Three young talents from Improven on their traineeship and assignments

Early this year, financial consultancy firm Improven launched a traineeship programme: Young Improven. Nine months on, the programme for budding young consultants is running at full speed. "Our young talents work in various organisations - for public and private clients, in various roles and in various locations, coming up with creative and workable solutions together with the client and colleagues," said Masha Hennequin, Director at the agency. – Message from Consultancy.co.uk

One of the young talents is Jorian Schol, who is currently, with a team of Improven consultants, is active as a PMO-er in an improvement programme at a large elderly care institution. "A challenging assignment," says Schol. About his role, he says: "As PMO-er, I support the project leader and programme manager on a daily basis by monitoring project planning, making progress reports and mapping risks, issues, actions and decisions. It's balancing."

The pace is fast, the expectation is high so it is hard work

He describes the learning curve he experiences during his assignment as steep: "The pace is high, the expectations are high so it is hard work." Being in a team with Improven colleagues on the project gives him every opportunity to develop. "On the one hand, I constantly want to prove myself to keep up with the senior consultants. On the other hand, I still want to ask a lot of questions, receive feedback and grow. I therefore regularly spar with my manager about my growth process."

"I really like setting up a project structure and applying Improven's pragmatic project management methodology. So much so, in fact, that in the coming months I will be allowed to train the care institution's employees in this methodology, together with Maarten van Weeghel (the 'Improven project manager' at the client)."

On a daily basis, I deal with designing processes, creating process descriptions and managing project documents

Joeri Visser joined the consultancy firm's trainee programme in May this year. He was able to start almost immediately on a great assignment at Heineken. He has a supporting role within an implementation and optimisation project in the field of process design. "On a daily basis, I deal with designing processes, creating process descriptions and managing project documents. I am working on a project for the first time as part of a project team. We organise workshops and come up with great insights and ideas."

Despite being surrounded by much more experienced colleagues, the young consultant feels fully appreciated. "Right from the start, my colleagues have involved me tremendously and made me feel like a full part of the team. On top of that, I am not alone. My manager Guido Anninga is also involved in the project. Ideal, because I get immediate feedback and can apply it."

Only just started and already feeling good about the organisation, atmosphere and team

Martijn Bronder has been working in a young and refreshing team at DUS-i, an organisation that implements grant schemes, for a few weeks now. The challenge at hand involves handling and assessing almost 8,000 subsidy applications in a short space of time. It is up to Bronder and the team to check all these applications for completeness and correctness and subsequently reject or grant the subsidy application.

"Just started and already feeling good about the organisation, atmosphere and team. An open atmosphere with hard-working and friendly colleagues. As a junior grants consultant, I mainly deal with management work. This means that I have both feet in the mud, can work fast and apply structure. Because I participate in the operation myself, I see and hear a lot and also discover where there is room for process optimisation. This gives me the opportunity to simultaneously contribute to the development and improvement of the organisation as a consultant."

Young improvise

Would you also like to work through Young improven on fun assignments with enough challenge and learn at the same time? Would you like to know what Young Improven can do for your organisation? Then contact Masha Plooij-Hennequin: mobile 06-20604325 or via e-mail m.hennequin@improven.nl.