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. 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.