Vol.4 – Building Careers at CPA’s first overseas office

For this Meet the Team episode, we sat down with Mayu Inenaga, an associate member of our Netherlands team, to see how her 6-months at CPA have been so far. She’s part of a small but growing 5-person Japanese team in Amsterdam, which was set up as our first overseas office in August 2023.

How did you get started in recruitment?

“When I moved to the Netherlands, I didn’t think about working at a recruitment agency, but I contacted Centre People to use their services and a team member introduced the role to me. I really liked the company story and philosophy – “to make everyone involved happy” – and I really struggled in finding a job when I moved here, as well as previously when I lived in Australia, and so I wanted to help others in the same situation as me.”


What do you enjoy doing in your free time? Any hobbies or hidden talents?

“I really like to bake, that’s my hobby. Everything from basic cakes, to cheesecake, chocolate cake, pumpkin pie, and more! I recently started making more healthy cakes without sugar and gluten, so that way I can eat even more cakes!”


What’s something your clients and candidates might be surprised to learn about you?

“Maybe my experience in Australia would surprise people, because I did so many different jobs. On a working holiday visa you can only work the same job for 6 months, so I did lots of different things! I was a horseback riding guide, and worked on a farm picking vegetables, and also in a winery – harvesting grapes, crushing them, bottling, measuring the alcohol content, and so on – I think these job experiences might surprise people.”


What do you think are the main differences between our UK and Netherlands offices?

“I did my first month of training in the UK office and it’s quite different to the Netherlands, but I really liked it there. It’s a lot more fast-paced, with everyone working together when a new vacancy comes in, quickly getting on the phones to support each other. The Netherlands office is very calm – of course, we communicate a lot internally, but it’s a small team, so we focus more on targeted searches and building the database through reach outs.”


Is there a moment from your career that you’re particularly proud of?

“When I introduce the company to someone, and place them, they’re always so sweet and say nice things. I always communicate with them after interviews and it’s so good to see when a candidate is really keen on a position and then they get it, it makes me so happy!”


What do you think is the most important quality in a recruiter?

“That’s a difficult one… I think it would be communication, both for learning new things, and teaching people too. As a generalist agency, we work on many different positions that we aren’t experts on. So, we have to listen to the companies and the candidates when they tell us things, so we can grow our knowledge. We have to communicate professionally what the company is looking for, this is really important.”


And finally, what’s your new year’s resolution for 2025?

“I’m an associate level so I’m still learning, but we have a new member joining next month so I want to be able to support and help them as much as I can, to be a good “senpai”! I just want to make everyone happy this year.”


We’re lucky to have Mayu on our team, she certainly lights up our meetings and brings a wonderful cheer that makes us all happy! Feel free to connect with her and follow us to meet more of our fantastic consultants!