Most company data describes a state: this is how big they are, this is what they filed. A vacancy is different. It is a company spending money on a problem it has decided it cannot solve with the people it already has, and it is dated.
That makes hiring the most actionable signal on a Belgian company record, and the one most teams never filter on.
The short answer
Belgian vacancy data comes from two places. Companies publish roles on their own websites, and they publish them on VDAB, the Flemish public employment service. Neither is a single searchable database of "who is hiring", so the practical job is joining vacancies to company records so you can filter on both at once.
In Bizzy job listings are tracked from company websites through PredictLeads, complemented in Belgium by VDAB vacancies, and they sit on the same company record as the filed accounts, so "manufacturers in West Flanders with 50 to 200 staff that are hiring operations roles" is one query rather than three lists to reconcile.
Which hiring signal you actually want
"Is hiring" is too coarse. Three different things hide inside it, and they mean different things.
Signal | What it tells you | Who it is for |
Number of open roles | Scale of expansion right now | Anyone selling capacity: software seats, space, equipment |
Which roles | Where the company is investing | The sharpest signal: a first RevOps hire is not the same as a second warehouse picker |
Which department | Which budget is growing | Maps directly to who you should call |
The role title is the one that repays attention. A company hiring its first controller is about to formalise reporting. A company hiring three field technicians is about to need vehicles, tools and scheduling. A company hiring a head of e-commerce has decided to sell online, and everything that decision requires is now in play.
Pair it with the filed numbers
A vacancy tells you what is happening this month. The annual accounts tell you whether it is a trend, and Belgian accounts carry two fields that matter here.
Annual average headcount, filed by every company that files accounts, with several years of history, so direction is visible. A company that went from seventy to a hundred staff in three years has problems it did not have before.
New hires in the year, filed alongside it. A company with flat average headcount but a high number of new hires is churning staff, which is a different conversation entirely.
Put those against live vacancies and you can separate three populations that look identical on a filter for "is hiring":
Growing: headcount up over several years, vacancies open now
Replacing: flat headcount, steady new hires, vacancies always open
Starting something: flat headcount, then a cluster of roles in one new department
The third is the smallest group and by far the most interesting, because the decision to start is recent and nothing has been bought yet.
Two ways to use it
Selling to companies that are growing
Filter on your normal ICP, then add open vacancies and a headcount trend. Lead with the specific thing rather than the fact of hiring: "you have three operations roles open in Kortrijk" is a reason to talk; "I see you're growing" is not.
The department of the open role usually tells you who to contact, which saves the step most outbound skips.
Selling recruitment services
For staffing and recruitment agencies the vacancy is the buying signal, and the entire advantage is being early. What turns it from a job board alert into an account plan is the company data underneath: how many staff they actually file, whether they are independent or sit under a parent that centralises hiring, whether they have used agencies before at this size.
That last question is answerable in aggregate: a company with a filed temporary-worker line in its accounts already buys agency labour. Belgian annual accounts carry temporary workers as a separate item, including the count and the cost.
The limits, honestly
Website vacancies are not complete. Companies that recruit only through agencies, LinkedIn or word of mouth will not show up. Absence of a vacancy is not absence of hiring.
VDAB is Flanders. Wallonia's equivalent is Le Forem and Brussels has Actiris. If your market is national, vacancy coverage is not uniform across the three regions, and you should not read regional differences in vacancy counts as regional differences in hiring.
A vacancy has a shelf life. A role posted four months ago is either filled or in trouble. Recency matters more than the count.
Big companies always have vacancies. For a company of a thousand people, five open roles is noise. Normalise against headcount or you will simply build a list of large employers.
A workable sequence
Set your size and region filters first. Hiring is a timing signal layered onto a qualified list, not a way to build one. Of Belgium's 1,187,819 enterprises, 997,481 have no employees at all and cannot hire.
Filter on department rather than "is hiring". You are looking for a budget that is growing, not for activity.
Check the headcount trend on the ones that match, to separate growth from churn.
Sort by recency and work the newest first.
Open with the role, not the observation. The vacancy is public; pretending you inferred something clever from it is worse than naming it.
For the wider set of dated events worth watching on a Belgian company: appointments, restructurings, new establishments. See searching the Belgian Official Gazette.
Read next: B2B lead generation: what it is and which strategy fits your market.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find companies that are hiring in Belgium?
Company websites and VDAB are the two main sources of Belgian vacancies. To use them for prospecting you need vacancies joined to company records, so you can filter on size, sector and region at the same time as hiring activity.
Is a vacancy a good buying signal?
It is one of the better ones, because it is dated and it shows committed spend. The role title matters more than the count: what a company is hiring for tells you which budget is growing.
Where does Belgian vacancy data come from?
Companies publish roles on their own sites and on the public employment services: VDAB in Flanders, Le Forem in Wallonia, Actiris in Brussels. Coverage is not uniform across the three regions.
How can I tell growth from staff churn?
Compare live vacancies with the filed annual average headcount over several years and the filed number of new hires. Flat headcount with steady new hires is churn; rising headcount with open roles is growth.
Do Belgian accounts show whether a company uses temp agencies?
Yes. Temporary workers are filed as a separate item in the annual accounts, including the number and the cost, which tells you whether a company already buys agency labour.
Written by Arthur Cremers at bizzy., which builds European B2B company data from official registers.
Photo of the Forem headquarters in Charleroi by Jmh2o, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
