At Manpower Belgium, a Data Analyst plays a pivotal role in bridging the gap between raw workforce data and strategic recruitment solutions. As a global leader in contingent staffing and workforce management, the company relies heavily on data-driven insights to optimize recruitment funnels, predict labor market trends, and match the right talent with the right client opportunities. Your work directly impacts operational efficiency, client satisfaction, and regional business growth by transforming complex datasets into actionable business intelligence.

As a Data Analyst, you will not merely pull reports; you will act as a strategic advisor to branch managers, account executives, and external clients. You will analyze recruitment pipelines, evaluate candidate placement velocities, and identify bottlenecks in the staffing lifecycle. By building robust reporting frameworks and monitoring key performance indicators, you help Manpower Belgium maintain its competitive edge in a highly dynamic European labor market.

This role requires a unique blend of technical expertise, business acumen, and communication skills. You will work with large-scale relational databases, clean messy administrative data, and design intuitive dashboards. Whether you are optimizing a SQL query to analyze regional hiring trends or presenting a data-backed staffing strategy to senior leadership, your analytical contributions will directly shape the future of work at Manpower Belgium.

The following questions are representative of what you can expect during the Manpower Belgium selection process. Drawn from real interview experiences, these questions are designed to test your technical foundations, problem-solving methodologies, and behavioral alignment. They are grouped by category to help you identify key patterns in how we evaluate candidates.

SQL and Database Fundamentals

These questions evaluate your ability to query, manipulate, and retrieve data from relational databases, which forms the backbone of our analytical infrastructure.

• Describe what a database is and explain the concept of a database schema.
• What is the difference between an INNER JOIN and a LEFT JOIN? Provide a practical scenario where you would use each.

To succeed in the Manpower Belgium interview process, you must prepare to demonstrate a balanced mix of technical capability, logical reasoning, and communication skills. Our interviewers look for candidates who do not just write code, but who understand the business value of the data they analyze.

Technical Competence – You must demonstrate a strong command of SQL and basic data manipulation. Be ready to write clean, syntax-accurate queries on the fly, explain database normalization, and demonstrate how you clean and prepare messy data for analysis.

Business Translation – A great analyst at Manpower Belgium translates numbers into business decisions. You should always link your technical solutions back to business outcomes, such as reducing time-to-hire, increasing placement margins, or improving client satisfaction.

Structured Communication – You will interact with both technical teams and non-technical business partners. We evaluate your ability to structure your thoughts logically, explain your methodologies clearly, and present data insights in an engaging, easy-to-understand manner.

Client-Centric Mindset – Because our business revolves around serving clients and candidates, we look for analysts who understand how operational metrics impact client relationships. You should show that you can think from the perspective of our staffing clients and branch offices.

The interview process for the Data Analyst position at Manpower Belgium is designed to evaluate both your technical proficiency and your behavioral alignment with our corporate culture. It is a structured yet conversational process that aims to give you a clear understanding of the role while allowing us to assess your analytical capabilities under realistic conditions.

The journey typically begins with an initial HR or recruiter screening, followed by an online assessment focusing on logical reasoning and basic technical aptitude. Successful candidates then progress to a technical interview round with the hiring team, where the focus is on SQL, data manipulation tools, and scenario-based problem-solving. The final stage is often a behavioral and situational interview with a department director or senior manager, focusing on your career trajectory, teamwork skills, and client-readiness.

The visual timeline above illustrates the standard progression of our hiring process, starting from the initial application review through to the final decision. Candidates should use this roadmap to pace their preparation, ensuring they dedicate sufficient time to technical practice before the assessment and technical rounds, while saving time to refine their behavioral stories for the final manager discussions. Note that the exact timeline and number of rounds may vary slightly depending on the seniority of the position and the specific regional team.

SQL & Database Querying

SQL is the foundational tool for any Data Analyst at Manpower Belgium. You will be evaluated on your ability to write efficient queries to extract, filter, and aggregate recruitment and client data.

Be ready to go over:

• Joins and Set Operations – Deep understanding of INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, and UNION. You must know when to use each to avoid data loss or duplication.
• Aggregation and Filtering – Master the use of GROUP BY, HAVING, and aggregate functions like COUNT, SUM, and AVG.
• Subqueries and CTEs – Writing readable and maintainable queries using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and nested subqueries.
• Query Optimization – Understanding basic indexing, avoiding unnecessary joins, and writing queries that run efficiently on large datasets.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a query to find the top three branches with the highest candidate placement rates in the last quarter."
• "Explain why a query using a LEFT JOIN might return more rows than the left table originally had, and how you would fix it."
• "Given a table of candidate applications, write a query to identify candidates who have applied to more than five different jobs."

Business Case Analysis & Logic

We want to see how you approach real-world business challenges. You will be given situational scenarios where you must diagnose a problem, identify the necessary data points, and outline an analytical approach.

Be ready to go over:

• Metric Definition – Identifying the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure recruitment success, client satisfaction, or branch productivity.
• Root Cause Analysis – Systematically breaking down a business problem (e.g., a drop in placement margins) to find the underlying drivers.
• Data-Driven Recommendations – Formulating clear, actionable advice for business stakeholders based on hypothetical data trends.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "A regional director reports that client satisfaction has dropped by 15% in their territory. Walk us through how you would use data to find the root cause."
• "How would you design an analysis to help us determine if we should invest more in online job boards or local hiring events?"
• "Describe how you would set up a spreadsheet model to forecast temporary staffing needs for a retail client ahead of the holiday season."

Behavioral & Situational Judgment

At Manpower Belgium, cultural fit and communication are just as important as technical skills. We assess how you handle professional challenges, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and manage your workload.

Be ready to go over:

• Stakeholder Management – How you handle requests from non-technical colleagues and present complex data simply.
• Handling Ambiguity and Pressure – Your approach to working with incomplete datasets or tight deadlines.
• Continuous Improvement – Your willingness to learn new tools, admit mistakes, and improve your analytical processes.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell us about a time when you found an error in your analysis after presenting it to a manager. How did you handle the situation?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex technical concept to a client or colleague who had no background in data."
• "How do you prioritize your tasks when multiple branch managers are requesting urgent reports at the same time?"

As a Data Analyst at Manpower Belgium, your daily work will revolve around transforming workforce data into strategic assets. You will be responsible for maintaining the integrity of our reporting systems while proactively seeking out insights that can drive business growth.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Developing and Maintaining Dashboards – Designing, building, and updating interactive dashboards (using tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel) that provide branch managers and regional directors with real-time visibility into recruitment KPIs and placement metrics.
• Ad-Hoc Business Analysis – Responding to urgent data requests from business leaders, such as analyzing local salary trends to help sales teams win client proposals or identifying bottlenecks in the candidate screening process.
• Data Cleaning and Integration – Extracting raw data from multiple internal and external sources, cleaning inconsistencies, and ensuring that our reporting databases remain accurate, reliable, and standardized.
• Collaborating with Cross-Functional Teams – Working closely with IT, recruitment operations, and marketing teams to align data collection methods, implement new tracking tools, and support company-wide digital transformation initiatives.
• Providing Labor Market Intelligence – Analyzing macroeconomic trends, regional employment data, and sector-specific hiring patterns to help Manpower Belgium position itself as an industry thought leader.