Why not let them apply together?

Kruidvat has hundreds of stores across the Netherlands and Belgium, and a huge chunk of the team is young people working part time. And honestly, every supermarket and fast food place around the corner is fishing in that exact same pond.

So how do you stand out in a market like that? The obvious answer is to make the job sound better. Higher pay, cooler job ad, better perks. That's what everyone tries first. Problem is, so does everyone else, and for this generation, that stuff matters less than you'd think.

So what actually makes this group tick? What do they need, where's the pain, what makes them happy?

First time applying for a job? Nerve wracking. Not knowing where to start, how to even bring it up, what to say when you walked in. I still remember mine. And what makes this age happy? Hanging out with friends. See where this is going?

Why not just... not do it alone?

That's basically the whole idea. Apply with your bestie. Interview together. If it works out, get scheduled together too. While we were at it, we made the rest of the process way less annoying. Apply through WhatsApp, get matched to a store within a day.

You end up with actual friend groups working the same shifts. You can feel that on the shop floor. Young people working alongside their actual friends, and it works surprisingly well.

We wanted something that showed that, not just told it. So we made a shirt. One shirt, made for two people to wear at once. Kind of ridiculous, honestly. It toured cities in a photobooth, and we built TikTok content around it as part of the campaign.

That's the stuff that took off. TikTok grew 774 percent, duo applications jumped 83 percent, and so many people applied we had to pause the campaign for a bit.

With this generation, you don't win by being louder about the same offer everyone else has. You win by actually putting yourself in their shoes and finding where it hurts. Sometimes that's not the job at all. It's the part right before it.