Tini Groen: “I still enjoy visiting Amsterdam. But living there? That’s something I’ve now made a conscious decision not to do.”

She has lived in Friesland all her life. First in Kollum, then for a long time in Leeuwarden, and now in a village near the provincial capital. Tini Groen feels at home in the province. Yet for years she thought her future lay in the Randstad. “I really wanted to work in marketing. About ten years ago, there weren’t that many jobs in that field in Friesland. In the west of the country, those jobs were available. Even during my studies in Graphic Design and Communication and Multimedia Design, we were advised to do work placements in the Randstad. That’s where you could learn the trade, we were told.”

Yet Tini never made the move to the west. Initially for practical reasons: “A student room in Amsterdam was beyond my means, so I looked for an internship in Friesland. I kept saying that I’d ‘go west later on’, but that never happened.” Because that internship was followed by a first job, a home of her own, and so Tini built a life in the province she’d always thought she’d leave. “The longer I stayed here, the less need I felt to go to the Randstad. I appreciate Friesland and living in Friesland more and more.”

And those jobs in online marketing, which she’d long assumed didn’t exist in Friesland? It turned out they were there after all. “To be honest, when I graduated in 2017, the number of opportunities was still quite limited. I made myself visible with a LinkedIn video in which I talked about myself. That’s how I came into contact with various companies and eventually found my first job. Fortunately, the number of online marketing roles in the province has increased in recent years. It’s now a lot easier to find a job in this field.”

But Tini isn’t looking for anything new at the moment. She has been working as a content marketer at TRES in Heerenveen since 2023. “I develop content strategies to put TRES on the map, and I implement them myself. That means I take photos and videos and write articles. I also analyse the statistics and make improvements based on them.” It’s not just the nature of her work that Tini enjoys so much. “At TRES, I’m given the freedom to try things out. My colleagues believe in my expertise. That feels good.”

There’s a good reason why this woman from Friesland feels so at home at TRES: in 2023, the company was ranked second in the list of the Netherlands’ Best Workplaces. “When I started working here, I immediately noticed the personal attention given to staff. At the time, I was recovering from a fairly serious car accident. On my very first day at work, I was asked how I was getting on, and I was given the flexibility to go home early if I needed to.”

So the career in the Randstad that Tini had always envisaged didn’t materialise. Instead, she built a fulfilling career in the countryside, where she feels so at home. Where tranquillity and bustle coexist side by side. “I still love visiting Amsterdam. But living there? I’ve made a conscious decision not to do that anymore. I’m glad I stayed here. In the end, I found everything I was looking for here.”