Hiring non-EU workers as an SME: where to start?

Many Belgian SMEs give up on international recruitment before even looking at the procedure. The idea circulates that it requires a dedicated HR department, a serious budget and months of patience. In practice, what blocks most often is not the size of the company: it is the order in which the questions are asked.

Two questions before anything else

These two questions determine whether your hire is straightforward or complex. Answering them takes a few minutes, and it avoids starting a process that will not succeed.

Does the candidate already have the right to work in Belgium? This is the first thing to check, and it is regularly overlooked. Certain residence situations already open access to the labour market. In those cases the single permit question simply does not arise, and filing an application adds an unnecessary procedure.

Where will the work be performed? Belgium does not have one single procedure but a division of competences. The Region where the work takes place handles the employment side; the Immigration Office handles the residence side. Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders do not apply the same lists or the same criteria, and a role that is obvious in one Region may require a considerably heavier justification in another.

The three steps, in order

1. Qualify the role and the competent Region

You start from the place of work, the function, the salary and the candidate's profile. Together, these four elements determine the route of access to the labour market and which Region will handle the file.

This is the step with the best return. It costs a few minutes and it decides everything that follows: depending on the answer, your file is a formality or an exercise in demonstration.

2. Build the file

The employer and the candidate gather the relevant documents. The burden is shared: some documents can only come from the candidate, others are the company's responsibility.

This is where delays most often slip, and rarely for a substantive reason. A missing document, an untranslated certificate, an inconsistent date between two forms: the file goes back, and weeks are lost on a point of form.

3. File and follow the procedure

The file goes to the competent Region, which handles the employment side, while the Immigration Office handles the residence side. Both progress in parallel, and active follow-up beats passive waiting: a request for additional information answered in three days costs nothing, while the same request handled in three weeks extends the procedure by as much.

What an SME should above all remember

Verify before the start date, never after. Allowing someone to work without the required authorisation exposes the company to sanctions. This is the point where company size changes nothing: the rule is the same for everyone.

Do not confuse speed with safety. A file submitted quickly but poorly qualified is not faster: it comes back. Time saved at step 1 is genuinely saved; time saved at step 2 is usually paid for at step 3.

Difficulty recruiting locally has to be demonstrated. Depending on the applicable route, the employer may have to establish that no candidate was found on the local market. That demonstration is prepared, with evidence: vacancies published, channels used, applications received and reasons for rejection. Assembling this evidence after the fact is considerably harder.

Where to start concretely

Before committing to anything, check whether your role appears on the shortage occupation lists of your Region. That is what separates a smooth procedure from one that must be justified. Our eligibility simulator gives you that answer in three minutes, role by role and Region by Region.

If you want to understand the overall mechanism first, our single permit guide covers the principles, the actors and the steps. And if you are already looking for profiles, the candidate database lists available international workers by occupation and by Region.

If you already have a specific role in mind, first check what the new shortage occupation list changes.

One useful clarification

This article describes a general logic. It does not replace the review of a specific file: the Region, the function, the type of contract and the candidate's residence situation all change the analysis, sometimes significantly. On a specific case, legal advice upfront costs less than a procedure restarted from the beginning.