Undergraduate named ‘one to watch’ at prestigious awards

Cardiff Business School undergraduate, Alex Stickler, won The One to Watch Undergraduate of the Year prize at the TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year awards, Friday 21 April 2017.

The Economics and Finance student collected his award, sponsored by First Names Group, at an event held in Canary Wharf, London, which was hosted by television presenter Konnie Huq.

As part of his prize, and in recognition of his talent and potential, Alex will now embark on a fully paid 10-week internship at First Names Group’s head office in Jersey. He will have the opportunity to meet and learn from the company’s Senior Leadership Team, and will also undertake a trip to its Hong Kong office.

Responding to his win, Alex said: “This is a tremendous honour and I’m thrilled to have been named the winner of the One to watch prize. I am excited about taking up my internship with First Names Group and recognise how valuable an experience this will be in my continued professional and personal development.”

In additional to Alex’s success, Cardiff Business School Accounting with a European Language (German) student, Pawel Kaluzny, was shortlisted for the Mathematics, Economics and Finance Undergraduate of the Year Award 2017 (sponsored by Gazprom).

The 2017 TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year awards, now in their eighth year, welcomed more than 120 students to the ceremony where 12 prizes were announced. This year, almost 3,500 award applications were submitted with just 1,050 students invited to participate in the assessment process.

Category awards were sponsored by a range of graduate recruiters including ACCA, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, E.ON, FDM, First Names Group, Gazprom, Laing O’Rourke, L'Oréal and Rolls-Royce.

Cardiff University’s Employability Manager, Victoria Rees was invited to attend the awards and was impressed by the commitment and professionalism that Cardiff students demonstrated. “It makes you incredibly proud to see the success of our students. It is evident they are working hard to improve their employability skills alongside outstanding success with their university studies. This will be reflected in achievements such as Undergraduate of the Year finalist on their CVs; this can’t fail to impress prospective employers”.

Cardiff Business School’s Placement Manager, Alex Hicks, added: “I would like to congratulate Alex on his win, and Pawel on his nomination. They should both be very proud of their achievements which recognise the commitment they have made to their future employability and to developing their professional skills so they are ready to hit the ground running once they complete their studies.

“Providing students with opportunities to undertake professional placements and engage in work experience is very important to us. Recently, we have increased the opportunities by making all of our undergraduate programmes available with a professional placement year. This is in addition to our integrated placement programmes and range of other project based initiatives.”

Read more about Cardiff Business School’s careers and employability offering, including the professional placements it offers.