 Welcome to the Greenwich Means Business podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Greenwich Means Business podcast. Today we're joined by two current students who are on the programme of international business. Would you like to introduce yourselves and tell us what you're studying or what you've just finished studying? Yeah, thank you. Hello everyone, my name is Harlecy and I'm an MBA international business student. I have completed my studies and I'm currently working at the university as a kind of partnership officer. Hello everyone, my name is Ishaan Thakur and I'm a second year international business student. So my first question is Greenwich, the University of Greenwich. How did you find out about the University of Greenwich? What was your process of choosing this university over and over? Did you want to tell us first? Yes, so I'm an Indian and I always want to do an BA degree. So for us it's always the IAMs, that's the Indian Institute of Management. They are the premium insurers for pursuing MBA degrees and it takes a lot of preparation to get into an IAM because there's an exam called the CAT, that's the common after-test. When I consider about doing an MBA from India, I have to crack the CAT exam first. That is going to take around like one to two years of preparation and then it involves a lot of financial obligations and then I will not be able to start working until I complete my course on a full-time basis and I would still be a fresh graduate. And it was my sister who already came to the University of Greenwich. She did her master's at the Kent campus and she did MSc in food innovation. So when she left to UK, I was like, why can't I go to an abroad nation and then do a master's degree. But there were many questions and then there were many challenges that I had to face. So the first question obviously was which country? There was a trend in India when students were going abroad to countries like Canada, UK, US, Australia. I definitely don't want to go to US or Australia due to various news that I have been hearing since then. And then the second priority was Canada. But based on my research I came to find that I can't do a proper MP program in Canada and the temperature was a big issue back then. It was extreme weather climate. Then anybody was going to be UK because my sister was already here. And then the next question which university? And I informed one of my agents in India that I wanted to MP in UK. I asked them if you could refer some good universities and they shared me a list of five, six universities and University of Greenwich was one among them. But still I wanted to do a research of my own and I came across 19 universities. So I started filtering out one by one based on the eligibility requirements, the fees, the location, everything. I had to strike out most of the institutes because of the work experience that they were demanding. Usually an MP student has to have hard to have 35 years of experience and I was still a fresh graduate. I graduated in 2021 and applied to the University of Greenwich in 2021. So there's no way I could get into these institutes because of lack of experience. Second thing was the GMAT. So similar to CAD exam to get into the top institutes in UK, the insurance have to give an exam. It's called the GMAT. So again, if I have to prepare one to two years for CAD then I have to prepare another three years for GMAT. Then at the end it came to two universities. One was University of Greenwich and the other one was the Coventry University. The third thing that I considered was the location. So University of Greenwich was based in London and when I was going through the university's website I came across the name Cannery Wharf. So that's the London's premier financial hub and I knew that most of the companies are based in Cannery Wharf and then in Central London. So my thought process was like if I can get into University of Greenwich then I can connect with these industries and I can build a career within London. And then after one or two appointments with the agents I finally decided that University of Greenwich is the best place for me and then I went course by course and then I had a couple of conversations with the previous alumni and finally it came down to University of Greenwich and I'm really happy that I got to here because I've made some really good friends here, some great connections and I'm working for the University of Greenwich now. Yeah, that's quite a nice story but you did a lot of thinking and a lot of research beforehand I can tell, which is good I mean you need to in that sort of situation. It was going to be a big decision and a tougher one for me because I don't want to mess up. It's going to be a broad nation, people that I don't know about and a totally new experience for me so I want to take a careful look at the risk. That's why I had to do a lot of research. I guess almost five to six months of research I put into it and then I get into the University of Greenwich. So it was in January 2021 that's when my sister boarded her flight. It was the same that I decided okay I'm going to go to UK. She's boarding her flight and you're thinking okay I'm going to that country as well. Yes, that sounds fine. Yeah, what about you? So like answering the first question how I find the University of Greenwich then I would say amazing because this is the place that I always wanted to spend my crucial time of life because I'm doing undergrad, I'm spending three years of my life here and how I chose the University of Greenwich. So initially I had like four to five options in my mind but according to my requirements and what I want from a university Greenwich was my top priority and the first the Greenwich School reputation around the companies and in the community as well as they have the good business management programs and then like before when I was in India I was searching about the course I looked out the page of the course and when I researched about what I can get from the university it was not just a traditional course that I will be getting but it was more than from the lectures for example I found about what University of Greenwich I mean the business group has to offer for example generator because a student like me who wants to do business in a future or maybe have a consulting career in life so a generator is a very best option because when I saw that not I'm going