In touch with the Business World : Week #4, Free Post: Junior Movement

I did 1 year of college in Brazil before coming to the US, and during this time I had many different experience that made me be sure about what I wanted to study. What brought me to America was the fact that through this experiences I could see how far I could get and also how far I wanted to get.

Going back to the experiences, I had a lot, research group, two congress in my first year and also I was part of a Junior Enterprise. This term is not common in the US as it is in South America and Europe, the Junior Enterprise is a non-profit company that is managed by students of a field, inside of a university. This organization work with the real market in order to help other companies with their need through consulting.

The company that I was part, was in the business field, but we had students from many different areas, we had people from engineering, economics, design.. This experience added so much to my life, that was very had for me to leave when I came to study in the US. I had contact with a very big world of students that are really engaged in a cause an want to make it big, the Junior Company Movement is very big in Brazil. Students that are part of the movement have a differential in the job market, big senior companies are interested in students that are involved with it.

Inside of my company we offered services in the area of business and we had to deal with real clients, real people and if they wanted our help they should invest a small amount of money in the project, considering that is non-profit, the money was used in the project expenses as transportation, paper work, and also for the basic need of the Junior Company, none of the students were paid, we all were there because is a meaningful experience in a student career.

When I entered in college everybody talked a lot about it, and that it was for good students, because the process to enter was just like as in a real senior company, trainee process, interviews, dynamics.. When I got in, a very big world opened in front of me there were a lot of junior enterprises all over Brazil and also Europe, the movement was something very big. I participated in a congress that was in a state level and there was a huge number of students there that shared the same experience that I did.

We had a regular company routine, students have a time to work there every week, but is flexible because of classes, have a lot of emails to answer, we had departments, president and vice-president, regular meetings and also a lot of projects to work on, internals and externals ones.

I was part of the marketing department and also of the Sells Group, during my experience I had contact with many clients that were there to 'buy' my product, so every meeting was a big responsibility but also a huge learning. I worked in one of our consulting projects that was our 'product' and this was also an amazing opportunity, I worked with a big Shoes Company of the city and developed with my group a market research with 400 interviewees. By the end of this project we had to do a formal presentation to the company with all the results that were taken from our data analysis.

I would talk about the Junior Movement for a long time, because this was the most meaningful experience that I had in life until now. I wish that this was more popular here, because this way I could still be part of it.

This was a personal post, with a brief story of mine and the Junior Movement. Attached to this post I put some videos that demonstrate a little bit of what I am saying. If you got interested in this subject I strongly recommend that you look over some websites:

https://www.facebook.com/juniorenterprise.desautels
http://www.jadenet.org
http://isctejuniorconsulting.pt/en/iscte-junior-consulting/junior-enterprise-movement/