brussels teams get with Pickr

A scored shortlist in minutes, in French, Dutch and English

Describe the role, including the languages it needs. Pickr finds and scores candidates from your own talent pool and beyond in minutes, with reasoning attached to every match. CVs in French, Dutch and English sit in the same pipeline and are scored against the same requirements, and related skills count, so a strong candidate from a neighboring specialty is not dropped for lacking the exact keyword. On a multi-agency brief in Brussels, that is the difference between sending the shortlist the client acts on and sending the one that arrives second.

Match reasoning you can put in front of a client or a hiring manager

Every score comes with an explanation in plain sentences: what fits, what is missing, what to probe in the interview. Agencies send it to the client with the submission; in-house teams use it to get a hiring manager to a decision without another meeting. Every completed placement makes the next shortlist for that role sharper, so your accuracy on the profiles you place most often improves over time.

Structured interviews and a client portal that ends the CV email chain

Each role gets tailored interview questions, live transcription and scorecards that write themselves, so a French-speaking panel and a Dutch-speaking panel assess against the same criteria. Your clients review candidates, vote and leave feedback in their own portal, free and with no user limit. Interviewer and hiring-manager seats are free as well, so the whole panel is in the process without a licensing discussion.

Less admin, more conversations

Follow-ups, scheduling, rejections and status updates are drafted for you; you review and send. Email, calendar, Slack, WhatsApp and LinkedIn conversations land in one inbox against the right candidate. If you prefer, connect Claude or ChatGPT via MCP and run the pipeline from a chat window. Your existing data from Bullhorn, Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, Teamtailor or a CSV file is imported in minutes, so your afternoon goes back to candidates and clients instead of copying between tools.

EU-hosted in Germany

Candidate data and the application itself run in Frankfurt, Germany, inside the EU. Pickr is GDPR compliant, a data processing agreement (DPA) is included, every sub-processor is published with its location and purpose, and names and email addresses are redacted from AI prompts by default. Your data never trains AI models. For an agency or hiring team in the city where the EU writes its data-protection rules, that means a short answer to the vendor-review question rather than a long one. Built in Austria by a founder who ran a recruitment agency himself.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is Pickr available in Brussels?

Yes. Pickr is a cloud application and is available to companies and recruitment agencies in Brussels and across Belgium with nothing to install. You, your clients and your interviewers work in the browser. The interface, demo, onboarding and support are in English or German. Pricing is on request; the quickest way to get it is to book a demo.

Where is candidate data stored?

Candidate data and the application run in Frankfurt, Germany, inside the EU. Pickr is GDPR compliant, a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is included, and personal data such as names and email addresses is redacted from AI prompts by default. If you want AI processing to stay entirely within the EU, that is a single setting.

Does Pickr work for recruitment agencies in Brussels?

Yes. Pickr was built by a founder who ran a recruitment agency himself. Clients, mandates, submissions and placements are part of the product, not tags bolted onto an in-house tool. You run several client pipelines side by side, your clients review candidates in a free portal, and every shortlist comes with reasoning you can send with the submission, language requirements included. It suits contingency, retained and hybrid models.

Which languages does Pickr support?

The interface is available in English and German. Candidate data, CVs and notes can be in any language, so a Brussels team can work with French, Dutch and English CVs in the same pipeline, and candidates are scored against the same role requirements regardless of the language they applied in. Interview questions and follow-up drafts follow the language of the role and the candidate.

Can we import our existing ATS or CRM data?

Yes. One-click import from Bullhorn, Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, automatic recognition of Teamtailor exports, or a CSV from any other system. Past applications, talent pools and notes are searchable and scored from day one, so your first search on Pickr does not start from an empty database.

Is Pickr compliant with the EU AI Act?

Yes. Candidate matching is treated as a high-risk AI system under the EU AI Act. Candidates are informed before it is used, every score comes with an explanation a person can read, and no hiring decision is ever fully automated: a recruiter or hiring manager makes the call. For teams in Brussels that answer to EU-level clients or institutions, that is documented rather than promised.

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Written by Andreas Amann

Founder of Pickr. Former operator at startups in Berlin and Silicon Valley, where he helped scale companies from 40 to 200+ people. Built Pickr after years of using every major ATS as a recruitment agency owner at ScalingPPL.

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