Case studies - business & administrative studies

• Accounting and finance
• Business studies
• Management studies

Helen (graduated 2000)

After graduating, I started work as a trainee recruitment consultant in the construction industry, recruiting senior engineers, surveyors and project managers. I worked there for about a year and then moved to another recruitment consultancy, this time working as a recruitment consultant in the graduate market place, selling recruitment and training solutions to all sizes of company from owner managed to blue-chip. Just over a year later, I moved out of recruitment consultancy and became an E-Guidance Executive for a company that provides careers information, advice and guidance in the UK higher education sector. In this job, I was responsible for managing demand for E-Guidance services through effective planning of marketing and promotion. The job required me to co-ordinate the work of twelve careers advisers and provide administrative and technical help to the careers advisers, developing new products and services such as chatrooms and maintaining/improving existing services.

I still work for the same company but as of July 2003, became a Product Manager of publications, both paper and web based. Work includes deciding on editorial, design, product placement, distribution and pricing. Also, deciding on and working to budgets, informing the sales team of new developments, writing product plans and end of year reviews to assessing profitability and generally managing the whole publication process of products that come out weekly, quarterly and annually. In addition to work, I am hoping to begin studying for the Advanced Certificate in Marketing in a few months time, leading to a postgraduate diploma in marketing and eventually hope to become a chartered marketer.

Philip

I graduated with a degree in business studies and the experience of a year's placement in the retail sector. I had always enjoyed sales and customer contact and, on graduation, I began to look for jobs that could offer this. It was whilst completing all the vast graduate recruitment forms that I secured a temporary job in a call centre for a finance company.

Initially I found the shift patterns hard to get used to (working hours were 10am to 10pm) but I enjoyed the teamwork and I was working alongside lots of other young graduates. I found the work quite challenging as I never knew what each phone call would bring and there was a lot of new financial information that I had to get to grips with.

After six months in the role it was suggested by my supervisor that I should apply for the next supervisor's position that came up; I did and got the job. I took on my own small team of staff to train and to motivate and set targets that we all had to meet, or ideally exceed, which I found challenging. I was now in a position to suggest changes in the working practices and I took referrals of any difficult calls. I was soon moved on to a team leader role, which involved supervising a larger team, and I began to specialise in looking at staff recruitment, motivaton and retention. I have now been working in the call centre for just over three years and have just been promoted to call centre operations manager. I hope my next move will be to a larger call centre out of the financial services sector.

I enjoy having targets and having to think on my feet. I find the job offers variety and fully uses my communication and teamwork skills. I always have a goal to work towards and I am using many of the additional skills and concepts I acquired and developed during my degree.

Darren

After graduating from Nottingham University with a degree in Management Studies, I stumbled across media planning/buying. A friendly contact gave me rafts of information and contact names and numbers just in case I was interested in getting into the industry. I was sold on the job very quickly. What appealed to me was the variation and the intermix of social skills, negotiation, number crunching, budget juggling and the cut and thrust of hitting deadlines.

I sent my CV to all the top agencies and got a first interview at Optimedia. This went really well – I had researched thoroughly and got on well with the recruitment director who offered me a second interview on the spot. Once again the second interview went really well, consisting of a presentation and then Q&A session with a number of group directors. Luckily within a week or so I got the call to say I could go away for three and a half months with a graduate job to come back to.

Optimedia took on seven graduates and we spent the first month in hothouse training, learning about all the elements of media in a fun and interactive environment. Once we were designated to our teams and started 'proper work' I began by doing a lot of menial work, ie vouchering, competitive docs etc. However, it was still enjoyable because of the buzz of the office and the industry as a whole.

Day-to-day work becomes more taxing and interesting very quickly and the learning curve is extremely steep. I'm now planning and buying my own schedules, whilst also still keeping on top of the administration side of things. My job is the envy of my mates as I get to work on huge worldwide clients such as British Airways and Siemens mobile phones. I am in constant contact with young, like-minded people, the social life is great if you want it and there are plenty of perks whether it is corporate hospitality at top Premiership games, all-expense weekends away in France, or invites to the Channel Five 5th birthday party.