Nadia van Bedijk-Dekkers – Founder of “You Need Tech Ladies”

Being creative, personal and sincere has become even more important now in this digitalized era.

Nadia van Bedijk-Dekkers is a 32 entrepreneur from the Netherlands and the founder of “You Need Tech Ladies”.

YNTL was started with the motto to ‘Empower the women around you’. She has a complete focus on matching female engineers with the most innovative (high) tech companies in the Netherlands. The mission and vision of YNTL is well received and is spreading throughout Europe amongst women and companies in tech.

In a Nutshell: Tell us a bit about your job and what role technology plays in it?

Nice to meet you, I am Nadia and the Founder of YNTL (pronounce as Yentl) which stands for You Need Tech Ladies.

YNTL is a recruitment agency in the Netherlands that has a 100% focus on recruiting women in Tech and connecting them with the most innovative companies in the Netherlands.

Where did your professional journey start and how did you get to where you are now?

About 13 years, I finished my study and wanted to go to work as soon as possible. School wasn’t really ‘my thing’. In the first few years I had some different jobs and wasn’t really building a career back then. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, tried some things out and eventually I ended up pursuing a career in Corporate Recruitment.

I very consciously chose the Tech sector. I don’t have a technical background at all, but I had the affinity and saw the potential especially in the Eindhoven region in the Netherlands. And I was right, now 13 years later it is the European Silicon Valley. I can say it was a good hunch!

What was the best decision in your career?

Making the decision to start my career in Tech recruitment and bluffed my way into a job without any experience / educational background.
And this was just the start, in the next 10 years I made it my habit to make as much growth choices as possible instead of being comfortable.  This process was challenging but led me to the quickest route towards my goals.

Which led me to founding my company YNTL in 2019.

What is the greatest transformation in technology you’ve witnessed in your career?

In my field of expertise, recruitment. I have seen a tremendous transformation when it comes to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). We are working with Recruitee which is our backbone and enables us to track all of our candidates.  This ATS is so much more user friendly and it made it easy to basically do everything from one system. The whole candidate journey, from the A-Z recruitment process to recruitment branding.

Besides that, to turn the question around, technology made it possible to deliver us great tools but in the end of the day it also made clear that personal contact is the key to success. Everything became more digitalized and there are companies where you don’t even speak to the recruiter anymore. Women (and men) in tech get spammed every day with loads of messages and they have become numb to recruiters and don’t even respond or read them anymore.

Being creative, personal and sincere has become even more important now in this digitalized era. You have to have a clear vision and mission with your agency and to be able to carry this out in the right way and to communicate this with your audience. Bringing value to your candidates and building a Community is the new way of recruiting.

When you think about ‘women’ and ‘technology’ what comes to your mind first?

A great match and that everyone benefits from having more women in Tech. It is not just striving for a better balance in the current (mostly) technical teams within a company, but it affects all of us. Everyone is using Technology. It is ingrained in our daily life.

We are in our 4^th Industrial Revolution and if you look back just a decade ago and compare that with the day of today, technology has made a giant leap. Where will stand a decade from now? Technology becomes more and more important and this revolution has an impact in all of our lives, male and female. If this revolution is led from a merely male perspective, we are all missing out. We all benefit from having a feminine perspective. So, every one of us benefits from having more women in tech.

In your words: Why aren’t there more women in tech?

From my perspective, it all just takes time. It was only in 1956 that the law of Legal Disability for women was abolished.

From my perspective, it all just takes time. It was only in 1956 that the law of Legal Disability for women was abolished. After that married women were allowed to work, open a bank account and travel without the permission of there husbands! That’s just 64 years ago!

We did well in the last 64 years and made some huge steps.
The career mindset has shifted, the women before us paved a path towards the freedom and great environment women are in today. Technology studies and jobs are evolving as well and getting more attention and a better image.

In the (near) future a majority of the jobs will have technology involved. Even if you would, let’s say, would strive for a job as a Fashion designer. Your tablet / computer will help you with the designing process, setting up a website and social media to present your products and engaging with your customers and data analytics is needed for tracking. This of course is just a simple example, but it shows that technology will take up its place in way more jobs than you would think now.

If you had 1 Million € to invest in women, what would you do?

That is a good question, I can think of many initiatives that are worth investing in!

If I had 1 million euro to invest at this moment I would invest this in scaling up YNTL. To spread our mission and vision even wider and reach as many women in Tech as possible in order to help them with their pursuit of taking the next career step in the Netherlands. This eventually will lead to a better gender diversity balance within the Dutch tech industry.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your 14-year-old self?

It is okay to be the odd one out. This will eventually lead to the awesome person you are today.

That everything will all work out just fine and that it is okay to be the odd one out. This will eventually lead to the awesome person you are today, YOU ROCK!

Nadia van Bedijk-Dekkers is a 32 entrepreneur from the Netherlands and the founder of YNTL which stands for You Need Tech Ladies.

YNTL was started with the motto to ‘Empower the women around you’. With YNTL she has a 100% focus in matching female engineers with the most innovative (high) tech companies in the Netherlands. The mission and vision of YNTL is well received and is spreading throughout Europe amongst women and companies in Tech.

See more interviews of our amazing Gals.