Amy Houtkamp

Answering questions

‘As internship & campus coordinator, I’m HR and recruitment’s contact person for colleagues with questions about internships at TNO. They come to me with all kinds of questions about interns and internships.

I really enjoy recruiting new interns and getting them excited about our organisation. This is how I connect TNO with different universities. I organise campus events and am in close contact with student associations of all kinds of technical and other studies across the country.

Discover

Good internships are an important part of students’ studies. During an internship, they can discover what they really like to do. And find out whether TNO is the right place for them.’ That’s why interns’ assessment of their internship is a big part of my work. What do students think of their internship at TNO? And how can we improve their experience?

Passion

Everyone working at TNO is doing cool things. We’re playing our part for the future across a wide range of topics. TNO employees perform that role with tremendous passion for their profession! This is reflected in their enthusiasm and helpfulness. They’re always happy to explain what they’re doing.

We create internships with the help of our colleagues in the departments, the internship coordinators. To assist them, I help

solve their issues and introduce some structure to the process. This keeps things fun for the internship coordinators, interns, and everyone else involved.

Puzzle pieces

The combination of thinking strategically about potential improvements and translating them into tangible actions brings me great joy. Moreover, in this role, I’m of real value to both my colleagues and the interns. It makes me happy when others benefit from my actions or the information I provide. Phone calls or mailings of this kind reinvigorate me completely. But I also enjoy it when others help me and pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

Besides answering practical questions and implementing organisational aspects, I also determine the strategy for internship & campus. Every year my colleagues and I come up with an action plan in which we decide what we’re going to focus on and what we’ll need to make it work. For example, how can we lower the threshold students experience when applying for an internship? And which campus events do we as TNO need to attend?

Experimenting

Personally, I experience a lot of freedom at TNO. For example, I started in a completely different role, as the executive secretary to the operations director of the Defence, Security & Safety unit. Soon, I started working on all kinds of interesting side projects.

There’s a high level of trust here to try new things; a lot of space to experiment, hone your approach, and try again. And there’s consideration for my needs, vitality, and development. I find that quite special. I sincerely hope students find a working environment like the one I have here at TNO.’