Your career

You can do a placement year with any of our undergraduate degrees at Essex Business School (students on our language courses can opt for a study abroad or work abroad placement year) - it's the best way to gain some hands-on experience for your CV.

The Placements team at Essex work with our students to help you apply for nationwide placement schemes, such as those with Lloyds Banking Group and Samsung, as well as for more tailored opportunities at fast-growing SMEs and startup companies, such as Footprint Digital and Filament AI.

We'll support you through the whole process of securing a work placement. From the research right at the start of your second year, through to coaching you for writing your application and attending interviews and assessment centres - We'll be on hand to help.

Your future, your conference! We are one of the few business schools to run an undergraduate conference with the aim of bringing our students closer to business and issues affecting the global economy. Each conference is themed around a topical business issue and guest speakers join our student to discuss their experiences of the issue in their workplace or industry.

Essex Business School in Colchester marks the entrance to the Knowledge Gateway, which is the University’s research and technology park. The Knowledge Gateway also incorporates Parkside Office Village, home to a number of SMEs, and the Innovation Centre, which is home to the University’s Start-Up Hub; this helps students our develop an idea for a business into a credible business plan.

Essex Business School in Southend-on-Sea shares its space with The Hive Enterprise Centre which helps expose you to the reality of launching a business.

Topical business issues are embedded into the curriculum as extensively as possible. This could take the form of guest speakers, these have recently included Scrutton Bland, a local Accounting Firm, HSBC and Footprint Digital, a local marketing agency. 

Some of our courses, such as The Essex MBA, BSc International Business and Entrepreneurship and MSc Global Project Management also run business simulation activities where students work on a live brief using virtual reality software. A recent example asked students to work on a project developing a new football stadium for a fictional local club.

All of these examples aim to give students some practical hands-on experience of how to put their studies to good use in the workplace.