CEMS Breakfast: connecting CEMS Alumni and Students

On Friday, October 6^th, CEMS Alumni and current CEMS Students got together for a delicious CEMS Breakfast at Secret of Raw in Prague. 

The official topic of the day was Digital transformation and its implications on the future career of CEMSies. 

The whole event was held in an informal atmosphere, so the open discussion between graduates and soon-to be graduates was covering as broad topics as career opportunities, hiking and exotic vacations.

Key take-aways from the event:

• If you are not 100% sure of what you want to do, choose a career that allows you to experience different functions.

• CEMS is just the beginning of a truly international experience.

• Stay connected with the CEMS community after graduation :)

Feedback we have received:

It was great to discuss new ideas accompanied by a delicious breakfast! Kate, CEMS Student

What I found very nice is that Alumni are still interested in meeting CEMSies. Also it was really nice to hear about their experiences from studying and working and career paths. Personally, I was lucky to have met a person from my future exchange university and I got really useful tips. All in all the unique value of being a CEMSie was proven and it was an inspirational morning. Monika, CEMS Student

We are looking forward to seeing you on other CEMS events co-organized by CEMS Alumni Association and CEMS Club Prague,

Florian Brezina (CEMS Club Alumni Representative)
and Pavlina Simurdova (CEMS Alumni President)

on behalf of your CEMS Alumni Board Team
Blog :: Facebook :: LinkedIn

CEMS Breakfast - Digitalization and its career implications on 6 October

Dear alumni
Enjoy the breakfast with current CEMS students and discuss the hot topic of digitalization and its career implications. This event is co-organized with CEMS Club Prague. There is a limited number of available places (for alumni as well as students) so register as soon as possible. For more info you can check the facebook event.

Location: Secret of Raw Cukrarna, Rumunská 265/25, 120 00 Praha 2
Registration: cemsalumni@seznam.czcemsalumni@seznam.cz.

Vojta
on behalf of your CEMS Alumni Board Team
Blog :: Facebook :: LinkedIn

CEMS Talk on the topic Building BIG: What an impressive start to CEMS Alumni autumn 2017!

Three top speakers, engaged attendees, beautiful venue, and great wine tasting created an unforgettable CEMS Talk.

What is the key take away from the CEMS Talk on the topic Building Big?

• Learn from the best ones: Get the job in a top company in your area of interest
• Become an industry expert: Understand the business you are in
• Follow your personal values in your career as well as in your business without compromises
• Find what you enjoy: Go for it, work on it, stay hungry, humble and persistent
• Find a gap: Fill it in with a unique offering
• Grow wisely: No need for rapid jump up
• Choose great people who are better than you are: Don’t go only for good ones.
• Be flexible and adaptive: See and use new opportunities that are constantly arising
• Follow the signs
• Give back

              

 

CEMS Talk is an event concept inspired by TED talk:

• Every CEMS Talk is dedicated to a unique topic related to life and career in today’s world. 
• Speakers are chosen based on their level of experience and relevancy for a chosen area. 
• The audience is built from CEMS students and alumni, both Czech and international. 
• The main purpose of CEMS Talk is to share real, authentic and honest stories and thereby inspire members of the CEMS Community in their future life and business choices.

Who were our three speakers?

Jan Hrdina: an extraordinary entrepreneur

Jan has managed to grow a family owned business into an internationally recognized company, #1 on the Czech market for wooden products. 

His success lies in the combination of:

• unique product offering, 
• focus on top quality, 
• choosing the best people and 
• following and embodying his personal values such as: fairness, honesty, transparency, family business, ecological approach, giving back. 

Radomir Salitros: a top star all across

Radomir became a VP in an Austrian banking group before he turned thirty. 

With his CV and experience, he could have had easily an amazing and secured career in the financial industry. 

Instead he decided to do what he enjoyed. He moved back to his home town in eastern Slovakia and founded a company producing luxury beds that is one of the top companies in this field internationally.

