Undergraduate of the Year Finals – Catch the opportunities that are out there!

This is a guest post from Year in Business Management student Andrea Totaro who is currently doing his placement year with SAP as the EMEA North COO Associate. We were delighted to hear that Andrea had reached the finals of the prestigious TARGET Jobs Undergraduate of the Year Award held at Canary Wharf on April 26th. He was short listed for the Finals of The Future Business Leader Award sponsored by Procter and Gamble and Andrea writes about his experience for our blog:

More than 4,000 applications, 3 months of selection and a great journey of learning until the Finals for the Undergraduate of the Year Award.

My initial journey started in December 2018 when I have received a notification from the YIB team suggesting applying to the Undergraduate of the Year award. On this platform, TargetJobs offers many different competitions sponsored by different companies: from Management undergraduate of the Year to the Female Undergraduate of the Year award. The key benefit from these competitions is that you can challenge yourself in new areas and, at the same time, have the chance to get an internship or a graduate job with the sponsor company – you can only WIN from this experience.

My focus went of the Future Business Leader award, advertised by Procter & Gamble with a focus on Sales – the reason behind it was mainly due to my interest in exploring Sales and the possibility of seeing the operations in a completely different industry from SAP, where I am currently spending a 13-month placement.

The process has been quite long, but at the same time a great source of learning. I had the chance to attend a 3-day assessment course at the P&G HQ in Weybridge, where I have experienced the way of how P&G does sales and the opportunity to meet and network with some senior managers in the company. 

Thanks to this journey and events with P&G, I had the chance to test my ability to do sales and evaluate the possibility of having a career in the FMGC indstry: things that otherwise I would not have had the possibility to experience.

In the environment where we are right now, opportunities are everywhere and if there is a piece of advice I would like to share with you would be research, investigate all these opportunities, critically assess what you can benefit from them and then challenge the idea that you can only come out stronger from these journeys. You will apply and spend some of your time – if it goes well you get to the final stages, if it doesn’t you will know what you will need to be working on for the next opportunity – this can be of great help for your future success!

Andrea follows previous Royal Holloway Management students, Connor Griffiths and Alvaro Ferreira  in successfully reaching the finals of the Undergraduate of the Year Award and in doing so learning so much along the way. 

Massive congratulations Andrea! Read more about Andrea's placement at SAP here: http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.com/2018/12/andrea-sap.html