FEB student Aman Sharma wins First Prize in EU Career Challenge!

Together with his international team Kirsten Burke (Trinity), Loren Cooper (Leicester), Jean-Vincent Vallée (Leicester) Aman Sharma of the Faculty of Economics and Business won the first prize in the EU Career Challenge organized in cooperation with the FEB Careers Company. The finals were held in Brussels where the teams had to present their proposals in two languages before an international jury. They also had to handle questions in two languages.

The challenge was to come up with an idea on how the EU can better adapt, compete and deliver in a new digital era and what Europe's top priority should be in this area over the next five years. The solutions proposed by Aman’s team was to inculcate IT knowledge in primary and secondary education across Europe.

"An exclusive competition"

"The EU Careers Challenge is a competition to encourage students to come up with innovative solutions to some of Europe’s biggest challenges", says Aman. "This year, the focus has been on driving the digital economy. In The Netherlands, only University of Groningen students were allowed to participate.

The Careers Company hosted the challenge within our university, and I attended the info meeting at the FEB after seeing the initial invitation from the EU on Student Portal. What I quickly gathered was that this was quite an exclusive competition, and if one reached the finals, a very special reward of presenting at the European Commission and meeting real policy-makers lay in waiting."

"The team didn't know each other"

"Over the past 4 months, we went through three different rounds of judging – each time our proposal progressed further, and ready for the final presentation in Brussels. What was very interesting though was that we were compelled to work with international students from other countries, and we didn’t know each other prior to this. My team had three other members, from France, England and Ireland."

"Our idea: building the future workforce"

"The theme of digital economy fits right in within my domains of interest. The supply of IT graduates isn’t able to keep up with the job creation, and that’s a riveting problem we’re facing today. My team’s proposal is to indoctrinate a culture of programming and IT knowledge amongst students at the primary and secondary levels already, thereby building a future workforce that is better prepared for the hyper-connected world we live in. We tailored our model to fit the different levels of education – university level too – and aimed to use existing infrastructure and minimal funding from the EU to meet the IT-skilled labour needs of 2020."

"Winning has been thrilling"

"Winning this competition within all of Europe has been really thrilling, and I’m very glad to have always taken up challenges like this alongside my studies. The Careers Company is a very useful source for such opportunities. Besides that, I’ve been regularly attending the workshops at the CC from Sujatha Poel this academic year, and I believe it is playing a big part in preparing us for our future."

Students looking for a Career at the EU?

If you are looking for a career at the EU, please note that you can apply for the selection procedure for Generalists (i.e. policy makers) from 19 March to 21 April, or for Auditors from 26 March to 28 April. The registration is closed .

The EU also offers traineeships at all of the institutions. The duration is normally around five months and you can find out more information on the EU Careers website.

Students interested in a career opportunity at the EU, please visit the seminar Careers at the EU on 18 March, 1:00 - 2:30 PM at Next.

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