Finance Trainee

Finance Trainee

Finance Trainee

You and your enthusiastic colleagues represent the beating heart of our business. As a Finance Trainee at Action in Zwaagdijk, you will go behind the scenes of the financial world at Europe's fastest-growing retailer. If you feel ready for the challenge, get on board and boost your career! 🚀

You will embark on an 18-month program consisting of three key pillars: professional development and cross-functional learning alongside the entire group of trainees, three 6-month rotations across multiple teams, and assignments & goals that will help you become a successful collaborator within your team. By the end of this program, you will be a fully equipped professional, ready to contribute to Action’s future plans.

Your daily tasks

As a Trainee Finance at Action, you will have the opportunity to choose between two exciting career tracks: General Ledger Accountant or Process Expert.

General Ledger Accountant Track: You will start by gaining hands-on experience in the Accounts Payable team, handling incoming invoices for non-trade goods and services. Next, you will move to the Cash & Bank accounting team, where you will work on payments, receipts, and reconciliations. Your final step will be in the General Ledger Accounting team, focusing on housing costs, fixed assets, intercompany cross-charging, and lease accounting. Throughout the year, you will build a solid foundation in accounting, crucial for a successful career in finance.

Process Expert Track: Your journey begins in the Goods Accounting team, where you will manage receipts of goods and related invoices. Then, you will dive into inventory management and accounting in the General Ledger team. In your final assignment, you will focus on process improvement, identifying opportunities to optimize financial operations. This track not only strengthens your accounting skills but also challenges you to innovate and improve processes.

In both tracks, you will gain valuable insights and experience that lay the groundwork for your future as a financial leader.

On a daily basis you will work on your assignments and prepare for your periodical assessments.

Your team

Welcome to Finance, where it is all about the numbers. And we have great numbers at Action. We open more than 300 new stores every year along with new distribution centres regularly all over Europe. And when it comes to our turnover growth, it's been 20% a year on average in recent years. It should therefore come as no surprise that our team is bursting with energy. In total, we work with about 90 finance service specialists and including business control and treasury there are over 150 colleagues that we work closely together with on several topics, ranging from financial administration to reporting and from treasury to business control. We make sure the numbers are in order and well recorded, and that our systems and processes are increasingly efficient for all countries in which Action operates. We also challenge the business owners to broaden their horizons. Rapid growth encourages us to reflect on how we can move forward together, build new structures, improve and have a positive impact on the operating result. If there's anywhere you stand to develop as a financial professional, it's at Action Finance!

Curious about your new colleagues? 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 ensures 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. We're now up to more than 2,600 stores in 13 countries and millions of smiles from our customers – and we're not stopping there, because we have major growth ambitions, both for Action and you. Our growth means you can always take new steps to develop as a professional, whether that means a different 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.

You can also count on Action for the following:

• 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)

How we contribute to society

We are also working hard behind the scenes to make a positive impact on society and the environment. Did you know we sponsor more than 2,000 children worldwide who are growing up in an SOS Children's Village? Or that our team reflects the diversity of our customers, representing 155 nationalities? Or that 94% of our wood products and 100% of our cotton already come from sustainable sources? Or that we only use energy-efficient LED lighting in almost all our stores? If you're curious about what other initiatives we're taking, join our team and see for yourself.

Interested?

We're proud to be an inclusive employer, and we warmly invite anyone who sees themselves in the vacancy to apply. So take action and respond to this vacancy now!