Business opportunity within the EU!!

Time flies, especially when you are having fun! A lovely expression often used in the English language. However, I came to realize that this also counts when you are not having that much fun but your days simply do not have enough hours! Busy times...

As I already mentioned before things get very serious in your last year. This could work both ways. You either get yourself together and do whatever it takes to achieve your objectives (that is what I am trying at the moment) or you get kind of scared, or insecure, as you still don't know what you really want which could lead to horrible school results and study delay. This behaviour is called: Avoidance of study obligations. In Dutch: Studie ontwijkend gedrag. This behaviour can be recognized by an obvious lack of motivation. Instead of studying for the exam you have the day after, you prefer being on MSN or updating your friends via hyves (Dutch network) or facebook. Although I believe I am getting myself together now, I have also been contamined with this avoidance disease in the past. For me it was not really necessary but I still decided to stay an extra semester at the HAN. Most of my class mates are already doing their Graduation Assignments. I still had one course I had to resit and although I could have managed doing this and starting my GA, I decided to stay another semester and choose various courses that might be of interest for my (near) future. This also gave me some time to really figure out what it is that I would like to do.

The first period is over. The exams have passed, we made it through and this Monday it starts all over again with the 2nd period. However, my very very last at the HAN. I am happy with the previous period. My grades were: 100 for a Spanish presentation, 95 for a Spanish oral exam and a 85 for the 'Business Opportunity' presentation for EIN (European Integration, exchange course). I wanted to explain a little bit about this last mentioned presentation as I consider this a great (future) Business Opportunity that I would like to share with you. Let me know how you feel about it!

We go back to the 'work-for-international-students' topic that I also addressed in my previous blog. Employment agencies are very popular and succesful in the Netherlands (more than abroad), and very present to! Wherever you go you see 'Randstad', 'Start People', 'Adecco' etc. In the previous months we visited many of them to find a job for an international student = very, very hard! There was only one that was able to supply work, I think two times in total > www.asastudent.nl They also place native speakers at TomTom, however - this is in Amsterdam. It might be quite expensive to travel back and forth if you don't have an OV. (Dutch public transportation card, suplied by IB groep, which enables you to travel for free  and/or with a 40% discount during the week or in the weekends.)

For our EIN project I was thinking about the opportunity of setting up an International Employment Agency. Focussing on highly educated international students and young professionals. Not only would it enable more international students and young professionals to come to the Netherlands as they are assured of the possibility to work. It would also improve the inbound/outbound communication of international firms! The most important factor in international trade=Communication. If you have a Native Speaker working for you who could perfectly translate and fill you in concerning the customs and traditions of their homeland you would have a big advantage over other international firms that still employ 'regular' temporary workers. (Yes, they DO speak Dutch - but they do not have the international knowledge and experience of these international students whom are living/working and studying far away from their homes. Not only are they very motivated, it also shows great commitment if your are willing to study abroad.) As our group saw this as a great idea to collaborate on we enthusiastically prepared our presentation. We were surprised by the ideas and presentations of all our class mates, everybody did a great job. We were the last group - however, last...definitely not least! We gave a very convincing presentation and we even managed to answer some questions during the defence in such a way that the teachers had no additional comments! At the end of the day one of the teachers came to us and said "I think it is a great idea and you should start TODAY!" We were very happy with this remark and also very pleased with our final grade: 85.

So, if somebody also considers this a great business opportunity in the European Union - contact me as I still have all the information for hand.

Never stop dreaming, especially not in this Crisis-crunch. Behind every cloud there is sunshine and...we have lots of clouds in the Netherlands!