in Expresso, 22nd of June 2013rofessional opportunities
Annually, hundreds of University students participate in the Global Management Challenge with the support of several national and multinational companies. Some of the students end up establishing a working relationship with companies that sponsored their teams.
Bruno Ribeiro, Alexander Figueira and João Pedro Santos are examples of that and explain the impact that the competition had in their professional lives.
Bruno Ribeiro is 26 years old and is a Master in Electrotechnics and Computer Engineering of the Instituto Superior Técnico and is currently a computer programmer at Accenture. “I joined the company at the end of March 2012 and my function is the development of SAP solutions. So far it has been a positive experience and I have had the opportunity to work on projects for large clients nationally and internationally.
Value : increasing Weighting in recruitment
During their participation in the competition, his team had the support of Accenture and the consultant firm, with the aim of recruiting, invites the sponsored team participants to send their resumes. Bruno Ribeiro did. “I think that participation in the Global Management Challenge had an important weighting in my recruitment”, he stresses. The former participant has no doubt that this competition allows students to make a closer contact with large companies at the national level, which can be a step into the labour market. “I hope that Accenture continues to sponsor this initiative and that more employees will join the company in this way,” points out Bruno Ribeiro.
Also for Alexander Figueira, competition was decisive to his professional life. At 26 years old, he graduated in Computer Science and Business Management at ISCTE-IUL, and is now SAP consultant in the financial area in CGI Portugal. “The experience in a team sponsored by CGI began as an interesting challenge, especially for me, because I played the role of leader and thereby became an opportunity to enter the labour market due the good performance achieved,” said Alexander Figueira.
Observing for hiring
Joining the company in 2011, after completing his degree, he tells us, that at the end of the course, when he was on vacation, he had already guaranteed to have a position. No doubt that was the performance in the competition that led the company to hire him. “There is no better way to present yourself, than showing results. The results speak more for themselves than the verbal language and is a fair way to assess competencies, as well as to develop and test soft-skills of the participants, “he adds.
To João Pedro Santos, “the Global Management Challenge aligns perfectly the academic world with business reality. The sensitivity of assessing a student for their course results is quite lower than the one that exists when you are studying the capabilities of that same student during a competition of this size and, thus, companies have a very important vector for the analysis of competences. “In his case, the participation in a mixed team allowed him to make contact with an executive of EDP and the internship which started in March this year, in the area of product management.
João Pedro Santos is 25 years, holds a degree in Marketing and is finishing the master’s degree in Management at the Catholic University of Portugal/Porto. He explains that, “when I decided to participate in this challenge, it was to improve my resume and maybe obtain more easily a job interview”. In the end, he got a job.
