What happens after student life?

Hi there! The name’s Bert and you may know me from my presence in the Internaat, thrilling foosball games during coffee breaks, or from my role as Commissioner of External Affairs in the illuminating 34^th board of Intermate: Pharos.

After finishing Sustainable Innovation, I switched over to the neighbors to study Innovation Management in 2019. There is certainly a strong connection between Innovation Management on the one hand and Innovation Sciences or Human Technology Interaction on the other hand. We all want to see innovation. Not as an end goal, but as a means to create a better, more sustainable, and healthier world. How cool is it that we can help to shape this world and thus, the future?

I graduated in August after an exciting graduation internship over at Sogeti; one of Intermate’s main partners and perhaps a company that may be interested in you (yeah you!) as well. SogetiLabs, their design thinking lab in Vianen, is a breeding ground for innovation and welcomes all kinds of new trends and technologies in order to make an impact with their projects. I was challenged to leverage on knowledge management methodologies to structure the digital innovation processes of SogetiLabs for my master thesis. As a result, I combined the collection and assembly of knowledge from both internal and external networks to create a centralized vision of trends and technologies. Based on this I helped to shape the portfolio management process that will be introduced organization-wide.

After a few months of taking a well-deserved holiday, I’m currently searching for the perfect place to start my first full-time job. I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of guy that likes any kind of challenge as long as it creates a positive impact on the world. Luckily I have met a lot of interesting companies during my board year which helped me to narrow down the kinds of industries and sectors that I see myself working in. So here’s my question to you: what do you want to be when you grow up?

Do you want to enter a competitive environment or would you like to join the public sector? Do you want to be a broad consultant or a deep-delving specialist? Do you want to travel for work, be an entrepreneur, a PhD candidate, a designer, a hobbyist… or an eternal student (which would totally be awesome under some circumstances)? Do you want any of these options or a combination of them? I’m not trying to be cheesy, but visiting a few career activities during your student life may greatly help you to figure out these questions for yourself.

Your life decisions have brought you this far and you can never be too early to think ahead. But never ever forget to live in the present and enjoy your time at the university as it is a magical place full of amazing opportunities. So, wanna play foosball? Hit me up!