By Cassie Melrose

BU Graduate, BA (Hons) Retail Management

Having live consultancy projects as part of your course at BU can help you in so many ways. It looks amazing for your employability and also gives you an idea of what work may be like in the real world as you work with a live company and they may well implement your changes. In second year and final year I completed consultancy projects which involved marketing plans for OTC Windsurfing and Poole Borough Council. Other people in my year worked with companies such as John Lewis, B&Q, West Quay shopping centre and Dixons. Not only can you make some great contacts and gain great experience there are sometimes even some other perks. All of the group working for Dixons were all given a free Galaxy tablet…not bad!

You finish these projects with a very professional report (paid for by the companies) which can be taken to future job interviews and it is exciting and motivational to know you may be making a difference to a company whilst gaining marks for your degree.

Our presentations and work were taken very seriously by the companies who listened and they asked so many questions, showing their clear interest. Poole Borough Council brought along 12 members of different teams to come and listen to our ideas which made us feel amazing as they clearly were assured we could provide something useful and took us very seriously.

The tutors are an amazing help with the consultancy and have some great connections and advice from previous projects or from their learnings in the field. I will definitely be taking my project along to any graduate interviews and think taking part in this project will have increased my employability and understanding of business greatly!

Bournemouth University has a number of established links with some of the most successful businesses in the world. Being a Retail Management student I got to experience this first hand as in both second year and final year part of the course involved working on live projects with retailers.