Business Studies
Steve
Business Studies with Marketing (2011)
I worked extremely hard in the final year of my degree to gain as much experience as I could because I was aware of the current climate of the employment market.
I volunteered at the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce, which gave me experience in working with local business and attending business networking events. I also started my own website called nowtweet.it as part of one of my modules, which led to me blogging using the knowledge I obtained from my Digital Marketing module. I became a Business School Ambassador, meaning I attended open days and showed people around the facilities at Brighton, all of which was great for my CV and getting my job.
The university gave me a number of skills in a variety of business disciplines, and in the final year, you get to choose electives meaning you can tailor the course to what you are interested in. Digital Marketing modules nurtured my knowledge of the industry and other modules such as Managing People gave me insight to how teams work together to reach goals, and how to generally push a business forward.
My course was a sandwich course meaning I spent one year out gaining experience in the real world, and this feature from Brighton is probably the highlight of the course. This all went in my favour when it came to securing my current role at Fresh Egg as a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Engineer.
I first met Fresh Egg at a University of Brighton graduate Careers Fair. They were looking for students who had a passion for anything digital to join their ever growing team. I went away and looked up Fresh Egg online and realised how passionate they were and I wanted to be part of the team.
I applied for a role at Fresh Egg as they are one of the UK’s leading digital agencies, and they also happen to be only 10 miles away from Brighton. I had an interest in working in digital media from when I started at Brighton, so after four years on my course, I was so happy to be offered a role in SEO.
Fresh Egg offer SEO, web design and digital intelligence to a number of local and national companies and are experts in the field. The work is flexible as you get to work on a number of clients and you are not tied down to any job for overly-lengthy time periods, and the office environment is great. Fresh Egg has a knowledge sharing approach, encouraging teams to mix through social and work events. The office even has a cafeteria and pool table to help staff mix and share their ideas.
Right now I am developing my expertise in SEO with Fresh Egg, who are growing at tremendous speed, and offer fantastic career prospects. One day I hope to climb the ranks and help develop Fresh Egg further into a leading SEO and digital agency.
Fresh Egg are always looking for talented individuals who are interested in SEO, social media, web design and development and everything that comes in between. They offer internship and work experience programs, so anyone who is interested into getting involved in this industry should visit the website and contact them to start their journey!
Dan
Business Studies (2004)
Dan Hawes graduated with a BA(Hons) Business Studies from the University of Brighton in 1994. After gaining further work experience Dan and fellow Business Studies graduate Chris Cater decided to pool their talents and in 1997 founded the Graduate Recruitment Bureau based in Brighton.
The company is a recruitment agency specialising in matching graduates with job vacancies across a range of sectors and major clients include Deloitte, Accenture, Sony, Barclays and McLaren. The company has continued to grow despite the challenging jobs environment and already employs a number of other Brighton graduates.
We were business graduates (apprentice yuppies at the time!) and left Uni brimming with ideas. We found work in sales and marketing functions locally in 1995 and our weekends would be taken up with squash and weekend drinks talking about ways to make our first million! Our driving force to set up an enterprise like GRB was the realisation that as a business duo we were ideally suited - we wanted the same things and we very ambitious with bags of energy.
After years of research and discussions with my uncle, who ran a recruitment agency at the time, we struck on the idea of a niche area of recruitment that we felt could be improved. Initially we thought ‘Wow’, this could have helped our friends find work when they graduated and kept our social life going, rather than everyone going back to their parents to find work. Set up costs were affordable, we had the skills, the bank liked the idea and so we sold everything we had, left our jobs and worked liked crazy 24/7 sacrificing decent food and any social life.
My degree at Brighton gave me a basic grounding in business theory but what really helped was having a year out on placement as it gave me some commercial awareness. It was my determination, motivation and ambition that lead me to become an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur behind Coffee Republic once said "leap and the net will appear", which I like. It is about having the confidence in your idea and going for it. You do need to be very focussed and that will mean sacrificing many things to reach your goal. Ultimately it is the journey you make that you will look back on not necessarily the financial rewards, so surround yourself with good people and enjoy it.
We asked Dan what general advice he would offer to graduates about how they can enhance their employability prospects in such a competitive market;
Differentiate yourself. Start with research - what do you like? What are you good at? What do you hate? Build an honest appraisal of you. Next apply this set of characteristics and skills to a few jobs - be open-minded - you can narrow it down later. Then tailor your CV for each job you apply for paying careful attention to exactly what the company wants whilst communicating your enthusiasm for the role.
