Emma Herschberg

“I had to do an internship as part of my degree but I found it difficult to decide where, so I applied for quite a few business courses. One of them was at ING. The application process for the business course entails four out of the five rounds of the trainee selection process. I wasn’t ready to start on a traineeship yet because I still had to do my internship first, but I was selected for the business course.”

Immediately at ease

“I had a good feeling about ING right from the start; the people were really friendly and I felt very at ease. So I immediately applied for a graduation internship, in a team that develops advanced analytics and artificial intelligence models for Know Your Customer (KYC) purposes. Halfway through that internship, I applied for the Operations & Change traineeship.”

A flight to Bratislava

“The first rotation of my traineeship was in Wholesale Banking, where I was mainly involved in process optimisation. I did two projects and learned a huge amount. For example, just a couple of months into the rotation, I suddenly found myself alone on a flight to Bratislava to attend a workshop with ING Slovakia’s heads of Sales, Lending and Client Service Delivery. That was a little daunting but above all very cool! It was also nice to feel that the company had confidence in me. That’s what I love about ING: the world is your oyster if you show that you’re willing to make the effort.”

Alternative to gaining experience abroad

“I’d made all the necessary preparations to do my second assignment in Manila, in the Philippines, but it became clear that it wouldn’t happen because of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s a pity, of course, because no one wants to miss out on such a great chance to gain experience abroad. But I sprang into action to find an alternative and succeeded in securing an assignment at Global Change Execution, where I stayed on after the assignment ended. I am now officially working there in my first permanent role, within a programme to take compliance and KYC to an even higher level.”

Out of my comfort zone

“I’m a Change Consultant for a section of the programme and am working on an improvement project. I’m involved in all kinds of aspects: the policy, the external regulations, the process... It’s a much broader role than my previous assignment, which automatically means that you go into less depth. That’s forcing me out of my comfort zone, because I like to be in control of the details – but that’s precisely why I can learn so much in this position.”

Shiny gold jacket

Besides that, I’m working with a great bunch of people, which is not unimportant. I haven’t met everyone in person yet because we’re still working from home. But they probably all know me because I organised an online bingo session for the whole department. I was the one standing next to the bingo machine wearing a shiny gold jacket!”