"After graduating with a double Bachelors degree in the European Business Programme from the University of Applied Sciences, Muenster, Germany and Portsmouth Business School, England, I decided I wanted to progress further and meet my higher career goals to be able to work in Controlling in an international company. To do this I realized I had to do a Master's degree.

Interested in learning another language, France became my first choice and I began my search for a suitable institution. I was particularly attracted by EDHEC's informative website and the school quickly became my first choice, being one of the few to offer a Master's degree in just one year. I learned that the school had an excellent reputation, its one-year Master programme was in English and to crown it all, it was located in a wonderful Mediterranean city with great weather! EDHEC was just the school I wanted.

The MSc in Strategic Management at EDHEC allowed me to understand more about different business functions by helping me to connect the different subjects of my undergraduate degree and see the bigger picture. It gave me more general management and leadership ideas. With people not only from Europe, but also from America, India and China, this international programme gave me a completely new experience in working in a multi-culture environment, how to pick the best for each culture, how to talk and negotiate when building teams and working together, something that is always helpful for personal development and for getting the best result in a project.

Shortly before the end of the Master, I started looking for trainee programmes in Finance & Controlling and wrote applications to a handful of companies. I applied to Unilever Germany because the trainee programme they offered sounded very promising. After applying online, I had to do a capacity test which was followed by a telephone interview and assessment centre. I believe I was chosen because of my diverse background, communications skills and international experience and was offered a position even before I had graduated from EDHEC.

At the moment I am working in the Netherlands as part of my trainee programme. I am working as as controller in a plant which produces brands such as Calvé, Hellman's and Knorr which are sold in about 15 European countries. I find me position very exciting and no two days are the same. One day I calculate a business case for a new product line and do the month end reporting, on another I give a presentation about TPM (part of TQM) in the factory. For this in particular, the EDHEC course on Total Quality Management proved to be very useful as it provided me with a lot of useful tools to analyse and solve complex problems. Besides I am responsible for the finance part of the implemenatation of a new Europe-wide SAP system ( an enterprise resource planning software)

So, how do I see the future?

For now, I'd like to stay with Unilever. In March, when my project is finished, I am going back to Germany to do Marketing Controlling for the last six months of my trainee programme, after that I'll see. I can imagine working in a factory again or perhaps going into corporate audit within Unilever.

My time at EDHEC did not only help me to reach my career goals, but also proved to be a wonderful experience as I met so many nice people. Many weekends we went hiking, canyoning, sailing or skiing or exploring the villages of the Cote d'Azur or neighbouring Italy. Now, one and a half years later, I am still in contact with many of the people I met in Nice and in the past year I have visited them in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, London, Paris and even in Shanghai.

Looking back, EDHEC really did give me a wonderful student experience."