Young Hub: the first year of Han Gerritse
- Stories from the (Young) Hub
- Furthering my career
- From AP to treasury, GL and controlling
My name is Han, I graduated in 2019 and joined TriFinance in the summer of that same year. Ever since, I feel like my career is skyrocketing! Here is the story of my first year as a young graduate at TriFinance.
July 1st: Finally graduated, first day at the office! I received a very warm welcome from the BaseCamp team of the Blue Chip Boutique Transition & Support Antwerp.
July 2nd: First day at my first project. A few days earlier, I had my first interview at a client, together with a Business Consultant. I left a good impression and could start right away at the Accounts Payable department of a large dairy company at the Port of Antwerp. It was nice to know that there were already 3 other TriFinance Project Consultants active at this client.
October 1st: The start of the Young Hub Program. Two weeks of intensive training with a group of 15 freshly graduated Project Consultants from different Business Units. During these two weeks, we learned how to put the theory we’ve learned at University into practice (Do-How!), and we got to know each other better during several fun activities!
October 17th: The Young Hub Get Together, a yearly gathering for all Project Consultants that started their career as a Young Hub. We learned more about the career paths of ex-Young Hubs in an interactive quiz, organized by BaseCamp. It was a lot of fun, but most of all very inspiring to see what the possibilities are for a young graduate at TriFinance.
To summarize my first half year at TriFinance: growth!
Han Gerritse, Project Consultant
December 31st: Reflecting on my previous year. To summarize my first half year in one word: growth! At that moment, I was still working at the same customer. However, within the same project I have rotated between many positions. It all started with Accounts Payable for about two and a half months. This allowed me to recap the basics of bookkeeping, to get familiar with the T-journals, debits and credits, general ledger accounts and cost centres.
After I returned from the Young Hub program, I did treasury activities. This included the booking of bank transactions, reconciliation of bank accounts, manage suspense accounts and prepare cashflow statements.
During this period, I learned to find my way in SAP FICO. This allowed me to do many ad-hoc activities for GL bookkeeping such as intercompany reconciliation, deliver statements to revisors and optimize and improve all the activities I have been involved with.
Then, I was asked to do some controlling activities such as turnover reconciliation. This allowed me to explore the Business Intelligence software Tableau.
January 1st: Setting resolutions for the upcoming year. My ambition is to find a position in financial controlling. I am aware that this position requires some seniority. My resolution for 2020 at TriFinance is to gather many different financial experiences, starting with GL bookkeeping.
March 3rd: The client I was working for wanted to extend my project to GL bookkeeping. I was happy to see my new year’s resolution was already met in March!
July 31st: The end of my first project. Ever since I got my project extended in March, I have been doing interesting stuff. Many tasks that could be categorized as ‘financial controlling’ (one of my 2020 resolutions).
I like to summarize my experience in some keywords: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Treasury, Payments, Cash management, Cash forecasts, General Ledger, collaborate with external auditors, Financial Controlling, KPI Dashboard. Other than that, I have met at least 10 finance professionals of which I am sure I will stay in touch with, so next to my knowledge, I also extended my network very quickly!
Now, it is time to look forward to my next project, starting in August. I will support the treasury department of a global player in fruit & vegetables market. Is it exactly in line with my new year’s resolution? Not 100%, but that is how adventures start! Curious for what is coming, excited for the challenges and new finance professionals that I’m going to meet!
End of Young Hub Program: The program is finished! After 2 weeks plus 6 days of extensive trainings throughout the year, I ‘graduated’ from Young Hub to Hub. What does that mean for me? From now on, I’m in the driver’s seat of my own learning & development plan, supported by the BaseCamp team, to realize my goals and ambitions.