Curricular education off the UCL campus

The preparation for your future job includes obtaining a diploma as well as, of course, on-the-job experience and contacts. UCL places great emphasis on this part of personal development and offers students many opportunities for improvement in this respect. I would like to share with you the three experiences that I garnered this year that I consider the most interesting.

Thanks to the help of UCL’s career center, I scored an Easter placement at UBS, a prestigious Swiss investment bank, in tough competition. The one week was a great opportunity to learn more about the firm, meet its people, see how they work, and get to know if working in such an environment would suit me. The selection was based on an application, several standard online tests, and a telephone interview. In addition, we took another mathematics test during the week, based on which some of the applicants were invited to a selection process for a summer internship at the end of that week. I took the test successfully, and so on Friday my friends and I did a group exercise and interview, and prepared and delivered a presentation. The experience was amazing in several respects. I felt I could put to good use my experience gained during “open days” at similar firms. Also, after one week at UBS, I knew the firm a bit better, making it easier for me to answer the obvious questions regarding my motivation for working with that company in particular. You can imagine my immense pleasure at a phone call from the HR department the same day, offering me placement for the next summer :-).

University of London’s career department run a course entitled Focus on Management at the turn of May and June. Four different firms introduced themselves to us within two days, and then we worked on case studies prepared by them in teams of seven or eight. We were guided by graduates who work in managerial positions now and are able to share their experience. In the end, we all were offered very useful feedback. It was even more interesting in my point of view, as there was another Czech girl on my team, and one of those execs was a Czech too. It always makes me happy when I meet my fellow countrymen in London – perhaps because it’s unfortunately such a rare occurrence. I also obtained a contact at a consulting firm during a social evening, and I was offered participation in an open house to be held there.

UCL also runs a number of workshops, called Skills4work, focused on improving students’ employability. Topics include networking, preparation of presentations, interviews, and being assertive. Workshops are not linked too closely, so you can take any number of them as your time permits. I took almost all of them.

I am really happy for UCL to offer those and many other opportunities for students. I think this is important for our successful start in business. I am looking forward to what my second year in university will offer me and what I can learn outside the UCL campus.