What is the magic behind? 

• being transparent and honest,
• staying hungry and humble, 
• following the signs, 
• learning from the best companies and then applying that in own business and 
• based on his experience not trusting anyone.

Frantisek Peterka – a modern start-up entrepreneur

Frantisek does not see a difference between doing business in a digital or real world. Frantisek has already managed to establish and grow several top digital companies. 

His passion is the first stage of the entrepreneurship journey: building new company. 

Aiming to build a business for his wife, he founded the biggest and most successful shopping platform for kids and mums in the Czech Republic. 

Frantisek’s secret is build upon:

• his desire for building new solution for customer needs, 
• being adaptive, flexible and open to new opportunities and 
• doing business with people he can trust as his family, friends, former colleagues.

We thank to our exceptional speakers as well as to all attendees.

We look forward to seeing you at one of our next events.

Pavlina on behalf of CEMS Alumni Board

PS: We are extremely happy for you feedback, below a few notes:

Hi Pavlina

Just wanted to thank you for a great event on Thursday, I had to leave quite early so didn't have a chance to say it in person Looking forward for more events like that

Nika (CEMS Student)

_________________

Dear Pavlina, 

thank you so much for organizing the event yesterday - we all loved it! 

Kate (CEMS Student)

_________________

Ahoj Pavlíno, 

včerejší akce totální liga, smekám za organizaci a děkujeme za úsilí, které jsi tomu věnovala.Budu se těšit na dalších akcích

Richard (CEMS Alumnus)

_________________

Ahoj Pavlina,

Este raz dakujem za pozvanie a perfektnu organizaciu vcerajsieho eventu. Bol to velmi inspirativny a myslim, ze aj najviac autenticky event zo vsetkych CEMS podujati, ktore som dosial navstivila. Tesim sa uz na dalsie stretnutie. 

S prianim pekneho dna,

Gabriela (CEMS Student)

Pavlína
on behalf of your CEMS Alumni Board Team
Blog :: Facebook :: LinkedIn

What to do after the summer? Plan of events - updated

Dear alumni
at the beginning of this year we were planning a number of different events - aimed at networking, cooperation with students, fun... Whatever you like...

This is the current version of the plan (update as of 30 May 2017):
28.1. Topic: Family and Career (already took place) DONE
23.2. Start of mentoring program (already took place) DONE

16.3. Topic: Business Owners (already took place) DONE

30.3. CEMS Graduate profile DONE

5.4. Drink (you can register here)  DONE
7.4. CEMS Gala (organized by students) DONE
11.4. Sauna (you can register here, changed date) DONE
20.4. Mentoring program checkpoint (via on-line questionnaire)
29.5. Topic: Prevention of burnout (changed date)
8.6.  CEMS Soiree (organized by VSE) + Mentoring evaluatoin
10.6. Yoga in the park

There are still some events we need to plan in detail: networking event (in May or later) and maybe something more :-).

Would you like to propose any other event? Or would you like to help us organizing these events?

What kind of events should we organize after the summer?


Pavlina, Vojta and Honza
Your CEMS Alumni Board Team
Blog :: Facebook :: LinkedIn

CEMS Roundtable: Students, Alumni, Teachers and Corporate partners brainstorming about the future of CEMS

• What are the current business trends influencing the CEMS Programme?
• What is the experience with the CEMS Programme seen from students', alumni's, teachers' and corporate partners' point of view?
• How can CEMS address current needs of the job market and prepare alumni that will star?

These are a few questions that were discussed during the CEMS Roundtable organized by Vojtech Oplestil and Ladislav Tyll at the University of Economics on 30th March 2017.

Each core CEMS Group (students, alumni, teachers and corporate business partners) was represented by the minimum of 4 participants. The whole program was organized in a very open-minded and informal atmosphere, which gave a space to many discussion and experience sharing.

Below you can find a few notes from the brainstorming evening:

What are top business trends these days? 

