Laila Verhoeff | making work meaningful stories.
Laila Verhoeff, senior operations manager for Randstad Sourceright
a workday with Laila
If you would ask me what I love most about Randstad Sourceright, I’d say it’s the opportunities we offer. I’ve been working here for seven years and each year I’ve been given trust and new opportunities to grow and develop my career.
I’m a senior operations manager currently overseeing all operations of the recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) delivery team serving a particular client across 32 countries. Everyday brings new challenges and tasks, but at the forefront of my responsibilities is building a strong partnership and trust with the client while ensuring a strong sense of teamwork.
Typically my role involves managing my team’s capacity, allocating new requisitions, managing client requests and demands, reporting, preparing presentations for clients and ensuring smooth operations throughout the team. What I love most about my work is the variety of my tasks. I especially love the feeling of being challenged every day, which pushes me to learn new things.
always new challenges and opportunities to grow
My journey at Randstad Sourceright began as a sourcing recruiter in the Global Business Services center in Budapest, Hungary. Before I started, I was already familiar with the Randstad brand. When the recruiter approached me about the job, it came at an ideal time because I was looking for a job that would allow me to be in close contact with people from around the world, support them and make a positive impact on their lives. Changing lives through helping people find new jobs was the perfect match for me!
Two years later, I was appointed as team leader for the sourcing team and two years after that I was promoted to center manager. In that role, I was given larger RPO accounts. It was at the end of 2020 when I advanced to senior operations manager, fully focusing on my current responsibilities.
Randstad Sourceright offers an open and transparent culture that promotes creativity and idea generation. It’s an environment that encourages its employees to be bold and make positive changes. I feel confident that this is a place where opportunities are abundant for those who are willing to work hard and make the most of their career development.
flexibility and balance are a work priority
Outside of work, I used to be a professional horse rider for show jumping. Growing up, all my free time was spent around horses. In fact, I used to own three horses in Italy. Later on, I became passionate about traveling and experiencing new cultures, which drove me to live in multiple countries, including Ecuador, Israel and Guatemala. Nowadays, I enjoy running, taking long walks with my dog, Noce, and cooking Italian food.
I’m grateful that my job allows me to have full ownership of my schedule and time. And with a fully virtual working structure, periodically working from different environments, like in a café or outside, has also helped me keep a healthy mind.
As a manager, I strive to provide that same flexible working options to my team. As long as the work gets done, they, too, may start and end their workday according to their needs and preferences. Additionally, ensuring that the team has a healthy workload is one of my key responsibilities and goals. I closely monitor the team capacity on a daily basis and, if necessary, we scale up the team to provide the right support. To support my team with a sense of fulfillment even outside of work, I also encourage them to take advantage of the Randstad with Heart volunteer hours to support their wider communities.
Managing a team virtually also requires a lot of creativity in organizing team-building activities that allow us to connect with each other, but creativity is in no short supply here and we always manage to have fun!