A boardyear at Asset | Financials: The Experiences of The Vice-Chair and The Secretary
A board year as External Affairs at Asset | Accounting & Finance
For the Dutch version, click here. As External Affairs, Celine is responsible for liaising with current and prospective partners of Asset | Accounting & Finance. In addition, she coordinates the Accounting Expedition Committee and the Orientation Committee. She is also responsible for organizing the Master Experience Days Accountancy and Finance and for the FinanceDay. In this article, Celine talks about what her position entails and how she experienced a year as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Who am I? My name is Celine van Es and I am 23 years old. I have lived in Tilburg all my life and did my bachelor’s degree in Business Economics here at Tilburg University. In my last year of my bachelor I decided to become active at Asset | Accounting & Finance where I was an active member of the Orientation Committee for my board year. This is one of the two committees that I now also coordinate! Why did I choose to do a board year? Before I became an active member of Asset, I never had a good idea of what a board year at a student union exactly entailed and therefore had never really considered it. When I became an active member of Asset | Accounting & Finance in my final year of my bachelor I quickly got to know a lot of nice people and found out what kind of cool events we organize besides all the informal activities we do. My master’s choice was getting closer and closer and since I wasn’t sure which master’s I wanted to do, I started to consider the idea of a board year. This would be the ultimate opportunity for me to find out which master’s degree suits me, to develop myself both personally and professionally and to boost my CV. What exactly does the position of External Affairs entail? As External Affairs, you are responsible for all business contact and therefore also deal with everything that concerns the partners of Asset | Accounting & Finance. A big part of this is acquiring partners for events and exposure opportunities. When you start your board year as External Affairs, you will visit with your predecessor over the summer to visit all the partners to discuss partnership opportunities for the coming year. This is a fun way to get to know the partners you will be working with that year and to get a good idea of their expectations and goals. At the end of your board year, you and your successor visit all the partners again in the summer and you can reflect together and look back on the cooperation. Besides the company contact you are responsible for keeping the Career Platform Tilburg up to date, where partners can post a vacancy or company profile. In addition, throughout the year you are often asked for advice or help by companies, which sometimes requires some creativity but allows you to actually mean something to companies. This also gives a lot of space for your own interpretation of this function. Point of contact for companies, what else? Besides maintaining good contact with all partners, you also keep yourself busy with other tasks. As External Affairs, you also coordinate several committees and in my case they were the Accounting Expedition Committee and Orientation Committee. The Accounting Expedition Committee organizes a two-day corporate event and the Orientation Committee deals with informal activities and actions within the association. So they are two very different committees, which also makes coordinating them very fun and varied! Besides the Accounting Expedition, you also organize the FinanceDay with a fellow board member. Because you are responsible for the organization, you learn a lot in terms of planning and communication. You also learn how much it takes to organize a great event. In the end, one of the best things about my job is to be able to look back on a successful event where both companies and students were enthusiastic. During such events you also get many opportunities to network with companies and of course you often speak to your own partners. Furthermore, once a week you will also participate in the Acquisition Meeting with all other externals from Asset’s departments. Here you will discuss all external matters of Asset such as the acquisition of new partners or things about the Career Platform Tilburg. Each external also has one or more task forces within the Acquisition Meeting. Mine is General Revenues/New Business Model, where we look at all ways to make money for Asset Tilburg. Here you make sure the brochure is updated, but you also brainstorm on new events and opportunities. What are the main points of development as External Affairs? During a board year you will learn a lot on a personal as well as a professional level. You will definitely face certain challenges where you have to learn not to let stress take over in situations and to keep an overview. You will also learn what it is like to work intensively with a group of people and how important it is to communicate well with each other. We keep each other informed about what we are doing and what we are up against. This way you can keep each other on your toes and help each other out. You also learn that it is important to indicate your limits in time when it becomes too much and to dare to ask for help. As External Affairs I also had to step out of my comfort zone at times because it is a job where you often have to defend certain positions and as External Affairs you are of course in contact with everyone. If you set certain goals for yourself at the beginning of your board year, you can achieve a lot! What I would like to give my successors In the beginning a board year can be quite hectic and you will have to find your bearings. Don’t worry about this. In the