• focus on entrepreneurship
• digitalization trend
• increased competition of international business programs
• need of hard skills
• generation Y

How can CEMS address them?

• Building strong CEMS brand by offering excellent life-long education
• Minor specialization for CEMS students
• Increased offer of courses targeting deeper knowledge of technical disciplines
• Practically oriented guest speakers and lectures, e.g. real life case studies

How can CEMS Alumni Association support the future needs?

• Building the CEMS brand by organizing regular monthly CEMS professional events (e.g. Friday CEMS Stage) focused on the hottest topics that CEMS community is interested in
• At least once per year prepare big CEMS Community event with external top guest speakers

In the upcoming weeks, we will be gathering inputs from you, CEMS Alumni, about topics that are the most relevant to you, so we can plan the events for the 2nd half year of 2017 accordingly.

You can also have a look at the video with photos from this evening here

In case of any questions, let us know to: cemsalumni@seznam.cz

Pavlina on behalf of the CEMS Alumni Board Team

Sign up for the 2017 CEMS Mentoring Programme

Dear CEMS Alumni

we would like to invite you to join 2017 CEMS Mentoring Programme. This is an initiative that was running successfully in past and we would like to continue with this tradition.

Do you want to share you passion as well as your experience? Do you want to support the new generation of CEMSies through career or life mentoring? Join the 2017 CEMS Mentoring Programme

No previous experience in mentoring is needed. What is important is your willingness to share part of your time and your experience with others. No matter whether you run your own business or work in an international or local company, whether you do business or work for NGOs.Everyone has something valuable to share. 

Do you want to take part in the CEMS Mentoring Programme?

1. Sign up via this form
2. Book the evening on 23rd February 2017 between 6:30 and 9pm for the joined kick-off event (at VSE, Prague 3) 
3. Be comfortable with spending one hour of your time every two weeks on meetings with your mentee (meetings can be face to face or skype) between March and June 2017.

How is the CEMS Mentoring Programme organized?

After the kick-off event on 23rd February, we will finalize the matching between mentors and mentees. You will get contact details on your mentee, so you can agree on the first mentoring meeting. The frequency, location and time of your meet-ups depends only on the agreement between you and your mentee. After two months, we will call for a Catch-up meeting to share what is working as well as ideas for improvement. At the end of the 2017 spring semester, we will make the final evaluation. The mentoring programme may end for you at the end of the spring semester or you may agree with the mentee on it further continuation. 

Any questions?

Feel free to contact the CEMS Alumni Prague Team at cemsalumni@seznam.cz

Still not sure? Check out this video

Pavlina, Vojta and Honza

Your CEMS Alumni Board Team

Blog :: Facebook :: LinkedIn

REQUEST TO CEMS ALUMNI: Would you like to share your experience with students and prepare a lecture for one of offered VSE courses?

Dear alumni,

For me being an alumnus and working on behalf of the whole CEMS community means focusing on three areas: alumni (professional and other events), students and the university.

This time I would like to focus on the third one. Mr. Ladislav Tyll, MBA, Ph.D., a new CEMS academic director at VSE, would like to continue cooperation with VSE and alumni and continue inviting alumni into CEMS VSE courses, which was also held in the past few years. It would be another great opportunity how alumni could support CEMS at their university. There are two options in the field of lecturing:

• Lecturing at some of the basic courses at the Faculty of Business Administration for bachelor degree students in order to attract more of them to apply for CEMS (subjects like Management, Business economics, Marketing, Consumer behaviour, Personnel Management or Logistics). These subjects are taught in Czech language and on rather basic level with large audience.

• Lecturing at some of the CEMS courses (subjects like International Strategy, Corporate Finance, Global Management Practice Course, International Marketing, Entrepreneurship and New Business Venturing, Accounting Information for Financial Management or Intermediate Microeconomics). 

These subjects are taught in English language and focused already on some rather specific, more advanced topics with the smaller audience of max. 50 students.

