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Jobs and growth
The Dutch job-search year is only 12 months. Tech jobs around Eindhoven can make it enough
TU Delft and Eindhoven feed ASML and the semiconductor chain. The orientation-year visa is short. The industry sitting next door is not.
Monday, 24 August 2026 · IND Netherlands · 4 min read
The orientation year, called zoekjaar, gives graduates of Dutch accredited programmes — and a short list of top foreign universities — twelve months to find a job. You can work without extra permission during that year. After that you need a highly skilled migrant permit, which has a salary threshold. Compared with Germany’s 18 months or Ireland’s 24, it is tight.
The reason this still belongs on a Maharashtra STEM shortlist is geography. ASML and the Brainport Eindhoven region turned electrical engineering and computer science from TU Eindhoven and Delft into a labour market, not a hope. Amsterdam housing remains very expensive. Delft and Eindhoven are the student-engineer version of the Netherlands that the brochures describe.
What this means: English is enough to study. It is not always enough to stay. Take a technical master’s plus a housing plan. A generic social-science master’s in Amsterdam plus a one-year search is how families spend euros on a canal view.
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