Portrait of: Suzanne van der Linde
Meet our team: today a portrait of Suzanne van der Linde
Suzanne van der Linde, 37, who lives in Den Helder, has been working at Kuipers & Claassen for a year and is formally a junior assistant accountant. Besides the complete internal administration, she does the bookwork for clients, including processing bank mutations and preparing payment files. In addition, she sets up the administration for new clients.
Suzanne starts as a sixteen-year-old with a part-time job in the meat department at Vomar Voordeelmarkt. After two years, she ends up working full-time at the headquarters of this independent supermarket chain in the west of the Netherlands. She starts in the produce and deli meats line. There they soon see that she has potential to do more and she comes to work in the office. In her new position, her responsibilities include making production plans to supply the supermarket chain's 50 branches. She loves that responsibility. "Quite a kick when it all works out," she explains. More positions within the distribution center will follow, including assisting the buyers as assistant category manager.
Suzanne, searching in her younger years for what she would like to be, chooses hbo Accountancy after havo at the age of seventeen. While the class consists largely of much older students, feelings of fear of failure creep up on her. She quits early, which she still regrets. In addition to her job at the Vomar, she starts studying again. A few years later, she successfully completed the home study hbo Sales and Account Management at the Leiden Educational Institutions after which she left the Vomar and started working as an account manager at a sales office in Amsterdam. There she starts seconding ICT specialists. Although her own LinkedIn account is very frugal, she uses this online business social network to search for suitable candidates for available positions. 'A separate world,' is how she tries to put her experience into words. A world in which she does not feel comfortable. The pressure with targets and elbow work is not her thing. She prefers to do her job well in peace. The promise to better shape her own LinkedIn account has since been fulfilled.
With her then partner, who had experience in the hospitality industry, Suzanne took up the challenge. Together they started a lunchroom in the center of Den Helder. Her role there would be mainly in the background, doing the administration and taking care of the business side. When her partner becomes disabled after a few months, she throws herself wholeheartedly into his part of the job as well. Hard work with an effort of sometimes up to 60 hours a week. A growing regular clientele leads to her even having to hire staff. 'A very enjoyable but above all instructive period,' she describes the eight years of this adventure. She gets to know all the facets involved in being self-employed. Because she went through all those steps herself, she can now also better understand clients at Kuipers & Claassen. What are they going through as entrepreneurs, what are their problems. That empathy comes in handy for Suzanne now.
While others call her cheerful and positive, she characterizes herself as enterprising with a strong will of her own. If she has something in her head, she wants to do it that way. Suzanne does not get angry easily. In contrast, she rather experiences frustration when - in her urge to do things right - she doesn't understand something in her work. In her self-employment, she has learned to figure things out for herself or simply ask for help. By wanting to do many things at once, she regularly comes up against herself. Wanting to keep many balls high and therefore sometimes taking on too much, teaches her to indicate her limits. In recent years she has been managing this better and better.
For her seven-year-old son Benjamin, she loves fulfilling her role as a mother. Enjoying life together, spending a week on vacation at the beach with their feet running through the tide line. You won't find Suzanne in the gym anytime soon. She prefers working out at home, where she gets on well with high-intensity training, strength training and yoga. There she can spend endless evenings on the couch enjoying series on Netflix and likes to shed a tear. Lately, she also appreciates a good book more and more. She also enjoys dancing at parties where Cuban salsa, Bachata - the social dance style from the Dominican Republic - and Brazilian zouk are her favorites.
After becoming self-employed, she has a lot of trouble returning to work as an employee. She describes it as an authority problem. For eight years, she was used to determining everything from herself. "You think from an employer's point of view," Suzanne clarifies, "to act on your own. At some point this results in a work atmosphere that is unpleasant for her, in which her own initiative is cut off and she can no longer develop. She quits the accounting firm where she is working at the time.
After a week's vacation, a recruiter contacts her. He has two positions for her to apply for. She talks to both employers. Because being able to work from home is an important employment condition for her as a single mother, she chooses Kuipers & Claassen. She is struck by the confidence given to her upfront in the interview there. 'As if I came into a warm bath compared to my previous job,' she characterizes the feeling she had in doing so. Something like that works both ways. By now Suzanne really feels at home in the office. Driven in her work, she feels she can be useful and make a difference for their clients. The playing field she gets at Kuipers & Claassen motivates her tremendously. She finds the core values of proactive and passion most applicable to herself, someone who makes a difference, matters to a client.
It is clear that Suzanne has not yet let go of being an independent entrepreneur. With her passion for real estate, Den Helder may well gain another real estate magnate in the future.
Quotes
The hassle around it was my business.
The favor factor is very important.
I do like a challenge.
I am very entrepreneurial.
I absolutely loved that responsibility.
Even then I was excited by numbers.
I am very social and extroverted.
I can work wonderfully in silence at home.
I want to do my job quietly and well.
With me, though, the glass is always half full.
I always want to get it right.
I am someone who makes a difference.
