Careers in business management and leadership

At Essex Business School we champion sustainability and sustainable business and this translates into our teaching.

Our business and management graduates not only leave us with the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed in business but they also graduate with the ability to see beyond the current set of business problems and interrogate issues at the source. This ensures the sustainable lifecycle of the organisations which they are in the employ of and this makes our graduates a unique prospect for many graduate employers.

A business and management degree equips you with the skills that you need to succeed in business but in truth, these skills can make you an attractive candidate in most industries.

Common business and management roles after graduating include:

• Graduate Data and Insight Analyst
• Graduate Management Trainee
• Graduate Account Manager
• Business Development Executive
• Business Coordinator
• Junior Project Manager

Business and management graduates from Essex Business School have gone on to work for:

• Footprint Digital
• IBM
• RED Recruitment
• Lloyds Banking Group
• John Lewis Partnership (graduate management scheme)
• Marks & Spencer (graduate management scheme)

Common careers for business and management graduates include:

• Business analyst
• Business consultant
• Supply chain management
• Project management
• Company director
• HR director
• Marketing director

Throughout your studies in business and management at Essex Business School you will be exposed to a range of skills development embedded throughout our curriculum.

Although we teach you far more skills than are listed below (see the Essex Business School Careers page for more about embedded skills) we have pulled out the list below from our business and management skills map which we think will be most useful for a career in business and management:

Business and management skills

• Analysing qualitative data
  The ability to analyse all kinds of data is key to any level of career success in modern business settings as you will be working with multiple data streams on a daily basis.
• Analysing business reports
  A core skill that will see you be able to analyse and interpret business reports so that you can put into action requirements and recommendations to improve business output.
• Team work and showing leadership
  Good team work combined with leadership skills are dually important to a successful career in business as you will often have to work as a team to achieve goals while also demonstrating leadership.
• Adaptability to changing circumstances
  Business landscapes are constantly changing so the ability to adapt is key to success in business.
• Creative problem solving
  Much of the work you will do as a manager or business leader will centre around problem solving, so the ability to solve problems creatively will give you the edge against your competition.
• Recognition of rival conceptual ideas
  Understanding what your competitors are doing in the market is a key measure which will help you develop ways to differentiate your product and market it in a more targeted way. We will encourage you to recognise ideas and concepts and analyse their effectiveness.
• Writing a business report
  We will teach you how to write a business report which is analytical, data driven and solution orientated to help you develop this lifelong career skill.
• Expressing ideas for business purposes
  It is a skill to be able to express ideas but to be able to express them for business purposes requires attention to detail, the ability to research and present your findings in an engaging way. We will encourage you to develop your ideas in a coherent way while also teaching you presentation skills and how to use modern presentation platforms and technology.
• Argumentation skills
  While expressing your business ideas, you may find that skills in argumentation may help you to win over those more difficult clients and investors. Our curriculum embeds argumentation skills development through your assignments, essays and group work projects to encourage you to express your ideas concisely and while engaging your audience.
• Leadership practices, challenges and opportunities identification
  These core skills from the business and management skills map will enhance your leadership capabilities by teaching you how to lead; how to identify challenges and overcome them democratically, and; how to identify opportunities which will benefit your whole team. We embed leadership principles from the start of your degree to ensure that these skills develop throughout your time with us.
• HRM practice significance
  Human Resource Management is a very specialised skillset within the field of management and we teach you the significance of motivating and working with people from day one.
• Ethical awareness
  When you manage people you need to have a strong head for ethics, not just in business practices but in labour motivation too. We teach sustainable business and part of this centres around the role of people and how people are more than just a workforce.
• Strategic model adoption for global business
  The ability to strategise in a global business environment is key to sustainable business and career success.
• Management practice analysis
  Management practice is central to a business and management curriculum and we teach you to be analytical in your approach.
• Supply Chain Management analysis
  Key to sustainable business operation is a sustainable supply chain and one of the key skills for management students is developing a good understanding of supply chain management. We teach you how to apply supply chain analysis to any business model.

Business and management falls under our Management and Marketing Group which is one of our core five subject groups at Essex Business School.

We offer postgraduate study in business and management across three different research groups:

• Our Management and Marketing Group is based at our Colchester campus and explores themes such as; the role of the consumer, the value of the employee and the importance of responsible management practices
• Our Organisational Studies and Human Resource Management Group, also based at our Colchester campus, focuses on research which explores the relationship between people and infrastructure which make up businesses.
• We also have expertise in the area of Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship, based at our Southend-on-Sea campus, which conduct research into how organisations and entrepreneurs can increase their benefit to society and minimize their environmental impact.

We offer further study in management, marketing and entrepreneurship at Masters and Research degree (PhD) level.

If you are interested in studying management, marketing or entrepreneurship at a higher level or want to take your own research into these areas to the next level, then you are welcome to apply for one of our postgraduate degrees:

Masters study

We offer fifteen Masters degrees in management which will allow you to specialise in an area of your choosing:

• Master of Business Management (MBM)
• MSc Business Analytics
• MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• MSc Global Project Management
• MSc Human Resource Management
• MSc International Business and Entrepreneurship
• MSc International Logistics and Supply Chain Management
• MSc International Marketing and Entrepreneurship
• MSc Management
• MSc Management (International)
• MSc Management (Marketing)
• MRes Management and Organisation
• MSc Marketing
• MSc Organisational Change Management
• The Essex MBA

Postgraduate research

Our three research centres allow you to collaborate with our academic staff among three different themes:

• The Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) focuses on how the theoretical and practical possibilities of how commons values based on principles of cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can foster more egalitarian, inclusive, and participative 21st-century economies, communities, and organisations
• The Centre for Work, Organisation and Society (CWOS) aims to support cross-disciplinary research on work, society and organisational life, its interdisciplinary research draws on the humanities and social sciences, bringing in perspectives from disciplines such as cultural studies, history, literary theory, philosophy, psychology, sociology and political economy.
• The Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship, Innovation,  Management and Internationalisation (REIMI) contributes to a hub of research and training for entrepreneurship, innovation management and internationalisation and provide thought leadership in the three areas of entrepreneurship, international management and innovation.

If your thesis explores issues such as; international management, consumer studies, marketing and brand management, co-creation in social entrepreneurship, cognitive entrepreneurship and over-optimism, gender, diversity and intersectionality in the workplace, information systems in organisations, human resource management and approaches to wellbeing, work and organisation studies; then our supervisors would be interested in speaking with you about exploring it here within our research centres:

• PhD Business Administration
• PhD Business Administration (Integrated)
• PhD Entrepreneurship
• PhD Entrepreneurship (Integrated)
• PhD Management
• PhD Management (Integrated)
• PhD Management Studies 
• PhD Management Studies (Integrated)
• PhD Business Analytics
• PhD Human Resource Management and Organisation Studies