to learn from the lectures only but generator can be a part where I can do simple application of what I'm learning into the generator so during the year on the last year I have attended a few of the generator events for example hecatons, GRE start programs, enterprise challenge and this is the same just I'm not learning what I'm doing actually but also I applied so that's why I already searched everything before I came here and this was the combination of learning also application was only option in the Greenwich according to my requirements so I opt for Greenwich as well as the location because no one you feel like you are in the countryside as well as you can see from your campus you have the Thames River and also Kendrick of you I mean this is the best way you can ever so that's a very good point it's not many uni campuses that have the greenery of a park and royal park as well and then the river Thames on the other side yeah you can actually see the where you want to be your MNC's companies and the Kendrick of from where you are in the university so yeah yeah it's I would say it's one of the beautiful campus in London when I decided I was at a clinic I went through the maps I literally went through each and every building and I was like oh my yes yeah I was like it was a very big building and then once I got down here my one class was in Queen Mary building the other one was in Stiffelon's building I literally had to run that was a very big campus but I really like I mean most of the films were shot in this campus so it's actually a historic place and it's quite famous yeah yeah there is a lot of history yeah yeah I've been on one of the tours that the old Royal Naval College yes facilitates and if you haven't been I highly recommend it yeah you've been yeah yeah yeah they're fun yeah it's actually fun uh before I actually made the decision I didn't know that there was too much history behind the the buildings over here uh and I guess it's there in the stockwell street the library so I think the ground floor they have the history written down over there over the walls how the university of Greenwich came and what was this building before so yeah did you both apply for an agent what was your application process like what did you apply independently did you have to go for an agent yes so uh one of the authorized in-country representatives they had been throughout my application process they were the same agents who helped my system so we approached the same agents as well and the process would be pretty much the same for every student after me my friends also used the same agents so we first applied I mean the agents applied on our behalf so we have to send our documents the academic transcripts a CV a statement of purpose we call it as the SOP all the requirements will be submitted to them and they will be submitting the university of Greenwich Portland on our behalf so once I guess the academic team sorry the admissions team once they goes through all the documents that we submit they will give us the conditional offer letter and we have to meet the eligibility criteria like the language requirements and then a deposit amount so once this is paid we get the offer letter which is going to be an unconditional and then the regular visa process that involves behind so I would say usually takes for me around five to six months again because I made my application very early but what takes what took so long was the visa process I think it was because of the COVID time the immigration policies the traveling from UK to from India to UK it was recurring a lot of time so I guess that actually made this delay but my friends for them it took almost I think three months yeah okay so a little bit short term yes yeah okay yeah that makes sense was it very similar to you or me the application was same similar because as an entrance students you have to go through more step in comparison to the home students and for me the step like it was like for application process where I need to submit my official academic transcript then financial requirements also passport information the next step was getting application from the university so I got around like in less than 24 hours I received my operator wow yes and it was very quick because when I applied in the late time and it was around mid august and on that generally university have some clearing so they work on applications very quicker so after that I had a cast interview and then after receiving all the documents from the university as well as from myself I submitted my visa application process and during that I want to mention that if any of commissioners is coming so I can suggest that like between any of the process if you are depending on the private agents or yourself always keep in touch with the university because because usually interest department is always helping on the all-step because even when I was applying I had some doubts and also problems but usually a private agent cannot solve everything for the particular university but if you keep in touch with the admission department they want to give you your personalized doubts and everything so it's going to be much easier and you can trust the process as well and also sometimes if you if you can check your university email use valley university organizing some workshops I mean kind of initial workshop that you can attend and get your answers from the admission department so that way you can make your process faster as well as trust it as well yeah that's a good point actually there are so many even the open days you can do the open days virtually but there are webinars and there are webinars specifically for international students so you just have to check the website not you in particular but whoever is thinking of applying if they're an international student just have a look on the website to see what's on and then you can actually speak to admissions or the recruitment team who would be able to answer those questions yeah I mean all the resources are available there the university's website and even if there are if even if any student has any doubt about the admission process then I think the digital student center or the chat board in the university's website can really send a message and then if the chat board can't solve a question then I think it will be referred to the right department and then they'll take it off it yeah and it's real