On the 21st of March 2019 it was time for the annual Career Event, the day in the light of bringing students in contact with potential employers and vice versa.
The Career Event Committee has worked hard since september to set up this event, and then suddenly the time had come! We chose to go with the same venue of last year: The ‘Zalen van Zeven’ at the Bollenhofsestraat in Utrecht. We chose to do this because of the pleasant informal and nice atmosphere, the good service and smooth running contact. We heard a lot of positive comments for this location after from the participating students and therefore our thought was happily shared.
This year, we arranged to offer the participating students a nice variety of organizations: The Embassy of Colombia, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the representation of the European Commission in the Hague, van Hasselt Law, International Justice Mission and Cooperative Mediators were attending. The day was opened by a panel of opening speakers: Emilie van Hasselt (van Hasselt Law), Bas van Bockel (Senior lecturer EU law at Utrecht University) and Pieter Kuypers (AKD). They could make us laugh as well as they could tell us more about their career path and how they explored to find the job that they are passionate about and do now practice.
After the opening, there was some time to grab some coffee or tea and then go the the first workshops. There were three rounds of workshops of which students got the opportunity in advance to choose their preferences when registering for the event. In every round, two workshops were given. Every instance told about us how it is to work at their instance, how students can apply for an internship or job and more inside and interesting information about the organization itself. Students got the time to ask questions during or after the workshop. It was nice to see that students were eager to ask all their questions and were very attentive. Some of the instances gave an interactive workshop as to give the participating students a sense of what things they deal with every day or what kind of cases of work they are concerned with on a day-to-day basis.
In the evening, we organized a recruitment dinner with Stibbe, one of the biggest operating law firms in the Netherlands. Students that wanted to attend this dinner, had to send their resume in advance and were able to attend the dinner when they were invited by Stibbe. The participating students got the opportunity to talk in a nice informal atmosphere to two young lawyers working at Stibbe when at the same time enjoying the nice Italian food and wine at ‘Aandacht voor Eten’.
We can look back on an event that from our perspective was successful. We are satisfied that the day ran smoothly and that we heard positive comments from the participating students and instances. We hope we can make next year a success as well!
