There’s a unique tension that accompanies any new job opportunity, a subtle current equally flowing through candidate and company.
As a candidate, there’s the healthy anticipation of discovering whether there’s a real match. Not just in terms of skillset, but whether you’ll feel at home among the people, rhythms, and unspoken rules of the organisation. It’s a kind of social cartography; your credentials may be clear, but the internal landscape remains largely unexplored.
From the company’s side, the stakes are just as high. As a hiring manager, you likely know exactly what competencies you’re looking for. The greater challenge, however, is finding someone who not only fits the role but integrates smoothly into the existing team, someone who understands the tone behind the words, the subtext in meetings, and the unwritten expectations that shape daily collaboration.
Resumes are sorted, interviews begin, and your team senses that a new chapter is about to start. There’s an ambient buzz: a mix of anticipation for what’s to come and protective vigilance, because something new is entering a space that’s already full of its own stories and dynamics.
An informal relation
These initial hesitations and high stakes are amplified by the realities of today’s labor landscape. The Netherlands, for example, has consistently maintained one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU, just 3.8% according to the European Commission.
On the surface, that’s a sign of a healthy economy. But it also reflects a landscape where skilled professionals are in short supply. Reports from groups like the Dutch Employers’ Association (AWVN) and the Netherlands Statistics Bureau (CBS) show that more than half of Dutch companies struggle to fill vacancies, often resorting to external agencies and stopgap measures.
In such a landscape, the formal hiring process may appear robust, but it’s the informal welcome (or lack thereof) that often determines whether someone stays. This makes onboarding not just a task, but a relational threshold. And it raises the cost of a misfit; industry data routinely shows that as many as 15% of new hires leave within their first year, and around 40% feel disengaged.
Dispose of the deceptive job descriptions
The visible start of a hiring process is the job posting. That formal and uniform design of a job description, explaining what’s needed and what’s offered. We’ve all seen them, those listings on LinkedIn or Indeed that call for a “medior” with a “junior” salary and “senior” responsibilities. And the ones that speak of the many perks, or the hip location, the tight team and their Friday drinks, and those where the HR department simply seemed to have picked a standard template to tick all the required boxes.
It borders on performance art, a careful stretching of expectations to present a role in the best possible light, often revealing more about the company’s internal compromises than its real needs.
A well-known (though likely apocryphal) example involves James Gosling, the creator of Java, once being interviewed for a job requiring years of Java experience, only to be questioned about his own qualifications.
But the friction doesn’t stop at inflated expectations. It extends to the flip side; experienced professionals often find themselves dismissed for being “overqualified”, a word that frequently masks deeper discomforts. It’s not usually about age or cost; more often, it’s about the unspoken assumption that a senior expert might not “fit” the predetermined, often rigid, profile. Whether you’re applying for a permanent role or proposing your services as an external specialist, this filtering reflects an underlying culture of narrative control, one that prefers polish over clarity, and alignment over friction.
Even when I, or teams like ours, come in with a proven track record, there’s often a hesitation. Despite results, references, and relevance, the question still lingers: will they really deliver? This is a fair question, human and natural, but it points to a broader truth: the formal story is rarely enough. Trust lives elsewhere.
The whiteboard got wiped out
Years ago, my team and I experienced this firsthand. We were brought in as external colleagues to develop an innovative technical solution and establish its foundational marketing structure. Our core task was to prove that the end-solution was both technically feasible and commercially sound. After weeks of preparations and days of intensive hands-on research and development, we proceeded to build the marketing framework.
We engaged the sales, marketing, support, and engineering departments through one-on-one and group sessions, taking them through every detail. The culmination was a management brainstorm session where we presented our findings and the proposed foundation. By the end of the day, the largest wall in the building had been filled with whiteboard sketches, strategy diagrams, and data; all co-created, discussed, and approved. There was alignment. Enthusiasm. Momentum.
The next morning, however, we returned to find the entire wall wiped clean (luckily, we had taken photos before we left for the evening). At the time, no one claimed responsibility. Eventually, we learned that one key team member had quietly objected to the direction, felt excluded, and decided to erase the work. She left the company a few months later. We never fully learned the backstory. But it left us with a lasting question: how often does formal alignment mask unresolved informal tension? And how often is the success of a project less about the idea, and more about the invisible social buy-in behind it?
In retrospect, it was never just about the plan; it was about the informal permission to proceed.
Human connection: the ultimate driver
Organisations often rely on formal structures to define tasks, roles, and goals. But it’s the informal relationships, the ones mapped in hallway conversations, spontaneous coffees, or Slack threads that determine how work really gets done.
One is explicit. The other implicit. One gets printed in an org chart; the other is felt.
So, which matters more?
Both matter equally, of course. But when it comes to collaboration, trust, and staying power, informal bonds often tip the balance. Success tends to follow the path of relationship, not hierarchy.
This is just as true outside an organisation. Companies outsource services all the time – cleaning, IT support, recruitment – not just for efficiency, but because the internal team lacks time or capacity. Even when KPI’s are defined and contracts signed, the real difference is usually made through informal alignment, shared values, and goodwill.
The formal contract sets the frame. The informal connection brings it to life.
Trust as the foundation for success
This is why onboarding matters, and why it’s not just about forms and procedures, but about making someone feel welcome in the rhythms and rituals of a team.
As my Yiist – Change Agents partner Jan van der Spoel explores in his book “360º Vertrouwen” (360º Trust), many organisations struggle with onboarding because they treat it as a checklist, not a social integration. His work makes a compelling case: without trust, structures don’t hold. Without connection, talent drifts.
In increasingly complex and interdependent work environments, the ability to foster trust early, consistently, and across formal and informal layers, will be a defining trait of resilient organisations. This begins, crucially, with leadership.
Leaders bear the primary responsibility for cultivating an environment where trust can flourish. Not just in signing off on formal procedures, but in genuinely engaging in the human dimension of work. They set the tone for transparency, psychological safety, and the valuing of informal dynamics over rigid adherence to hierarchy.
The path forward reveals itself in the small moments: the leader who admits uncertainty rather than projecting false confidence, the team that creates space for dissent before it becomes destructive, the organisation that recognises informal influence as seriously as formal authority.
These aren’t revolutionary concepts, but they require a fundamental shift in attention; from optimising systems to nurturing the human connections that make systems work.
Perhaps most importantly, this means learning to see the whiteboard moments for what they are: not isolated incidents of individual friction, but signals of deeper systemic misalignment. When someone feels compelled to erase collaborative work, the question isn’t just about that person’s behavior, but about what invisible tensions the formal process failed to address.
The true potential of a team isn’t unlocked through structure alone, but through the invisible bridges built between people.
In those moments of recognition and resonance, culture is not just shaped — it truly comes alive. When a company truly understands this, the tension of a new job opportunity transforms into the confidence of a successful hire, creating a mutual match that thrives on genuine connection and lasting trust.
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