Would you be interested to share your experience with students? For you, that would mean not only preparing 45-90 minutes lecture based on discussion with the tutor, but also an opportunity to promote shortly your company, present yourself and enjoy presenting to CEMS students or to an audience of up to 300 fresh minds. It does not mean only some time spent on preparation and presentation, but also development of your skills and promotion of your company. Finally, it may be an attractive record in your CV.

If you are interested please, explore this file with the list of subjects including syllabus of each subject. For your better idea, I let the list of alumni lectures with their topics in the Winter Term 2012/2013 in the file. 

In case of interest please, fill in the table and send it back to me and a copy to Šárka Otčenášková (CEMS Communication Manager at VSE; sarka.otcenaskova@vse.cz). Please, send your e-mail by September 15, 2014 as the Winter Term starts on September 22, 2014.

I will be really glad to hearing from you - and helping the university together. Thank you for your time.

On behalf of Šarka Otčenášková, this post was created by CEMS Alumni Association Prague.

Meet the Luxury - pictures from one of the best events recently

Luxury as a topic...
5 speakers...
Some 40 participants, both students and alumni...

What will be the future CEMS graduates like

I believe one of the roles of alumni is to bring CEMS stakeholders together and let them discuss openly their concerns and ideas.

Therefore, a month ago together with VŠE we organised a roundtable aimed at the following questions.

All relevant stakeholders were present:

• corporate partners (ŠKODA AUTO, HILTI)
• VŠE representatives (programme management + teachers)
• Students
• and us, alumni

Together, 16 people + one child with various backrounds, professional as well life experience and lots of motivation to share their views.

Together we created the following SWOT

What I personally found interesting was the shift from promotion of the programme (which was one of the key issues of the first roundtable in November 2011) towards the academic aspects of the programme. It seems like the core - curriculum and learning outputs - is coming to the fore of attention.

Analysis is just the first part. We moved on and created a list of tasks for all stakeholders.

It will be a responsibility of all the stakeholders to accept their tasks and support CEMS. Alumni will definitely play an active role!

Vojtech

P.S. If you want to see the full presentation please just send me an e-mail.

Profile of CEMS MIM students - a discussion roundtable organized by alumni

UPDATE: The event starts at 17:00.
We believe a part of the alumni role is to help developing the programme we are all graduates of. The best thing we can do is to gather various stakeholders of CEMS MIM and let them discuss openly all the issues the programme is facing and let them take responsibility for its future progress.


Come and join us on 27 Feb.

Come and network while tasting wine

How about meeting other cems alumni and students while enjoying the taste of wines from the Austro-Hungarian region?

It is my pleasure to invite you to a wine tasting led by a professional sommelier. The event will take place on 22 November in Golden Tulip Prague Terminus, a four star hotel in the centre of Prague. We will start at 7 PM.

We will taste 11 wines especially from smaller wine makers.

1. Christian Madl , MADL sekt, 100% Welschriesling, brut, Champagner-Codex, Rakousko
2. Ota Ševčík, Grafty 11, cuvée Veltlínské zelené x Ryzlink vlašský, suché, Velkopavlovicko, AUTENTISTÉ
3. Trpělka/Oulehla, Veltlínské zelené 2011, zemské, suché, Znojemsko
4. Vykoukal, Veltlínské zelené 2011, pozdní sběr, suché, Velkopavlovicko, AUTENTISTÉ
5. Christian Madl , Gruner Veltliner 2011, suché, DAC Weinviertel, Rakousko
6. Peřina Zdeněk, Ryzlink vlašský 2011, pozdní sběr, suché, Mikulovsko
7. Figula, Olaszrizling 2011, suché, Balaton, Maďarsko
8. Somioi A.P., Olaszrizling 2010, suché, Somló, Maďarsko
9. Trpělka/Oulehla, Frankovka 2009, pozdní sběr, suché, Znojemsko
10. Franz Weninger, Blaufrankisch 2009, suché, DAC Mittelburgenland, Rakousko
11. Sauska, Kékfrankos 2009, suché, Villány, Maďarsko

Please note that some of the wines may be already sold out at the time of the event. In such a case it will be replaced by a comparable wine.