A board year as Secretary at Asset | Accounting & Finance – Lars van Maris
For the Dutch version, click here. As secretary, my responsibilities include taking minutes at meetings, the association’s incoming and outgoing communications and annual planning. In addition, I have organized the Audit Activity and coordinate the StudyTour and Faces Online committees. In this article I share how I have experienced my year as secretary of Asset | Accounting & Finance so far, what challenges I still see for my final months and why I made the decision to do a board year last year! Who am I? I am Lars van Maris, 21 years old and currently a 4th year Bachelor Economics & Business Economics student. In my free time I like to play field hockey, or sit outside somewhere quiet to read. After I finished my VWO in Eindhoven, Tilburg seemed like a nice city to study, and when I found a room in Tilburg 2 weeks before TOP-week I started to build my own place. My choice for Asset | Accounting & Finance During TOP week, like many before me, I walked past the tables of Asset and then joined them. Unlike others in my TOP group, I did not then become active in a department. I did join Vidar then, and it is here that I met someone who later told me about the Accounting & Finance Department. Besides planning to study Finance myself after my bachelor’s, the activities and events I heard about also seemed very nice to me, so then I contacted the then Vice-Chairman to become active. The reason I finally decided to put myself in as secretary for a year When I started college, I already knew that I would not or did not want to run nominally with my studies. Your student time is a period in your life where you can learn so much that I knew very quickly that I wanted to make the most of it. Besides, it also looks very good on your resume if you have done some things besides your studies. So from year one I became active at Vidar and SHOT, and about two years later also at Asset | Accounting & Finance. Within Vidar and SHOT I had already come into contact with people who did or had done a year in those associations, and after talking to them about this I thought it would be a very valuable addition to my time as a student. As I learned more about what each position does within A&F and talked to then directors about serving on boards in general, it quickly became clear to me that the secretary position would suit me best. This is where my orderliness really comes into its own and where I can learn the most from everyone else. “What do you do as Secretary on the Board and why are you always so busy?” As Secretary, of course you have the classic tasks such as taking minutes of the meetings and managing incoming and outgoing communication via email, for example. In addition, as Secretary I am responsible for 2 committees, namely the StudyTour committee and the Faces Online Committee. Also, together with our Vice-chairman Julia, I am currently responsible for maintaining our website and the events and activities we have on it. Other than that, I don’t really have very big tasks anymore, but so this does mean that I have the time to take on some more of the smaller tasks that are left between us from time to time. I also continue to play field hockey actively at SHOT during my board year and I still have to work quite often on the weekends. This all together ensures that I generally have a nice full schedule. “So what kind of ‘smaller’ tasks do you have?” One of the most common smaller tasks on the board in designing promotion and social media. For this we generally use the design programs Indesign or Canva. Throughout the year, I have used these to create promotional materials for such events as the StudyTour, Faces Online, and several other events and activities. I also occasionally take over other small tasks from other board members when they don’t have time for this, such as drafting a message for our group app or an email. I also sometimes went with the externs to the meetings with our partners during the summer to support them here and take notes of the discussions. Picking up all these small tasks gave me the opportunity to learn a lot of new things and to be able to watch and learn from many different aspects of our board. “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything and I have absolutely no regrets about my choice.” Faces Online was in the beginning a task I often spent all morning with on Wednesdays but over the months I have learned to handle this much faster and more agile and learned a lot about and from this. As Secretary, I am also responsible for the StudyTour, and although this is one of the busiest and largest committees in all of A&F, I am very happy that it falls under my position. The committee is great to work with and the satisfaction that will soon be there when we have successfully put on and completed this event is something that makes all that effort more than worth it. In addition, I have had the opportunity to attend events and activities that you can hardly find anywhere else and partly through the events and activities I have been able to greatly expand my network. “What moments will you never forget from your board year?” The first moments that will stay with me forever are the night I was told who I was going to form a board with, and the first board weekend we all went to. On both occasions I got to know the rest of my board better than the entire time before that in which I already knew them. On the weekend we
A board year as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance – Simo Smeets
