You’ll have to keep reading to find out; the suspense is part of the fun, just like it was on the Best Traineeship Award day on Friday the 3rd of July, 2020.

The Best Traineeship 2019 was different this year for a few reasons. Since meeting face-to-face wasn’t possible due to Covid-19 restrictions, all participants virtually participated in the final step to determine the award winner. Instead of the usual event photos a live scriber and visual designer, Jacobien Vermande, captured the atmosphere of the video pitches and the Q&A sessions in her drawings. This was also the first year with Kieran Canisius and Clarine Deijnen at the helm of the Best Traineeshipafter taking over the company from founder Ilse de Heer earlier this year. On behalf of the entire organisation, jury member Toke Atsma thanked Ilse for her dedication. ‘You wanted to give trainees the opportunity to choose a proper traineeship, and help companies develop and invest in traineeships and trainees. You’ve succeeded and created something very special.’

The best career start for young professionals

Ilse de Heer initiated The Best Traineeship Benelux in 2006 with the objective to identify traineeships for the best career start for young high potentials. But it’s more than just a competition. During the election process valuable information is collected and shared with the participants through benchmark reports and feedback. Organisations from all industries share knowledge and learn from each other. A deeper understanding of the different approaches to traineeships and what makes them successful benefits all parties involved. 

Benchmark reports

Kieran shared the most important insights gained from the benchmark reports of 2019 that show the main motivational drivers of trainees. They also showcase the progress that has been made by companies through the improvements that have been implemented over the last 4 years. Best Traineeship has decided to implement additional offerings to the traineeship industry, by providing a summary benchmark report, free of charge, which is based on an open Trainee survey, a knowledge sharing session for all Traineeship Program Managers at the beginning of each annual award. Kieran and Clarine also showed the attendees a sneak peek at the company’s new branding. 

The finalists

The five finalists made it to the final round by successfully passing two previous selection rounds. In the semi-final they each won a Best in Class Award in the categories Return on Investment (Facilicom), Personal Branding (Gasunie), Training & Development (DisGover), Balanced Projects (KPN) and Performance Appraisal (Enexis Groep). As this year the final round was virtual, each team was asked to submit a video pitch. In their fantastic video pitches the trainees used creativity and original angles to show what their traineeships had to offer in terms of personal and professional growth and learning opportunities. The next step was a round of questions from the jury consisting of Marco Koot, Toke Atsma, and Kieran Canisius .And while the jury stepped back to deliberate, Best Traineeship Program Manager 2019 winner Teun Trompert of Gasunie hosted a Q&A session for the teams. 

And the winner is

KPN! After the nerve-wrecking final, KPN took home the Best Traineeship award for the second consecutive year. It was a close finish. In fact, the jury had such a difficult time deciding that they needed some extra time to deliberate, keeping finalists DisGover, Enexis Groep, Gasunie, Facilicom and KPN on the edge of their seats until the very last moment. Jury member Marco Koot on the deciding factors: ‘First of all, it’s the made-to-measure traineeships KPN offers their trainees. Trainees have the opportunity to learn what they want to learn and explore what they find important. It’s not as much about what the trainee achieves but more about how they get there. The freedom of choice. We can see and hear that in all you do, you’ve even let us experience that freedom of choice through your video pitch where the viewer was given control of the content of the video they wanted to see. And finally: Consistency. From your first-round survey to the semi-final and now the final, you’ve shown strong, consistent results.’ Claudette, Traineeship Program Manager for KPN, was delighted: ‘We are extremely happy and proud. It was an exciting competition, the other teams had really good pitches too. I’m very happy for us and for our trainees and we’ll do our best to keep up this level.’

The Best Traineeship 2020

The Best Traineeship 2020 is now open for registration. This year, the Program Managers Meeting will take place on the 12th of November 2020. New this year: the benchmark survey will be open to all trainees, including trainees who aren’t taking part in the competition. This will provide all those working with traineeships with a wealth of information to utilize for improvements and to further inspire impactful traineeships. The goal is for businesses to learn through the competition process. We invite all organisations that want to meet, network, gain insights and keep improving their traineeships to register!

Sign up before July 15th, 2020 and take advantage of our Early Bird rate