My name is Dianne Hageman, I’m 23 years old and graduated since a few months. Since September 1, I am following the Young Talent Program at KPMG. So nowadays I am able to join conversations about the world of work. In this article I’ll tell my story about the choices I’ve made as a student and a graduate and how these have worked out for me.
In 2011 I registered for the bachelor Tax Economics. This study made sure I could postpone my final choice between Business Economics and Tax Economics/Law. When I passed the first year, I still had to choose in which direction I should continue my study. I chose Business Economics and I was happy about the two years that followed. During my bachelor it became clear I was interested in Corporate Finance, so my choice to follow the master Finance was not hard to make. At the same time I realized my student life was almost over, I wanted to get the most out of my master Finance. I became an active member of Asset Accounting & Finance, where I could contribute to the A&F Investments committee which manages a portfolio of shares. I gained a lot of knowledge during my time as a committee member, but I also learned a lot at other activities organized by Asset | Accounting & Finance. After this interesting but intense year, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my student life and I realized I should have become active at Asset | Accounting & Finance much sooner.
During the master Finance I came in touch with various aspects of the field, in which my interest went out to corporate valuation. In this part you make use of the available corporate information and models, such as the DCF model, to make analyses. In this area, you have to pay some extra attention to the assumptions which, as you have seen before, have a huge impact on the results. But the quality of the available corporate information, which is the foundation of the analysis, gets less evaluated. I wanted to get more insight in the quality of the numbers and in the effects that different accounting policy have to the corporate information we have worked with. This was the main reason I added an extra year to my study, namely the master Accountancy. Of course, an extra year as a student comes with the related fun things, such as a ski trip, a long summer break, a running contests and I could also attend a few drinks.
This year passed, and it was time to start orientating for a job. I was looking for an employer who values the combination of Accounting and Finance the same as I do and I ended up at KPMG. Within the Young Talent Program, KPMG encourages this combination and the widening of your horizon. Last month I have spent most of my time getting to know the system and the department. Furthermore, during this program I will be working on four different departments in which broadening your knowledge and building a network will be the point of focus. Audit and Advisory won’t be the only thing featured in this program, one of the rotations that will take place will be at the department of IT Advisory. Considering the importance of IT in this organization I am prepared to accept this challenge and I will try to take note all the information I will receive. This is definitely going to be a challenging half a year and perhaps I’ll be sharing my experiences to you guys in one year.