For the Dutch version, click here As External Affairs, Simo is responsible for the contact with the current and future partners of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Next to this, he coordinates the Accounting Expedition Committee and the Orientation Committee. He is also responsible for the organization of the Master Experience Days Accountancy and Finance and the FinanceDays. In this article, Simo explains what his position entails and how he has experienced a year as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Who am I? My name is Simo Smeets and I am 22 years old. In the summer of 2020, I completed the Bachelor of Economics & Business Economics at Tilburg University. I am from South Limburg, but I have been living in Tilburg for almost four years now. After the TOP week, I immediately became a member of Asset, first as an active member of Asset | Economics, and later also at Asset | Accounting & Finance. Before my board year, I was part of the investment group A&F Investments and the Sports Committee within A&F. Why a board year? Even before my board year, I have always experienced my time at Asset as very pleasant. I soon found out that the events that Asset organizes connect well with the things that I find fun and important. The association offers students a nice mix between formal events, where companies introduce themselves in different ways, and informal events, where you can get to know fellow students better. I soon realized that I wanted to contribute to Asset myself. During the final year of my Bachelor, my orientation to choose the right master began. I found out that I doubted between the Master Accountancy, Financial Economics, and Finance. A board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance would help me to make a good assessment for the Master that I ultimately want to pursue and to develop myself. “Keeping each other up to date is very important to keep the ship sailing in the right direction.” Why External Affairs and what does a year like External Affairs look like? As External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance, I am in close contact with many companies from the Financial sector. This is also the sector in which I expect to work after my Master’s. To make my choice for a Master, it is important to get to know different companies in the field. This has certainly happened during my board year. External Affairs is a position with many variations. No two days are the same. In the summer you start with the summer conversations. You introduce yourself to all partners and, together with your predecessor, tell them what will be organized during the new academic year. In this way, you get to know the companies quickly. You will make new contacts and improve your soft skills very much during this period. As time goes on and the General Members Meeting gets closer, your predecessor will let go more and more and you will have to do more work on your own. You notice that your professional skills get a boost during this period. You become the face of the association for partners and other stakeholders. Good cooperation with the winter External, in my case that was Evelien van den Broek in the first semester and now Myron Boere is of great importance. Every week you plan a meeting together with the winter External to discuss, in addition to the necessary informal things, the state of affairs regarding the business contact. Keeping each other up to date is very important to keep the ship sailing in the right direction. External Affairs in corona time When I applied as a board member at Asset | Accounting & Finance last year, we were already in the COVID-19 pandemic. I see it as an extra challenge to organize good events despite the necessary measures. We can conclude from the evaluations of participants of our events that we have certainly succeeded in that this year. In terms of formal events, I am proud of how we, together with the Accounting Expedition Committee, have put together a good online Accounting Expedition. Besides, it is important that we also continue to organize informal events, so that the social cohesion of our members is safeguarded. Naturally, the rules applicable at that time must be taken into consideration when organizing such events. Of course, I hope that next year the events can take place in a physical form again. During the first wave, our office, also called “the rooms” in many Asset members’ vocabulary, was unfortunately closed. Luckily, that decision was reversed at the beginning of 2021 and we can now work a few days a week from our office again. This makes it a lot more fun because you also meet the rest of the Asset board members from time to time. We are namely allowed to be present with a maximum of 15 board members per day. For me, this has been an enormous support. What do you do as External Affairs? As I briefly stated earlier in this article, you deal as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance with everything that concerns our partners. This involves the acquisition of partners for all our events and social media exposure and keeping our career portal Career Platform Tilburg up to date. As an External, it is important that you can bundle the opinions and goals of multiple stakeholders so that you keep everyone happy. As an External, you also have a seat in the Acquisition Meeting of Asset as a whole. This is a weekly meeting in which the external affairs of the entire Asset are discussed. This is often the most looking forward meeting because you always go in well prepared and have to come up with good arguments to achieve your goals. In addition to all these meetings, you are responsible for coordinating the Accounting Expedition Committee and the Orientation Committee. This
A board year as Treasurer of Asset | Accounting & Finance – Ella Boerkamp
