Recently, the amount of ‘what are we going to do after we graduate’, and ‘I really want to travel before I jump into the real world’ conversations I’ve had with my friends has increased exponentially. Luckily, I have it all covered, and I believe that winning the Undergraduate of the Year Award for Commercial Excellence was the catalyst to my recent successes – I’ll tell you all about it!

Since my last blog entry, I finished up my internship with Nestlé in marketing, which was an amazing experience, as through my project I was able to deliver a new product prototype for one of the UK’s largest confectionery brands. I found the complexity of my project amazing, especially as marketing was a new area for me, while the support and the culture of Nestlé helped me develop new skills and new ways to think. Part of my award is also a sponsored trip to Borneo with Raleigh International, for which I just had my tickets booked. I’ll be undertaking a community project and an environmental project during my 7-week stay at the island. While there is a lot I have to prepare, I have never been this excited about traveling before; it will truly be a life changing experience.

Towards the end of the year, I also secured a graduate job in management consulting with a great company – I will be joining the September 2015 class of Capgemini Consulting, within their Consulting Development Community (CDC) programme in London. Having attended the UGOTY assessment centre, and the additional experience I gained through my internships gave me invaluable insight on how to tackle the obstacles.

It feels amazing to have the next year of my life already set, where many students are just beginning to think about their career after graduation, so again, I would like to take the opportunity to recommend both the Undergraduate of the Year Awards and TARGETjobs, as they have been essential to my achievements.

I also have 5 TIPS for anyone thinking about entering below, which will hopefully help you tackle this great award.

First and foremost, do the background work – on the award sponsor, the award’s stages, on how to answer the online questions, and on any possible technical queries you might get.

Know yourself – someone once told me that going to an interview should be the easiest thing in the world: you only have to talk about yourself. Combined with my pre

Be confident – again, my tips are building on each other, if you have done the work and know your achievements this should be easy.

Practice online tests – having talked to recruiters from various companies, they all said that one of the stages where they lose the most applicants is the online tests, as people don’t take them seriously enough.

Take that first step – what is there to lose by entering? It might be the start to your dream career, and it’s great experience either way.

There are just a few days left to enter one of these twelve great awards! 

Enter now!