This event is intended both for students and alumni.
As for the price, the degustation itself will cost 550 CZK, with finger food the price will be 700 CZK. Paying alumni will pay only 300 CZK (450 CZK with food).
If you want to join as at the event please register here. Please register by Wednesday 8 November so we can let know the sommelier.

Looking forward to tasting wine with you :-).

CEMS Alumni Association Prague Team - Vojta, Olga, Richard, Lucie, Klara

CEMS Gala Casino Night

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

We are happy to invite you on behalf of the CEMS Club for one of the main evenings of this semester:

 

GALA CASINO NIGHT.

 

This evening will be full of music, dance, refreshments, nice dresses and casino tables. Moreover, you will have a chance to win some nice prizes provided by our corporate partners in a raffle. You should not miss on this event.

 

• When: 1.11. 2012 from 19:30
• Where: Na Marjance, Bělohorská 35/262 - 169 00 Praha 6-Břevnov
• Tickets: CEMS Club will sell the tickets from Monday - 22nd of October 9:15 before each CEMS class.
• Price: 250 CZK
• Dress code: Formal

 

If you have any questions or you want order tickets please mail to lebrovajana@email.cz.

 

We are really looking forward to seeing you all at this event. So suit up and wait for it...;)

CEMS Alumni Board

Would you like to share your experience with CEMS students?

Dear alumni
For me being an alumnus and working on behalf of the whole CEMS community means focusing on three areas: alumni (professional and other events), students (e.g. Meet the...) and the university.

 

This time I would like to focus on the third one.

 

Recently I met Jiri Hnilica, the CEMS Academic Director and vice-dean of the Faculty of Business Administration and we talked about the ways alumni could support CEMS at the university. We came up with two options:

• Lecturing at some of the basic courses at the Faculty of Business Administration for bachelor degree students in order to attract more of them to apply for CEMS (subjects like management, business economics, or logistics)
• Lecturing at some of the CEMS courses - subjects like international strategy, corporate finance, international marketing or managerial psychology

While the first one is supposed to be held in Czech and on rather basic level, the latter one should be in English and focused already on some rather specific, more advanced topics.

 

So - would you be interested in sharing your experience with the students? For you that would mean not only preparing 45-90 minutes lecture based on discussion with the tutor, but also an opportunity to promote shortly your company, present yourself and enjoy presenting to CEMS students or to an audience of up to 300 fresh minds. It does not mean only some time spent on preparation and presentation, but also development of your skills and your promotion in your company.

 

If you are interested please drop me a message and I will send you more details - list of subjects (incl. syllabus) and contact information.

 

I will be really glad to hearing from you - and helping the university together.

 

Best regards

 

Vojtech Oplestil

Meet the Sales 14.5.2012 Review

The regular event “Meet the….” took place on May 14^th with the focus on Sales this time. We were happy to welcome 20 students and 5 following CEMS Alumni in the role of speakers:

Jan Šach, Country Manager at Indesit

Jan Kubík, Sales Specialist, Investment Banking at Thomson Reuters

Zdenek Řiháček, District Sales Manager at Procter and Gamble
Stanislav Hába, Sales Manager at PPF Bank

Jan Rožek, Key Account Manager at L‘Oréal

The speakers were covering various businesses and talked about their career path as well as the current job position with passion. They helped to better understand what it means to work at Sales, what personal characteristics are essential and what challenges could one expect when working at Sales. The numerous group of students and alumni, afterwards, moved to the close restaurant Sklep where students could discuss with professionals in more informal way.

We thank to all the participants for their time and contribution.

