Working at Centix for six months during her gap year, Puck van de Poll (21) is now ready for her next step: travel first and then continue her studies. She began her work at Centix as an intern. “It was a research internship, where I got to do a cost price calculation,” she explains. At Centix, Puck will be missed! “Thank you for your valuable contribution, Puck!”
She had already graduated for a while (December 2022), but recently received her degree in International Business Management. Before she leaves Centix, she talks about her milestones, lessons learned and what makes working at Centix so much fun: “You work in a relatively young team and you’re pretty much allowed to do your thing. That’s nice!”
What did you learn at Centix?
“Above all, I was able to gain work experience. For example, I helped with the year-end closing and discovered how the sales process works. Furthermore, I helped renew the marketing plan. In my work I applied knowledge from school, which I combined with what I saw in practice at Centix. For 2023 there had to be new objectives, a renewed marketing plan. Together we are also looking at international opportunities from Centix. With consultant René Dautzenberg, we made a plan of approach for this. We want to roll it out in Belgium first. Then we will look further afield. It is good for the company that they are spreading their wings. It was already in the marketing plan last year, that we were going to look for opportunities in the market. I like to see that it’s slowly starting to take off now. That I can still see the results within the six months I’ve been working here.”
Why chose to do your internship at Centix?
“Here at Centix, they also expect you to come up with your own ideas. In that respect, everyone is equal at Centix. Everyone does the things they are responsible for. That is very pleasant during an internship. Also because you are really taken seriously. I was never the intern, but was seen as someone who was going to research something. That research was of real value to the company. After all, it was also in their interest to get a result that would be useful to them and that they could do something with. I would definitely recommend it to other students as an internship. Just do it!”
Pucks milestones:
She began her gap year as a financial assistant, but picked up more and more sales work, such as making quotations. Certainly the variety (even during her internship) was great. She herself lists her milestones from internship to now:
- Researching and making the cost price calculation.
- My Year-end contribution.
- Daily financial work such as purchase invoice entry, bank statement entry, accounts receivable management, et cetera.
- The renewal of the marketing plan.
- The launch of the internationalization program.
"I would definitely recommend it to other students as an internship. Just do it!"
Pucks working day:
“My workdays are very varied,” Puck says. “I usually start the day by entering the bank statement. Beyond that, I then see what a day brings. One minute I’m dealing with sales quotes, the next I’m doing financial analysis. There are many fixed things, but also ad hoc things. For example, I am currently working on setting up and optimizing one of our processes as efficiently as possible. For our ISO certification, we have to document quite a lot. That documentation states how a process should be done, so that it is done the same way every time. We have to monitor things. When you work on such things and immerse yourself in them, you find out how something works. Sometimes you also see things that you think could be done differently. I then investigated how such a thing could be implemented and submitted the result to ISO quality manager Alexander Westerman who puts it into practice.”
Future
For now, Puck is going backpacking in Australia. When she returns, she will begin her masters in management. “In this you can specialize. I would like to do financial management, but I might think differently by then.” When asked if we will see her again in the future, she replied that she leaves all options open: “Never say never. We’ll be two years down the road and of course I can’t see into the future.”