A scale-up in a growth phase often has more work than people, but not always enough certainty about which roles will stick around to justify hiring full-time straight away. Working students fit that problem: capacity that can flex with growth, without having to lock in decisions you can't yet make.
Why do working students fit a fast-growing company?
Growth often means work appears faster than the organisational structure around it. You can bring a working student on board relatively quickly for a new market, a new process or a temporary peak, with less risk than a full-time hire into a role that might look different again in six months. A fixed-term contract ends on the end date [1].
Can working students help you set up a whole new market or product line?
It can be done. At Mila Health, a VOIDS client, three working students in Marketing each ran their own market during the international expansion into Sweden and Germany: too big for an internship, not proven enough yet for three full-time starters at once. That's how you test whether a market is viable before making the bigger investment.
What's the risk of leaning too heavily on working students during growth?
The risk is letting structural work be carried by a role that is flexible and temporary. If a working-student role is still critical to a process a year in, with no plan for what happens next, the company is growing faster than the structure around it. Keep the chain rule in mind too: after more than three fixed-term contracts, or if those contracts together (gaps of at most six months included) cover more than 36 months, the last contract counts as permanent [2]. And a working student leaves at the latest when the studies end.
How do you build real stability around this?
- Plan a moment upfront to evaluate whether a working-student role should grow into a starter contract
- Make sure knowledge transfers, even for a temporary role: document processes, don't leave them only in someone's head
- Bring in a second working student before the first one leaves, so knowledge doesn't walk out the door all at once
- Pay for the level of the work, not for how temporary it feels: fast growth isn't a reason for a lower rate
When is it time to move from working students to starters?
Once the work stops being an experiment and becomes a proven, recurring part of the business. Then the flexibility of a working-student role becomes worth less than the stability of a full-time starter who can scale the process further.
How VOIDS helps scale-ups
Some of the clients in the cases on our website are companies in a growth phase, such as an international travel-tech scale-up [3]. During growth, working students can be deployed relatively fast and are cost-efficient to test with, provided you arrange guidance and handover.
Sources
- wetten.overheid.nl: Burgerlijk Wetboek Boek 7, artikel 667, geldend per 1 juli 2026, accessed 11 October 2026.
- wetten.overheid.nl: Burgerlijk Wetboek Boek 7, artikel 668a (ketenregeling), geldend per 1 juli 2026, accessed 11 October 2026.
- VOIDS: Voor bedrijven: werkstudenten, cases en werkwijze, accessed 11 October 2026.
Transparency: VOIDS connects working students with organisations and therefore has an interest in this topic. We back up facts with sources and connect research and trends to our own experience from practice.
