Finding work as an EU migrant: my experience with agencies and contracts

Short write-up, maybe useful for other EU people here.

Background: I came from Poland for work. As an EU citizen you can work in the Netherlands without a work permit, and your employer does not need one either — see ind.nl. That is the easy part. The rest is normal job hunting.

What I did:

1. Uitzendbureau (temp agency) first. Fastest way to start earning. Logistics and production work is everywhere. But read the contract before signing and ask exactly how many hours per week are guaranteed. If the answer is vague, that is your answer.
2. Check every payslip. Hours, overtime, vakantiegeld. Mistakes happen, and nobody fixes them unless you ask.
3. werk.nl. The UWV site. You can put your CV there and set alerts for vacancies. Not glamorous, but free and official.
4. Dutch. My warehouse ran on Polish and English. I still started lessons (voluntary inburgering — as EU citizen I am not obliged). Every interview after that went better. Correlation is not causation, but I know what I think.

After about a year of agency work I got a direct contract. Nothing dramatic. Boring persistence.

Question for others: has anyone moved from agency work into an office job here? How did you present the gap between "what I did in Poland" and "what agencies gave me here" on your CV?