Else Frijling
2 years ago, Else Frijling (32) joined Dynamic People as a Young Professional. With a great ambition and eagerness to learn, it couldn’t go fast enough for her. And hard work pays off: she has now promoted to Team Lead of our Azure & BI Team. How did she get here? Read here story here.
Back to the beginning
I’m curious: what is your background? “I have a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution & Governance (Political Science). That’s a completely different direction from the work I do now, although you do have to work diplomatically as a consultant and teamlead as well. Because it was hard to find a job in my field after my studies, I started working for a small company (wholesale and retail). I thought: you have to start somewhere. The owner quickly saw that I had more in me than just being a shop assistant and therefore asked if I wanted to run the business. This is where I developed my entrepreneurial mindset: within six months I received a budget to open the second store and within 5 years we had grown to 5 stores, including a distribution centre (B2B and B2C).” There is, of course, a lot to consider. “I helped with the expansion, which was a very nice experience. You constantly run into new things: hiring people, arranging ATMs, setting up webshop(s), setting up social media and at a certain point digitization became really important.” Why did you quit? “I wanted to innovate, I wanted more: working with systems, making decisions based on data, looking beyond my current horizon. After this adventure, I took a few months to ‘chart my new course’ and went traveling. On my travels in Sydney someone said to me: you would do well as a consultant.”
What happened then?
“When I got home I did an accelerated Data Analytics & Machine Learning course with the focus on ‘learning by doing’.Part of this training was that you could start somewhere as a trainee, but you still had to arrange the traineeship yourself. I eventually came into contact with Dynamic People for the Young Professional program through recruiters.” The Young Professional program is a trajectory that Dynamic People offers once every 2 years for starters on the market. Here, our YPs are trained for 3 months with all kinds of courses and training, after which we guide them through their first few projects. “I am very happy that I ended up here. The decisive factors for me were that the atmosphere was good from the start, the employees are well taken care of here and there is plenty of room for growth and development.”
A career at Dynamic People
“Actually, it couldn’t go fast enough for me: with my experience I wasn’t necessarily a Young Professional, haha. Fortunately, my Team Lead also saw that I had more to offer.” Else wanted to grow and especially wanted to come into contact with customers. But she still lacked some expertise. “I really had to catch up: push on, keep learning and made sure I studied enough. I am a really hard worker: ‘Nait soes’n, moar broezen’. That’s Gronings (Groningen is a province in The Netherlands) for: don’t whine, but act. It’s in my blood. I learned a lot myself to gain that knowledge as quickly as possible. After being a ‘Young Professional’ for six months, fortunately I was able to progress to medior consultant and a year later to senior. During my conversations I always showed my ambition: I want to grow and move up. The question soon arose: don’t you want to become a team lead? Yes please!”
Projects, projects
You have already completed quite a few projects at Dynamic People. Do you have a favourite? “B-Securite, which is part of Basic Fit. They want a lot and they wanted it fast. That gives me energy! The collaboration is also going very well, what started as 5 reports has now become a hefty report series with a total of more than 50 pages and they come up with something new every time. And they are very happy with it.”
And the most challenging? “That is Meelunie, they will agree. The project turned out to be a lot more complex than we initially thought, the entire process was overhauled, so that old reports cannot be copied 1 on 1 to the new situation. Rebuilding the data warehouse is also a huge challenge. In addition, they use more than 100 reports (from logistics and financial to commercial reports) throughout the organization, all of which must be created in Power BI. So a huge job. You start all over again and have to go through every definition again.”
In the new role
Else is now pregnant and went on leave last week: “Which is why we have chosen to do a transition period. I have been co-lead with Mike since May, so that I can learn all the tricks of the trade. When I return after my maternity leave, I start as a full lead. You have to grow into it a bit – we have a not really a hierarchic organization and ‘flat lines’- and I now have a great opportunity to do that.” At the start of the co-lead period, she immediately sat down with all team members to talk personally about what they really need and are looking for in a team lead, in order to offer the right coaching. Somayeh (BI team member) said: “I am always left astounded at the level of dedication and hard work she puts in every situation. Also, she helps others to establish sense of confidence and find their ways in doing their job. She is an inspiration to me.” And isn’t that a nice compliment?