Carlijn Elemans joined the DNB traineeship in 2020, together with eight other trainees. In this blog, she talks about her work, JongDNB and her position as a trainee.  

After my Economics and Business Economics Bachelors’, my interest in finance grew. I wanted to gain more practical experience before starting my Financial Economics Master’s, and took two internships to satisfy that itch. One was at the economics department of the Dutch embassy in Saoudi Arabia, a very memorable experience, followed by the financial department at Unilever. I wanted to try everything and the urge to learn more failed to subside. One of the reasons why I applied for the DNB traineeship in May last year.

Preventing money laundering

The fact that you get to work at three different departments within two years’ time, was very appealing to me. I am currently working at the Financial Crime Supervision department, specifically in the Intelligence & Innovation team. My team is all about making supervision more data-driven. We visit financial institutions to make sure they are meeting legal obligations and want to prevent from getting involved in money laundering. More concretely, I am currently building a dashboard to map transactions associated with an elevated risk of money laundering. I help the supervisor understand what is going on.

A lot of responsibility

I enjoy the fact that I get a lot of responsibility as a trainee, and am taken seriously. You join as a fully-fledged colleague, and others really see you that way too. Plus, other employees are excited about a new trainee joining the team. They want to give you interesting tasks because you aren’t there for very long. I could not have imagined how welcome I would feel from day one.

Neighborhood buddy

Of course, these are some strange times. But a lot is being done to keep our remote work fun. There is a huge amount of online social events for you to join and then there is JongDNB, a network of colleagues up to 35 years of age. Through this network, I was recently coupled to a ‘neighbourhood buddy’. We were sent to a coffee place where we received a take-away drink for our walks. A very sociable way of getting to know a new colleague during these times and characteristic of the great atmosphere at DNB.

Positively surprised

I am pleased that I took the step to sign up for this traineeship. At first, I thought: DNB is quite a static organisation, a knowledge-driven institute. Will there be room for fun and more informal activities in addition to the work itself? Well, there is. I am positively surprised and would recommend it to anyone. If you are still in doubt, join some DNB people for an online cup of coffee. There are various Meet & Greet moments in April, for example, where you get to connect with trainees online and ask them anything. Try to think about what you want you want to get out of the start of your career. If you have a passion for this field and the prospect of tremendous horizontal development in a short period of time appeals to you, this traineeship is right for you.