Students shortlisted for employability awards

Two Cardiff Business School students shortlisted for the National Undergraduate Employability Awards 2017.

Hristo Anastasov and Tim Taylor have become the first Cardiff Business School students to be nominated at the National Undergraduate Employability (NUE) Awards. The two final year students are going head to head for the Best Intern Award on the Student Shortlist.

The Best Intern category celebrates students who have exceeded expectations while on placement, making an impact on their department or the business itself. The awards, which are split in to Employer, University and Student shortlists, are now in their eighth year. They are designed to benchmark ‘success across all organisations, universities and students in the undergraduate employability market’ and are now the only national awards in the Undergraduate arena.

Alex Hicks, Placement Manager at Cardiff Business School, said: “This is great news and very well deserved. Hristo and Tim should be very proud of being shortlisted. The School is certainly proud of them.”

Hristo, a BSc Finance and Management student, recently completed a summer internship with PwC. During his time with PwC, Hristo was part of a team of 6 who won an internal Dragon’s Den-style competition designed to make the work environment more productive and digitally focused. The team created the Schoal meeting app designed to better connect employees on a personal level and harness the power of the network to improve staff well-being and facilitate relationships across the different functions and hierarchies, beating out 169 interns from across the UK.

Tim, a BSc Business Management student, has already been recognised internally at the Cardiff Business School Undergraduate awards this year. He was named Undergraduate Placement Student of the Year for his internship at HSBC having also previously undertaken a five month integrated programme placement with Target Group Financial Services. While at HSBC headquarters in Canary Wharf, Tim was tasked with reviewing, and improving, sustainability processes across several different teams of senior managers.  The teams were all working in silo and duplicating effort. Tim’s brief was to align these groups and create a project plan to integrate ideas and resources. He was commended for going ‘above and beyond’ in responding to the brief having delivered a robust project plan, co-ordinated manager briefing sessions and organised bespoke training sessions with external sustainability experts. Tim was also tasked with considering ways to improve engagement with Digital Banking in the Cardiff area. After conducting robust customer and staff research Tim created a detailed step-by-step
process for digital engagement designed to improve staff confidence and integrate digital set-up in to customer appointments.

Alex Hicks continued: “We are fully committed to supporting the employability of our students and helping them to determine and achieve their career aspirations. Our work experience offering is diverse and ranges from integrated placement programmes to summer internships and shorter live projects. Recent changes now mean that every single undergraduate student coming to Cardiff Business School also has the opportunity to undertake a professional placement year if they wish. We are very proud of the services we offer students and are confident that Cardiff Business School graduates are work ready on day one, whatever industry they join.”

In responding to news of his success, Tim Taylor said: “I’m delighted to have been shortlisted for an experience that was so important and valuable in developing my professional capabilities and ambitions. I think the nominations are a credit to the Business School and evidence of their commitment to students.”

Hristo Anastasov added: “It’s great to be shortlisted alongside a Business School peer. I look forward to the awards ceremony in February as a way of acknowledging both mine and the university’s achievements, building on our experiences and developing new networks with the other students and industry nominees.”

The 2017 NUE Awards ceremony will be held in London on Friday 24 February, and include inspirational guest speakers such two-time Olympic Champion swimmer, Rebecca Adlington OBE.