For the Dutch version, click here As Treasurer, you are responsible for the finances of Asset | Accounting & Finance. In addition, you coordinate the Activities, CityTrip, and Investment Night Committee. In this article, I describe my experiences as Treasurer of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Why did I choose to do a board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance? During the first three years of my student life, I wanted to get my credits as quickly as possible. After three years, I obtained my bachelor’s degree and started with the Master Accountancy. I realized that after one year I would probably be finished with studying and therefore also with my student life. This made me doubt. After all, I was only 21 years old. Then I started thinking and came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something else. Therefore, I started to find out how I could prolong my student life a bit and meanwhile gain experience within my interests. As of my third year of study, I have been an active member of Asset | Accounting & Finance and I always had a good time. For me, that was the main reason that I applied for a board year. I wanted a fun and above all enjoyable year. A board year at A&F was therefore the perfect choice. After all, I already knew most of the members, completed the Master Accountancy and I could come into contact with a variety of companies. “What do you do all day?” That is a question I often receive from many friends. Actually, it is difficult to explain what you do all day to people who have not done a board year. When I started my board year, I knew it would be a busy year with many responsibilities, but what it would look exactly was also not clear to me. On Monday morning, we always have our board meeting. When I saw the agenda for the first time, I was flabbergasted. The agenda contained a lot of different topics, such as our formal and informal events, articles that need to be written for Faces-Online, acquisition, etc. As a board member, you are doing a lot of different things, because everything needs to be well-organized and nothing should be forgotten. In short, besides having drinks with fellow students, you have a lot of responsibilities as a board member. At the moment of writing this article, I am thinking again: “What did I actually do last week? The week always flies by!” Is the position of Treasurer exactly what I expected? Before I started my board year as Treasurer, I expected to be busy with the bookkeeping of A&F: paying invoices and declarations, requesting quotes, keeping track of the budget, and sending out invoices. In the first few weeks, I was indeed very busy with this. Twinfield, our accounting software, was not really my best friend at the time and it took me a while to understand and work efficiently with the system. Every week, I mean every day, I contacted my predecessor with questions about Twinfield. After a while, I became more and more proficient and I started to understand what my predecessor meant by ‘Twinfield is just like gaming’. “That as a board member of A&F, you are working in a mini-company with 120 employees and you will never get these responsibilities at your first job.” In contrast to the beginning of my board year, I am currently spending much more time coordinating my three committees. This results in variety in my work. The Activities Committee organizes various events for active members so that they can get to know fellow students despite the few physical contacts that are currently possible. I also coordinate the Investment Night Committee. Investment Night is a symposium that will take place on May 12. Organizing this is a very fun and exciting challenge. Furthermore, I am the coordinator of the CityTrip Committee. I am very happy with this, because last year, I was a member of the StudyTour Committee that organized the trip to South Korea. Even though traveling is not possible at the moment, we still organize fun activities! Besides coordinating my committees, I am also busy with helping other board members, the weekly meetings of all Treasurers of Asset, the quarterly Audit of Accounts, the bookkeeping of the Alumni Association Financials, and the Financial Association Netherlands (FAN). What are you most proud of? I am proud of the fact that, with all the board members, active members, and partners, we have made it an inspiring and instructive year so far. As a board member in this crazy period, we have to make sure that we keep all our partners and members happy. We ensure that events continue and that requires us to be proactive and creative in finding solutions. Hence, our problem-solving skills were highly demanded this year. I am also happy about and proud of the fact that all our events have taken place this year, despite the various Covid-19 restrictions. As a result, fellow students still had the opportunity to develop themselves and get to know other students. Would I recommend a board year to others, even in these strange times? Definitely! When I started my board year in the summer of 2020, I knew that my board year would be different from a ‘normal’ board year. Nevertheless, it has been a fantastic period so far! My board year cannot be compared to any other board year. I hope, of course, that this unique board year will not become normal. During this year, we had to do the best we could to remain successful as a study association. Every event needs to have a plan b and c, which are usually a physical plan and one or two online plans because the rules are constantly changing. For this reason, we are constantly searching for the best option. Looking back at what I have learned, I dare to say
A board year as Secretary of Asset | Accounting & Finance – Martine Spaan