people behind that chat box so it's not it's not a robot yeah it's student ambassadors usually yeah it gets connected to a student ambassador at the end if the chat board can answer the question yeah okay lovely okay so moving on why international business you're both studying international business but on different levels one is undergrad one is postgraduate I mean MBA um should we go with undergrad why international business so so initially like when I chose like this course like first my initiative was like I'm coming from business family background and I also wanted to do business in my future but of course I can learn from my father but I want to go for the fundamentals and also in India it's a very competitive to get admission in the top universities due to a lot of publics we have so that's why I made a decision to go abroad and also I mean I can do a business management or any business courses but why international business because maybe in the future if I want to move back to my country or any other countries if I go through the course of international business there are some bodies like cross-culture management future path and I'll not just learn about the concept of the business but overall how in any kind of in any place of work in most of the mnc's like multiple corporation companies I can do job and even it's not making my knowledge limited because the way I'm learning international business course it makes me to think about strategy future markets and also a particular country's concept so interest and because of this course okay that makes sense so on a global scale yeah the global scale yeah specific to one country or one government or anything like that yeah well for me it was mainly due to my bachelor's degree in commerce that was an honest degree with specialization back again finance so I was more inclined to it's the finance side but for a bachelor's student in India then the next option is either a master's in commerce or master's in business administration so obviously for me I wanted to an MBA degree but I never thought that it was going to be an international business so once I chose the university of crannage I I checked what kind of options to the university have and then it was marketing and international business marketing wasn't really my cup of tea because I have done internships in marketing before and then I realized maybe people there are people who can do better than me in marketing so marketing was never my choice and then it was the international business but the actualization was made by check the the modules in international business so it was mainly the global strategy corporate governance international business finance the accounting everything so the modules actually helped me to choose that this is going to be my perfect choice so that's how I came into the international business but there's something more that I want to add to this question it's about the placement that was offered in the second year of mpa degree so my calculation was that once I complete the mpa degree I'm going to get a one year of work experience so I won't be a fresh graduate I will be having one year of experience and I'm an mpa graduate and I can use that one year of experience to apply for the companies so that's how I chose the mpa international business and since I said that I was more inclined to finance since I saw the business finance in the modules and then the accounting and finance as well so I chose international business would be the perfect choice for me and it's definitely business and it's going to be international so in a way in the world this degree is going to be applicable and I can use the degree and leverage to my level yeah a lot of people do say that they appreciate the fact you can study for one year and then work full-time for the other year all as part of your degree yeah I would say that is one of the one of the main usps of the university of crennage because when I checked the other universities during my research they require the work experience and even if you're getting the mpa program either there won't be any work experience or any placement program and it's going to be just one year so I can stay in UK for two years to complete my program and then use the other two years for my step back period so a total of four years in total I can be in UK and use that amount of time to create a career for me so that was a big calculation that I made it's always like a return on investment for my side yeah a lot of calculations that is one of my biggest strength I would say I do a lot of planning even I mentioned the same during my first interview that I gave this university of crennage that I do a lot of planning and once I'm convinced with my own plans only then I proceed I like it what can you do with a degree in international business a job what are the career options like it doesn't sound like it's a very limited degree it's not very niche or very specific to one area but what are some options what do you hope to do after you've both finished I know you're in different stages of your career in different stages of your studies but yeah what can you do I would say the options are not limited it's very unlimited I mean a student from mpa background they can do anything that is part of a business either it's part of a financial part or a strategy formulation corporate governance sustainability accounting and finance so the options are not limited I would say it's actually the passion of a student what kind of career they want to pursue and then focus into that for me it was more into the finance side and I have done internships into that but right now more into the administrative part so that's something that I that I love to explore about how a business functions on a normal day-to-day business and how to actually manage a project or a team or be part of a direct rate so for me it's always varied and I'm exploring my options one by one this is with something similar to what I did during my bachelor's I had a huge doubt what will I do with my bachelor's degree and back then it was one of the podcasts that I was listening to the person mentioned that if you are not sure about what kind of career that you want to pursue go for internships and then use different internships to understand what sort of career that you want so back then I used to do a lot of internships I mean I guess I have done nine internships in