Finance Trainee

Action is active in 15 markets, and we continue to grow. This growth also brings new opportunities within Finance. As a Finance Trainee, you join an 18‑month programme that helps you build the skills and confidence to become a well‑rounded finance professional. From our headquarters in Zwaagdijk, you learn how Finance supports our fast‑growing organisation and how we work with teams across the business. Through three 6‑month rotations, you gain hands‑on experience across multiple finance teams, take on real assignments from day one, and finish the traineeship with a clear next step in your career.

Finance Trainee

Your daily tasks

As a Finance Trainee at Action, you will follow the exciting career track of

Phase 1 – Foundation (Months 1–6)

You will start by gaining hands-on experience in the Accounts Payable team handling invoices and managing receipts of goods. Working closely with experienced colleagues, you will build your first understanding of how financial operations underpin everything Action does.

• Accounts Payable: handle incoming invoices for non-trade goods and services.
• Build your understanding of financial processes and how they support the wider business.
• Work alongside experienced finance colleagues and prepare for your periodic assessments.

Phase 2 – Skilling Up (Months 7–12)

With a solid foundation in place, you will broaden your financial knowledge. You will move into Cash & Bank accounting, working on payments, receipts, and reconciliations.

• Deepen your accounting expertise and contribute to team assignments and periodic assessments.

Phase 3 – Creating Impact (Months 13–18)

In your final phase, you will take on your most complex assignments yet. You will focus on housing costs, fixed assets, intercompany cross-charging, and lease accounting.

Your team

You will become part of the Finance team at Action, where it is all about the numbers – and we have great numbers. We open more than 300 new stores every year and our turnover growth has been 20% a year on average in recent years. In total, about 90 finance service specialists work in the team, and including business control and treasury there are over 150 colleagues working across financial administration, reporting, treasury, and business control. We make sure the numbers are in order and our systems and processes are increasingly efficient across all countries in which Action operates.

From day one, you will have a dedicated manager and mentor to guide you. Your colleagues are eager to share their knowledge and help you grow into a confident professional. Curious about your new team? Your manager, mentor, and teammates can’t wait to support you during your traineeship.

What you offer

You view documents full of numbers or complex calculations as a puzzle that you can’t wait to solve. Your critical eye means you love to dive into the details. Thanks to your good communication skills – which you improve day in, day out – you are also able to clearly explain your analyses to the rest of the organisation. Furthermore, you seize every opportunity to expand your financial knowledge.

Your background:

• A completed HBO education in Finance.
• 1–2 years of work experience, preferably within retail.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office.
• Good command of English (spoken and written).

Necessary competencies:

• Learning agility to be able to gain as much knowledge as possible from all your interactions and projects during the Traineeship.
• Analytical thinking to be able to assess situations and make data-driven decisions.
• Accuracy to ensure that financial data is recorded, processed, and reported correctly.

What we offer

From our headquarters in the Netherlands, you will have an impact across the whole of Europe. Action's growth means you can always take steps to develop as a professional, whether that means a certain position, an interesting innovation project, or new skills. And you can do all that in a culture where we truly embrace our shared values: customer focus, teamwork, simplicity, discipline, cost-consciousness and respect.

• A competitive salary (based on a 38-hour working week)
• 24 days holiday with the option to buy five additional days (based on 38 hours per week)
• 15% staff discount on your purchases at Action

Collective health insurance and travel allowance (Zwaagdijk is reachable from Amsterdam by car in just 30 minutes on uncongested roads)

We believe integrity is of great importance. A pre-employment screening is therefore part of the process for this vacancy.