For the Dutch version, click here As Secretary of the Board, I am, among others, responsible for taking minutes during meetings, the in- and outgoing communication of the association, and the year planning. I have also organized the Audit Activity and I am coordinating the committees Faces-Online en Accounting Insight. In this article, I will tell you about my experiences during my year as Secretary of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Why did you choose to do a board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance? During my first year as a Business Economics student, I decided to become an active member of Asset | Marketing. I really enjoyed this, but during the course of my studies, I noticed that my interests were closer to accounting and finance. This led me to join Asset | Accounting & Finance as chairman of the Faces-Online committee. In my third year, I went on exchange to Australia (Want to know more? Read my article!). After this unforgettable experience, I had the desire to take on new challenges. A board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance seemed to be the perfect opportunity to further develop myself and to start my orientation into the possibilities within the accounting and finance sector. Moreover, this was a perfect opportunity for me to enjoy student life for another year. What does your board year look like? A board year is quite unique, to begin with, but the way my year has developed was unexpected, to say the least. I had the feeling that my conveyance period had only just ended, and I had just gotten used to the board life, when COVID-19 caused an unexpected turn of events. The University closed in March, causing us to continue our board work from home. This took some time to get used to, but it was definitely not impossible. Since then I have often gotten the question “What do you guys actually do nowadays?” a lot. It might seem that we were out of things to do, but this was quite the misconception. I even had the feeling that I had more work to do than before the pandemic hit. Even though our physical events were canceled, our work continued and we had to prepare for uncertain times. This led to quite an amount of online meetings from home via Google Meet. Fortunately, my committees were able to continue their work from home as well. This made it possible for us to keep posting articles every week on Faces-Online.nl and with the Accounting Insight committee we’re still busy organizing our accounting symposium which takes place on November 25. We have made some changes to the format, because the symposium will be livestreamed as well, which is a nice challenge in my opinion! Next to coordinating my committees, I spend a large portion of my time on internal affairs of our association, giving me a varied set of duties, like keeping track of all active and passive members, and being responsible for our Alumni Association. Next to my standard duties, I often help my fellow board members by giving critical notes on language use in the messages we spread and I help with the social media designs for our events. I also keep track of the task list and the weekly planning of the entire Board. Lastly, I am Vice-Secretary of Asset General and Vice-Treasurer of A&F, which means that I must be present at all meetings of the Audit of Accounts committee. During summer, when the COVID restrictions got lifted, I got the feeling that there was light at the end of the tunnel. This was also the time during which a lot of new association boards got announced, our own (partly new) Board included. The three newly announced boardies gave us extra motivation with their fresh perspective on board life. They, contrary to myself, have chosen to start their board year during this global crisis. Since then, we started seeing more and more members and other associations in person, which made the upcoming semester feel like a fresh start. Not without any setbacks of course. We anxiously watch every press conference, because any change in restrictions could have large consequences for our events every week. “We often have to deviate from our original formats and are required to think outside the box, because life has not really taken its ‘regular’ course this year.” What did you learn during your board year? You learn to discover, use, and improve your own and new personal skills. We learn a lot from and about each other within the Board as well. Everyone has his or her own strengths, and with good communication and teamwork, you learn to optimally use your combined strengths. One thing that I have learned specifically this past year, mostly because of COVID-19, is how important it is to adapt to crisis situations. For example, I developed my crisis management skills by continuously working on new scenarios and back-up plans, which requires a critical look at each situation and its risks. As a Board, we have a large responsibility towards our association, which comes with its own set of challenges and difficult decisions to make. This requires critical thinking, energy, and time spent on intense crisis management meetings. Especially when these meetings are held online, there is a need for these meetings to be as efficient as possible, because as Secretary, I know how busy everyone’s agenda is. This has taught me to prioritize, since some situations require me to put off my own work in order to help one of my fellow board members. As a Board, we also want to get the bottom out of the barrel, for ourselves, but even more for our members and partner companies. Especially in a year like this, there is a lot of room to come up with creative ideas. We often have to deviate from our original formats and are required to think outside the box, because life has