almost five companies in three years you've done nine internships in five companies yes I was so crazy about internships I wanted to study yes and I scored the best mark so it was always a challenging thing for me and plus the planning obviously my class timings were mostly in the morning time so I used most of my evening time for internships and then I used to study in B2B and so those nine internships actually helped me realize that this is what I wanted this is not what I wanted something that I really liked was about the leadership internship I have done so I really like to do it the internships that I didn't really much like much or the ones I couldn't perform really well was the graphic designing internships or the marketing ones it requires a lot of planning strategies and everything for me I couldn't pull it off but I understood that this is not my cup of tea that was a huge yes it was a huge realization and I used all these nine internships to build my LinkedIn profile I would say that was one of the main agenda when I started doing the internships I want to build a very good LinkedIn profile something that is appealing to the employers yeah exactly yeah so to answer your question so options are not limited once you start doing a job with an organization you learn that there are many options within the same field and then you can go up so there always will be a career progression and once you get into the field of corporate you learn that there are many options so MBA international business degree is just stepping down from there onwards once you step into the corporate world to your career world that's when you actually learn that there are many options so most of them we won't be able to understand at the first go but once you go to it then you learn a lot of all that's true like international business is a very broad it can give you a lot of opportunities so in perspective of undergraduate school I would say you can as in it's international business you can get your career on or you can start your corporate life in any agencies around the world or in terms of the sector I would say in logistic in private sector government sector then you can do import export you can work in different startups you can work in any financial companies like jbmorgan pwc in topic for companies and also of course if you have undergraduate degree you can do masters and phd as well and for example for me like right now I'm doing internship with pwc so as an international business course like I'm doing consulting with them so of course you can have a like particular career like me in any agencies have like under sectors like consulting and everything so it's a very broad and it depends on what you want to achieve in your life either it's a job either it's your business or either anything you want to do in your life so yeah so you've both done internships how did you get these internships how did you find out about them apply for them in the first place because I feel like one of the first hurdles is getting an internship once you're there it's great you can pull everything into it but how how did you get them what would you recommend for students that want an internship say in their first year they don't really know what to do or where to go so in my case for us it's called the placement even I used to see it's an internship but it's actually a placement that's because it's still part-time and short oh no it's a full-time one and me okay yeah so I worked as a placement son internship assistant within the employability directory that was my placement so it's a placement job within the placement team as a placement assistant I'd like the way so for me I think I started applying and searching about four placements the day I came to United Kingdom I found a student whose testimony was there on the university's website so I found her in Instagram because I couldn't get her ID in LinkedIn and then I asked her about how to do a placement in in my second year of MBA and then she gave me a couple of tips and that I have to follow so the first one was from day one at the University of Greenwich I have to start preparing for my placement year because I have to rewrite my CV based on the UK standards they covered it and prepared for the interviews psychometric test online attitude test etc so I would say from day one onwards it required a lot of extensive preparation from my side and that I was keep applying for placements for my second day of the first year there were many rejections but it was always my need that I have to get a placement and I guess I applied to almost nine positions in five companies again and then the University of Greenwich we have the employability and apprenticeships directorate and they were offering MBA placement opportunities to the MBA students and then I applied and then out of the four placements that were offered I got into the placements and internships assistant so that was actually a turning point in my academic and career life I would say because I got to work with an amazing team so that's the placements and internships team and then I completed my placement as placements and internships assistant so in the job role I helped I think almost every undergraduate students in getting the sandwich placements builds up amazing partnerships with employees in London and then I actually got to talk to all the students except the MBA students because they have their own MBA placement team so for the MBA students the MPT team or the MBA placement team they are the right people to advice and guide you to find the right placement I would say but it's not just about the team it's about the willingness to do this and a lot of preparation is required from the student side so students must be really ready and they have to do a lot when it comes to a placement search yeah you need to be proactive about what yeah yeah so opportunities are not going to come to you opportunities will never come to you I mean there are a lot of opportunities out there because when I worked as a placement assistant I found that there are many opportunities it's the students that they're not applying there was a time where I've literally called all the students in the class seeking them asking them I interested in this placement opportunity and I couldn't know from their side but if it was me on their side I would have said yes yes I won this placement and then it's just not one