Silence after a final-round interview is one of the most demoralising parts of job hunting here, and it is easy to read as a personal rejection or a cultural insult. Knowing what actually drives it, and what a reasonable follow-up looks like, keeps a stalled process from eating weeks of waiting.
Mostly because so much hiring runs through agencies handling dozens of roles and hundreds of candidates at once, with no legal obligation to give individual feedback — especially to people who didn't make a shortlist. It's less a cultural trait than a volume problem: the same directness Dutch interviewers show you in the room doesn't extend to declined applications, where silence is just easier than writing a rejection. The workable norm is one polite follow-up email, sent a week or two after your final round, asking for a status update — that reads as reasonable persistence here, not pushiness, as long as you don't repeat it. If an agency goes quiet for three or four weeks despite that, treat it as a no and keep applying elsewhere rather than waiting on a reply that likely isn't coming.