Yousef Essali tells you why lack of experience should not limit your ambition

In the 2nd year of my BSc at Salford I applied for a lot of placements. Not even once did I get to the interview stage! What was I doing wrong? That was during my undergraduate degree where everyone was fairly similar in age and experience. But, when you think about  the postgrad level it gets even tougher. Suddenly you find yourself competing with peers with wider levels of experience and talent.

Why did I return straight away after graduation to start MSc International Business? One reason was the opportunity to do an internship or placement as part of my course. However, after the rejection fiasco in my Undergraduate degree I knew I needed a new approach! How could I change the playing field to my advantage, bypass the traditional recruitment process and get face-to-face with potential employers?

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Nim Tennakoon, MSc Digital Marketing student

Before I started my Search and Social Media Marketing module (SSMM), I did not consider optimising my digital profiles or worry about the ranking of my name in Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). Knowing what I know now this is one reason as to why I study Digital Marketing at Salford.

Most of us have social media profiles such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I actually have more than 5000 friends on Facebook! Even my Facebook page has more than 2000 likes. On Instagram I have nearly 3500 followers. For a long time I was active online posting around twice a day. But only recently I have started to understand the theoretical and financial values behind it.

Once I began to appreciate the theory of social media marketing I became fascinated. Did you know I am what you might call in digital marketing a micro-influencer?

It’s true! I have now even read some studies that suggest users like myself with smaller follower numbers actually have higher engagement rates on social media compared to some Megastars. Therefore, people like me with similar followings can be of huge benefit to online brands.

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A team from Salford Business School, is travelling to Bangalore which is known as the Silicon Valley of India. Bangalore is the centre of digital innovation in India and this month we will take the next step to building better relationships in its tech and education sectors. India is seen as a key market due to ambitious plans by the Indian Government for 30% of its young people to go on to higher education by 2020.

Along with my fellow colleague Simon Ireland – International Partnerships & Business Coordinator, we will visit Bangalore on 24th May for a week.

Bangalore is well known as the Silicon Valley of India, due to its concentration of technology companies. We plan to tap into the expertise in the region, as well as assess how the University of Salford and its graduates can contribute and show Indian students interested in completing a degree in the UK, what Salford has to offer.

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Pernille Doxrud, MSc Project Management

In January 2015 I began studying an MSc. in Project Management. One of the reasons I chose to study at University of Salford Business School, was the possibility of a placement experience in a company whilst writing the dissertation. I believe that the practical work experience you can gain from this postgraduate programme is unique; it gives you a different angle on the dissertation, as well as possibly opening doors to permanent employment.

Higher Education courses widen your horizons, make you a more aware person. But, whilst education for general knowledge is helpful, practical work placement experience is getting more and more important in the competitive work environment. It is often challenging to find a first job after being a student for many years. A work placement will improve your CV and gives you an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

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Le Hung, The Salford MBA student

Lê Tuấn Hùng came to Salford Business School from Vietnam to study for The Salford MBA. He had originally studied at the University of Transport and Communications in Hanoi, Vietnam, majoring in Construction Economics and after graduating, worked for a shipping company as a sales executive.

“My main job was to search for potential clients and convince them to use my company’s services, while dealing with and keeping existing clients the company had assigned. In this time, I achieved many new and well-known clients for my company. After that, I moved on to work for a Japanese freight forwarder as a sales manager.”

At this stage, Hùng realized that, if he wanted to progress his career, he would have to return to study to update his skills and to fill the gaps in his business knowledge.

“I realised that the practical experience and knowledge I had gained were not enough for the personal development of my career. At this time I also decided to study in a developed country to acquire this knowledge in the best way.”

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Seema Dosanjh, MSc Marketing student

The sixth annual North West Finance Awards took place on Thursday 1st October at The Premier Suite in Macron Stadium and had approximately 700 guests in attendance, including staff and guests from Salford Business School. The Salford Business School Employability Hub also invited finance and accounting students (Undergraduate, Postgraduate, PhD and graduates) to experience the event.

The North West Finance Awards are known for “recognizing unsung heroes” across all levels in finance and accounting in the North West of England. Entry for nomination is free and can be made by colleagues, business associates, clients, as well as self-nomination. Nominees are reviewed by a distinguished panel of judges, which included Eileen Roddy, Associate Dean at Salford Business School International.

The North West Finance Awards gained some help this year as a few postgraduate students from Salford Business School took on an internship at the organization as a part of their Business Innovation Project.

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Wendy Sinclair

You may well be wondering why a nurse has been invited to blog for Salford Business School, I asked the same question until I recognised that using social media in nurse education is part of our business. As a lecturer in children’s nursing, I am also part of the fitness for professional practice team and a few years ago I noticed an increase in referrals of student misconduct using social media platforms.

At the same time I was seeing a decrease in student communication via more traditional channels of email, telephone and the virtual learning environment and instead I was being asked by some students to use social media.

In an attempt to try something different, I began in 2012 with a personal twitter account (@wlasinclair) wondering if anyone was even interested in my posts. I had incorrectly presumed that all of our students would use twitter and even more inaccurately believed that they would communicate with me via twitter.

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Seema Dosanjh

This year’s Salford Business School Ball took place on Friday 29th May at Hotel Football (owned by Manchester United’s Class of ’92) and was the biggest to date as it sold out with 260 people in attendance.

The Salford Business School Ball is an annual black-tie event that not only brings together final year and postgraduate students, staff, and alumni, but celebrates their success as well. However, this year the event was more spectacular than ever as Salford Business School celebrated winning Times Higher Education ‘Business School of the Year’ Award.

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At Salford Business School,  we have a thriving PhD community from a range of fascinating business, management and law students from around the world.

A great example of this community coming together is our recent Doctoral Symposium in the world class facility of the ThinkLab. This showcased some of the superb PhD research projects which are currently being conducted within the School, as well as the high academic calibre of our PhD students.

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#MRBoss

“Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.”
― Ken Robinson

People are the biggest asset of any organization. However, managing employees in order to maximize them for the benefit of the organization is still a challenge. Why?

Before finding the answer to this question, let’s take the story of #MrBoss as an example. What do you think of him as an Human Resources (HR) manger? Yes, he would be acceptable if he lived 100 years ago, where employees were supposed to absolutely obey and follow their employers’ management style without question. However, it is 2015 now. Things have changed.

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