As part of the first-year bachelor course Inleiding Bedrijfskunde (introduction to business administration), multinational companies have provided these business lectures since 2001. Every year, a different company is featured in this course. This year, business professionals from various departments of the consumer goods multinational Unilever shared their experiences with the first-year bachelor students.
“Talents of the future”
“By giving student an insights in the daily life of a board member, we hope to engage and inspire these students with our company and our vision,” said Unilever’s Ruben Baldew, who is the vice-president of finance Benelux. “Also, [these lectures] provide Unilever with a great external view on talents of the future and their questions, concerns and passions.
Each speaker from Unilever covered the business area they’re responsible for during five separate lectures, which took place in September and October 2015. This year’s first lecture was a general introduction to Unilever led by management trainees Leonard de Mol van Otterloo en Jules de Vrijer, both alumni from RSM. The series’ second lecture was presented by supply chain director Wouter Smit, who discussed Unilever’s operations, supply chain and information systems.
First steps toward business career
Myrthe Geenen, HR director marketing and sales Europe at Unilever, spoke to students about human resource management during the third lecture, which took place on 23 September. Unilever’s marketing director personal care Joanny Lijbers, who is also an RSM alumna, shared the company’s marketing efforts with the Dutch business students.
First-year bachelor student Amanda Costeris said the Unilever guest lectures were a great opportunity to learn about ‘real-life business’ so early on in her studies. “I could tell all speakers are passionate about their work,” she said. “Also, three of them were RSM alumni which motivated me even more to work hard because it showed that this programme can lead to a career with a big multinational organisation.”
Dealing with global changes
To conclude the business lecture series for the BSc Bedrijfskunde students, Unilever’s vice-president finance Benelux Ruben Baldew addressed global changes and how organisations should deal with that.
“This board lecture was the most interesting,” said Costeris. “Ruben Baldew didn’t tell us some fairy tale about Unilever’s success. He was realistic and spoke about the changes in the world. I learned that there are a lot of different aspects to running a big organisation and you need to keep an eye on trends around you in order to keep up.”
BSc Bedrijfskunde guest lectures
Unilever is one of RSM’s founding partners and stays closely connected to RSM through graduate programmes, internships, and company presentations. Previously, Philips, TUI Nederland, ING, SaraLee/DE, KPN, Royal DSM, Shell, AkzoNobel, Randstad, Ahold, ING, NS, RET and Sanoma have presented their best practices and real-life business matters with RSM’s bachelor students during the Inleiding Bedrijfskunde course of the BSc in Business Administration/Bedrijfskunde programme.
