Inge Geerdens

Speaker
Dutch
English
Photo of Inge Geerdens

Who is Inge Geerdens?

Inge founded the Antwerp-based recruitment and selection bureau Executive Research in 2003. She gained earlier experience of the profession at a recruitment agency. In 2006, she founded a second company, CVWarehouse, which offers a complete online recruitment platform for companies That was also the year in which she received the Womed Award from Unizo/Markant and Vlerick. But she is also very active as a promoter of enterprise, jury member, commentator, lecturer, columnist and advisor. Her lectures are based on her personal experiences, including her failures, and are about the importance of searching for talent, being able to sell yourself and women in companies.

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    Failing as entrepreneur: shit happens

    Inge is a successful entrepreneur and CEO of CVWarehouse, a company that sells software tools so companies can efficiently process large flows of job applications. Her client portfolio includes Sanoma Media, Hema, McDonald’s and Kinepolis. In addition, Inge does not miss an opportunity to promote enterprise in different ways to a variety of target groups, including young children, new entrepreneurs and established companies that could do with a little bit of advice.

    Despite her success, she has taken her fair share of hits during her career. Failure is not a foreign concept to her. For instance, she has been fired, had to battle through the economic crisis with her company and also had to overcome other set-backs, which almost drove her to bankruptcy. She was completely stunned and almost collapsed physically, but managed to survive and emerged from these experiences as a stronger person. And she likes to share her experience with others: “Shit happens, get over it and go on.”

    Female enterprise

    Inge is CEO of a successful company called CVWarehouse, which offers recruitment software. She is also a director and commentator, appeared on television as jury member in Topstarter and Mijn restaurant, and regularly spends time in the US to get her company up and running there. She is able to harmoniously combine all this with a family, which consists of a work-from-home husband and three children. How does she manage to do all this? As a female entrepreneur, it is a question that Inge faces on a regular basis. She thinks it is unfortunate that her male colleagues rarely face such questions, but is not afraid to address the topic. It offers her a good opportunity to share her vision of female enterprise and the breaking of stereotypes, encouraging women to not shy away from entrepreneurship.

    Hire the attitude, train the skills

    There is little that Inge doesn’t know about searching for talent. She stresses the importance of having the right mindset. ”Hire the attitude and train the skills”. A person with a good work ethic is indispensable. You can always improve knowledge, but nothing or very little can be done with someone who doesn’t have the right attitude. The important question is, how do you give people the right attitude. Passion and enthusiasm are key concepts here. But the need for starters and young entrepreneurs to have the right mindset shouldn’t be underestimated either. They must be able to deal with success, as well as failure. This is another one of Inge Geerdens’ favourite topics.

    Elevator pitching: selling yourself in 60 seconds

    When Inge visited investors to raise 1 million euros for her company CVWarehouse, she wasn’t able to realise her objective overnight. She took part in various consultation rounds to convince investors of the potential of her project. In the end, she passed the test with flying colours. That adventure made her realise the importance of appropriate communication when trying to convince people. So she started to learn more about the subject. In 2007, she even earned the public prize at the Best Elevator Pitch, which is an international competition in which you are given 45 seconds to sell yourself and your company. She now offers workshops to start-ups, entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to present an idea, business plan, etc. to an audience in 60 seconds.

Everything certainly met our expectations! We had an inspirational afternoon. Inge Geerdens tells her story in a very authentic and enthusiastic manner. Her experiences were definitely of great value to our managers.
I really appreciated the fact that Inge ran through the presentation with me a couple of days in advance, so we could make one or two final adjustments.

Anneleen De Boeck

De VoorZorg

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I would hereby like to thank you once again for this fascinating and very inspirational lecture at our business event. The reactions from attending entrepreneurs were all full of praise: ‘A recognisable story’; ‘She speaks from the heart, with emotion’; ‘Inspirational and energetic’.

Stefaan Vermeulen

Belfius region Turnhout-Hoogstraten