What are the Bedrijvendagen Twente (literally translated to the “companies days” or “business days”) and why should you care?
Well it is nothing less than “biggest student-driven career event in the Netherlands” according to the flyers you must have seen (and probably did not read) around our campus.
So what is actually going on around your lecture and tutorial buildings from 14th February until the 23rd of March?
Credits: facebook.com/bedrijvendagentwente
Last Tuesday was the opening event: the Kick-Off. Marrit and I asked the volunteers and students around to gather more information. The O&O square was sunny and ready to register students for the event; this Kick-Off is all about snacks, goodies and information!
Let’s first meet with Lisanne Morshuis to find out about the organisation, their goals and to find out which events you should not miss this year:
What are the Bedrijvendagen about?
We bring companies and students together on the campus. You can join our event to think about your career, what you will do after you graduated and also where you will want to apply for an internship. The overall goal is to get a first contact with the professional world.
What is your personal role here?
I’m Lisanne and my role was Acquisition official and I was in contact with the different companies joining this event. It was a lot of meeting, pitching and emailing while preparing!
Why did you join as a volunteer?
I wanted to do a board year to learn outside of my study books. Work on one big event to build up something concrete was my main motivation and the seriousness of the topic was a plus for me.
How old are the Bedrijvendagen?
This is the 33rd edition held here at the University of Twente and it is growing bigger and bigger each year.
What can a first year student expect from this event?
While it might be too early to seek for an internship, you might want to attend the CV workshops (27th February). You will learn how to build your resume, find trainings for services like LinkedIn and other training activities to help with your first applications.
But you can also meet with many companies along the event to get a first contact and a concrete idea about you want to do.
What about a Bachelor/Master graduated, what can he/she expect?
As a Bachelor graduated it can be an opportunity to choose for a Master depending on which field you want to apply in. A Master student will be able to search for an internship or a job but also build of a good professional profile.
Each year we hear success story from both students and companies with people finding concrete opportunities!
Which events should a student with a busy schedule attempt to?
It really depends on what your priority is. You can join the Career fair (1st and 2nd of March) to meet with a lot of companies in a short amount of time. Student prep (7th March) is also a good opportunity to spend a day on finding your ambitions and learn how to present yourself for an internship or job application.
Thanks to Lisanne for taking the time to answer our questions!
Credits: facebook.com/bedrijvendagentwente
To capture the mood around this event, Marrit and I went around and asked students about their opinion on the Bedrijvendagen. (22 accepted to participate in total: 12 first and second year bachelor, 5 third year students and 5 master students)
With that little sample, we found that most students (16 out of 22) think they have a good resume already.
Students did not think this was true for their online tools. For portfolio, LinkedIn or other platforms we found the exact same proportion (16 to 22) not confident about the quality of their current online professional profile.
And as the following (overly complicated) chart shows we also found that most students feel they will improve their employability during the different events. A smaller portion of them thought they could directly find a job during the event though.
As you could imagine, the Bedrijvendagen are the perfect opportunity to build your professional profile and give your career a kick-start. You will not only get advices and discover good prospecting practices but it can also be the occasion for you to actually picture which jobs you will be looking for after graduating.
As mentioned earlier, we recommend you to check out the CV workshop (27th February) but also the Company presentation (1st and 2nd of March) if you need to gather information about your future career. If you are short on time, try to aim for the Student prep workshop on 7th March for a single day of a selected workshop.
And of course, everyone should look up for interesting lunch lecture to enjoy both free food and important informations at the same time!