or two times of creating a CV draft for me I think more than 10 or 15 times I've recreated my CV based on my strength based on the experience based on what job I'm applying to so it's almost I would say a term full of preparation in my case it was a year because I don't want to miss out any opportunity all the employability events the big picture seminars the talks presentations everything I've been part of yeah so that's how I got my placement it would be a bit different when it comes to the undergraduate students for the ABA placement students it's an 11 month placement so we are limited by options because the companies they want students for 12 months ABA students come to a 12 month placement that's 11 month so again that was a challenge but somehow we were able to get the placement yeah okay I understand what about for internships the one the type of internship that you've completed or your pwc internship how did you find that so like initially I would start with that like for the intensive internship and this kind of opportunities you need to be enough proactive because opportunities are everywhere but in general if I talk about always check your student mail because from all the departments you might get all the pop-ups of any openings or might have follow the official page of University of Greenwich for example employability team then business school because they usually offer and post about placement and internships every time and tomorrow at that you can always have a dropping sessions from employability where usually university helps you if you want to have an internship they actually guide you through all the steps about the internship how you can get it how you can acquire and tomorrow on that I'm talking about my internship experience so I was always be proactive when I get any kind of opportunity and as an undergraduate student I just finished my one year and I finished also my two internships so one internship it's it's like thing specific because my course is generally offering experience I mean summer course where you can have so I got fully funded internship from the thing specific about like university paid around 500 pounds for myself and I got a chance to do an internship on the NGOs and government level in the Fiji country so it was a virtual internship and I actually worked with a woman entrepreneur who had a traditional business in Fiji and I helped and made a guide for them to launch their online business and talking about the second opportunity so I in my life I always aim for aim for high for example if in the future if I want to 100 100 pounds I will aim for 1000 pounds but by the end of the day at least I will have more than 100 pounds so like initially I picked the big companies like for example PWC's top big four companies GP Morgan and everything and initially I got failures because that application process was very tough they have different assessment days interviews and everything but because of that I got three constant failures but at the last when I practiced enough for the PWC interview I actually got in and initially in the first year I did I mean early career careers where I went to PWC Manchester office for doing three days of consulting internship where I learned about depth in the PWC how works and about consulting everything and also like for the in general if you are if you want to move and more research about our side of the university you can always find every all the opportunities on different website for example find my placement LinkedIn careers where you can have different opportunities and also like if you find a people for example a brand ambassador of any companies who are promoting any career opportunities of their company for example right now PWC made me a brand ambassador for the company so right now I'm not looking for the internship but I'm offering them a scholarship internship and career opportunities to all the universities in London so like this is the way you can contact with them to talk about the stage process where you can ease your application process and you can understand better about the interview process and how the selection process work in the different companies this by doing this you can improve a chance in comparison to other students because you have some and sometimes they can flag up your application so it's always better to talk personally with them yeah and then this kind of brings me onto the question of you know when you need experience to get work experience how did you get your first work experience in the first place was it in the ways that you already said just apply or was your very first work experience voluntary so like I mean it's a very good question because for example in the future if I want to be a some kind of position for example in our university we have student societies and the student societies we have different roles for example president a financial director event management and this is the volunteer roles that you can do and you can learn from that courses and right now I opt for the same because I wanted to pursue my career in the consulting as well as in the finance so I become a financial director and even in the future if I apply to any of the roles in any companies when they see our experience work experience about financial director in my CV of course they would prefer me more than comparison to other students and even by doing this you are not just actually giving yours yourself a chance to learn but actually by involving in this activities the same thing that I think like learning an application on the same time while you are doing your university yeah exactly for me it was quite a different story because like I said when I came to know that the best way to get experiences is to or to find what career is right for you to use to find internships so the next question was world life and internships so most of my friends they advised back in college go to LinkedIn and find the opportunity but you know to some way to see if you don't have anything in my profile it's just my educational achievements and then I realized one of my uncle he runs a g factory in the place I come from and then I asked is it possible for you to give an internship I don't want to be paid if it's unpaid I'm happy about it all I want is an experience and he was happy to give it to me so I guess the first three or four internships that I did was unpaid all I was scared