This post will be about my enlightening experience about possible career paths during the IBS Winter One Europe program in 2020. As a business undergraduate student who will be walking across the stage to receive my degree in a few short months, the real world is approaching…quickly. A main deciding factor of whether or not I was going on this trip was the fact that the company visits span across a bunch of industries and gives insights to potential career paths as a business person. I had little to no clue about so much opportunity and variety of options in our interlinked global economy today, but my seminar with IBS changed the game for me.
To Sell or Not to Sell
It was just about this time last year (Spring 2019) when I had declared my major as Business Management. Even after declaring, I still had such minimal knowledge about what career options line up with my major. I have an older brother who is 26 and is about 3 years into a sales career. My mind was slowly beginning to form a preconception that I was just going to end up in sales. I began to notice this and really started to worry if sales are what I really want to end up doing.
Around late September, my mom had sent me a picture of the IBS flyer posted across our campus. The idea of studying abroad was something I always wanted to do but never got the chance to pursue. I thought about it pretty consistently for about a week before deciding I was going to apply. The main attraction for me was the number of company visits that were on the itinerary. With companies and organizations like Grant Thornton, SAP, Chelsea Football Club, and many more, I immediately was excited as can be to learn about these world-class organizations first hand and hopefully get a better understanding of what it is I want to do with my business management degree.
Exploring New Career Paths
In hindsight, this is the best thing I possibly could’ve done for exploring and learning about different career options. As an athlete myself, never did I think about the possibility of working in the front office of a sports organization and the world of business behind being an athlete. Now, after visiting the Chelsea Football Club in the heart of London, the idea of being involved in a world-class sporting club like Chelsea F.C. is a very appealing career path. The amount of financial management, marketing, and basically every other aspect of business involved with an organization like Chelsea F.C., is enormous. The free tickets and gear also sound like benefits of my interest.
Many other fascinating and ever so enlightening visits like the one to Lloyd’s of London, Hard Rock Cafe, Frankfurt Airport, and all others gave me so much ammunition to process and digest when thinking about what it is I want to do. The information was abundant, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for. Being able to hear from people who are actually involved in these businesses, while also actually being on-site and getting to see first hand what a daily operation is like, was priceless.
Consulting
The game-changing visit that made the whole trip cost completely worth it was the visit to Grant Thornton in Holland. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you one thing about their company the day before going to their office. When finding out they were primarily known for their accounting and tax services, I quickly thought to myself I wasn’t going to be interested during the visit but I would at least show my interest and learn what I could.
Little did I know, in the quick hour and a half or so we spent in their office, I would have my eyes set on a career path I never thought of before. The career path is consulting, they spoke in depth about all the different types of consulting services they provide and something about the nature of the challenge and critical thinking of consulting took my attention and generated a great deal of interest in this field. Now, being a few months out of the trip and closer into stepping into the real world, my desired career is landing a job in consulting (with a big back pocket of other ideas from the seminar).
The IBS trip is 100% responsible for my newly found interest and I’m truly grateful for this. Anyone wanting to explore the wide variety of business that is in our world today to find potential career path opportunities while traveling to some of the most beautiful places on earth, IBS is a one-stop shop!