about getting the experience and learning yeah definitely so since the only the first internship was um I have to go to the office and get experience all the other internships were virtual ones so I don't have any course in traveling or anything to buy nothing like that so it was since it was virtual um I didn't really care about the money but then I guess from the sixth or seventh internship on but since I had an experience in my CV and profile I asked them is this paid and then some of them they were able to pay me but still what matters to me was the experience uh which was again used per night started searching for placements here and uh in UK to get an internship or a placement I wouldn't say it's easy but it can be made easy if you use the employability's resources and help I'm sure the ones who sent uh issued the emails were from my department and mostly it was by me I'm sure yeah yeah yeah it was for me because when you after like we had a talk in the dropping session you have shared me on the materials for the placement internship and it really helped me because you not only shared the website but you shared the whole the process even how if you get the internship how you can get the credits from the university as well so yeah so um if a student can literally help another student to get a placement or an internship it would be more effective so that's something that I did when I was part of the placements and internships here so yeah uh getting experience was the first prior thing I didn't really care it was paid or unpaid but that was a different story in India uh my family was able to support me financially but here there are opportunities you have to use the employability resources and the employability service help to find the right internship or the right placement and then use your experience or skills to get into that position and then here it should be it's a law that students must be paid for whatever work they undertake so um it's possible and uh all this all what the student have to do is to prepare for it okay thank you the very useful information there final question what do you hope to do next oh that's another big question for me that's the next question that I'm facing now so are you trying to figure out or do you do you know where you're going from I have multiple options in front of me I'm confused which one I should go for so when I was doing my placement with the employability direct rate I met a lot of officials from different companies and that includes one of the vice presidents from the JP Morgan and when I shared my career aspiration with him he was ready to refer me so that's one option that's in front of me and I'm working with the university as standards and partnerships officer I have one year of experience working in the higher education and I really love the working culture here it's a proper work-life balance the projects that we are doing or the services that we are providing that's something that I really love and care about so higher education is next option for me or I could do something that is part of my degree so something like financial or or eating or consulting so there are options in front of me and I'm a bit confused which one I should go for at the moment I'm working as standards and partnerships officer I guess I'm gonna focus more into that at the moment but I never felt like I was limited by options it's that I'm limited when it comes to the options so this is the next challenge that I am facing but where I'm right now I'm really happy that all the way from India I came to United Kingdom I did masters in business administration I'm working with the university where I did my masters and I'm working with a great team and it's a great organization I would say the University of Greenwich and there are many career development opportunities here so maybe five years from now I would be working with the University of Greenwich in one of the top positions but where I'm right now I'm really happy because I'm an Indian student from a different country coming down to the United Kingdom doing a masters in business administration doing money off placement and working with the university where I did my masters all of this seems very good to me and I'm really happy where I am so I mean I still got a lot of time to decide what to do next but yeah I'm as a practical person I have already had my options in my lease so first of all as I'm doing some internships and getting the work experience I would continue my career corporate office job I mean the PwC in the consulting same form but in case if I get a chance to work on my business all the way just so as I'm right now working with the generator doing my two to three startups so once during I finish my two more years with the degree I will have a full I mean full fresh plan for doing a business so I might launch my business when I get my degree because as I introduced you cannot do official business so I might go for that one as well and even in the practical because it's I'm just finishing my undergraduate like after five years once I settle I might go for pursuing the master degree or PhD in the future but as of now not right now because as I'm already spending three years of my life by doing a graduation course and if I go for two more years I will give you like give my giving myself an excuse because in the back in India like I was in the koi time I like actually spent two to three years not doing official work because I was working with my father business so at that time my study was stopped so because of the age of right now I wanted to finish my education as early as I can so right now my options are having a own venture business or maybe doing a corporate job the same that I'm doing with the internship and that works for you yeah I mean it's like in the situation for all three options that I have or at the end I can go back to my country and help my father in doing business so yeah got lots of options I like it yeah and maybe if you want to continue your studies you can always do that part-time yeah in the future anyway but that's it for me is there anything else that you wanted to mention before we end um I mean there's nothing from me but I would say university of green is an amazing place you can add a lot of opportunities I only did uh one year of studies here and the next year was placement for me but in these two years I've done a lot of things um so the university presents almost different kinds of opportunities for the students it's just that students have to be a bit more proactive go for the opportunities attend webinars seminars presentations get more yourself more exposed with the university a personal example I would say is that when I was working as a placement student with the employment directorate I had a chance to give my mentoring speech my mentee speech because I was part of the career mentoring program the career members they really helped me to pursue my placement or applying for jobs everything including CV preparation cover letter mock interview seven they were the first people who helped me so based on my main experience I gave a speech so it was this year in july and almost all the companies in canary wharf and in central London were there our voice chancellor and all the top professionals of the university were present and then I guess around 100 more students were there I gave my speech and at the end of the speech I was really happy it went really well and I got a chance to meet a lot of professionals from the companies they were they congratulated me for the speech I gave the points that I raised so it was a very good opportunity for me so for me it's that I always go behind the opportunities and I choose the most challenging one it's been like that for me ever since I started my graduation yeah so it's an amazing place and I'm sure that you won't regret being here for three or two years yeah on the career mentoring ceremony were you both involved in that one yes I guess you were there for the career mentoring yeah yeah yeah yeah tell us a little bit more about your experience with that what just for anyone that doesn't know what the career mentoring so the career mentoring team yeah so the career mentoring team sits within the employee and apprenticeship's directory so if you were a student whether you're a first year or a second year student or a third year student if you're doing undergraduate degree then if you want to meet one of the professionals from the industry that you want to be part of or work in you can talk to the team send your register of interest for and then the career mentors I mean the the the advice is they would match you up with a professional from the industry so I chose for financial services industry and I got paid up with an investment banker from saturn banking and corporate investment so I think that was the first six months I talked to her and she gave me a good idea about how a graduate or what the life of a graduate would be in UK once I fully graduate and that gave me a very good idea about how I should plan my career from here to the next two years and then in my second year when I did my placement I wanted to choose someone outside the financial services sector because I want to get a different picture so that was something like laughing thinking or thinking outside of the box and I chose a legal counselor from City Bank and we discussed mostly about how to excel in your job in your career have to be more productive how to efficiently deliver your work have to promote your your own personal brand time management work-life pattern so I talked about different topics and she gave me different insights from her post life and from the life of other mentees that she had so it was a very good experience I mean this is something I would say one of the unique selling point of the University of Green it's the kind of managing program certainly getting connected with an industry professional they can talk about anything they want they will get a picture about themselves five years from then so that is something every student want to know whether I'm going to be successful more the same doubts I had when I came to the University of Greenwich and they were able to solve most of my doubts even though I completed my MBA program and I started working with the University I'm still looking for a mentor within the University so that they would literally help me whenever I have a doubt about my own career about my choices or the decisions that I have to make so yeah it's a very good opportunity and is it six months in duration with each mentor so it usually lasts for a term I would say I'm not entirely sure about the months but I'm sure that it's for a term yeah and if you are willing to continue with the same mentor then you can go for the second wave and then there's the career mentoring program for the next year as well at the end of the career mentoring there will be a ceremony where your mentor and the mentees will be present and all the university professionals the other companies will be present so it's a very huge networking platform that's where I met the Vice President from JPMorgan so he came towards me and then he appreciated for my mentoring experience so it's a very good networking platform and I would say to the students to go for it and maximize your water well benefits that the university is offering to you yeah it's not it's just not the career mentoring program we have the placements and internet that I was part of we have the employer engagement team they are the ones who bring all the employees to the campus they organize events with the university we have the student jobship team they are the ones through which the students get the student ambassador roles then we have the employee district advisors they are the professionals and the experts who help you write your CV cover it up preparing for mock interviews I guess I have done almost five mock interviews when I was preparing for my placement so it was just not limited to one advisor it was with different devices so different devices give me different opinions about my own interview skill so it gives me different picture I used almost all the resources that were available at the university which I thought I wanted this yeah so it's always a win-win situation for me when it comes to pursuing MP from the University of Greenwich thank you very much both of you for coming onto our podcast today it's been really nice to hear about your experience about your individual stories and how you got to where you are today thank you for having us thank you so we wish you the best of luck in the rest of your studies and in your in the start of your career now thank you so much thank you thank you you can find our podcast on Spotify Apple and Google podcasts subscribe to never miss an episode