We are looking forward to welcoming you at other professional and social events!
Your CEMS Alumni Association Prague

Please help a CEMS student with her survey

Hélène Aubertin, a CEMS student from HEC currently doing her exchange at Bocconi is doing a business project for Indesit. Please help her by filling in her questionnaire.

CEMS Venice Night

The CEMS Club is organizing once again one of its greatest events - the gala night.

Not only are alumni more welcome but also the election of the new board will take place right there. Come and join us :-).

You can find more details on the CEMS Club website.

The programme is as follows:

• 19:30 doors open
• 20:00 welcome word from CC president and Alumni Association
• 20:15-22:00 life band
• 22:00-22:30 dance performance
• 22:30-23:00 life band
• 23:00-23:20 charity raffle
• 23:20:00 announcement of alumni association election results
• 23:30-00:00 DJ
• 0:00:00 midnight surprise
• 00:10- DJ music

Offer Internships to CEMS students

This is an excerpt from the CAA Newsletter May 2011.

Do you remember when you were looking for your CEMS internship abroad? It may not have been easy to find the right one that met your expectations, but it was probably a very important experience at the beginning of your career which helped you to be where you are right now.
If you have ever asked yourself what you could do to give something back to CEMS, the answer is very easy: Post the internship offers of your company to the CEMS Job Market!

There are two options to post offers to the JobMarket.

• The preferred one is that your company registers and accesses the job market with its own company login. Corporate Partners can also screen the CVs of students and alumni.
• The other option is for you to directly access the Job Market using as company profile "CEMS Alumni offers for students". Simply access the JobMarket as a Company with the login name "alumni@cems.org" and password "offersfromalumni". On the left hand side under "Positions" -> "New position" -> "Internship", you can enter your offers. Please note: since the offer will be displayed with the company name: "CEMS Alumni offers for students" it is important that you put your company name at the beginning of the field "Position". In the fields "Contact name" and "Email", please put your name and your @cemsmail.org address. Otherwise we cannot validate your offer.

Pre-graduation dinner

The pre-graduation dinner organised by CEMS Alumni club for new CEMS MIM graduates took place in Lokal at the end of November. Students with completed CEMS programme met together with Ms. Subrtova and Mr. Hnilica to discuss not only their plans for the Annual event. As usually, the CEMS dinner was firstly a networking event, where you could get new, useful business and personal contacts, share your experience and find out how other school mates are doing.

The CEMS Alumni club organised a raffle for one year free membership in the Alumni Association: it was won by Martin Klimeš, congratulations!

The more people come, the bigger network – so hope to see you next time at our CEMS Alumni drink!

Your CEMS Alumni board
Honza, Jana, Richard, Vasek a Vojta

CEMS Student Board Newsletter

Even though our student years are over (well, unless you enjoy studying for instance MBA or PhD) you may still be interested in what is going on among students.
So may read the last newsletter of the Student Board. It deals with the topics of CEMS brand, CEMS student responsibility, and also some MiM affairs.

Soft skills seminare poradane studenty

Drazi alumni, tentokrare si dovolujeme vas pozvat na dva seminare soft skill poradane studenty.

Milí CEMSáci a milé CEMSačky,

iKnow Club si Vás dovoluje pozvat na připravované semináře zabývající se oblastmi nových využití informačních technologií a moderních manažerských postupů. Přednášejícím bude renomovaný školitel a publicista Petr Mára, jenž vás na přelomu dubna a května provede násedujícími workshopy:
Getting Things Done - jak se zorganizovat aneb moderní time managementová metoda

• Termín: středa 28. dubna 2010
• Místnost: RB 211
• Čas: 19:40 sharp

Keynote - jak se předvést v nejlepším světle aneb aktuální trendy v tvorbě prezentací

• Termín: středa 12. května 2010
• Místnost: viz stránky iKnow Clubu
• Čas: 18:00 sharp

Budeme se těšit na vaši hojnou účast a věříme, že výstupy všech připravovaných workshopů budou přínosem pro váš každodenní studentský i osobní život. Další informace sledujte na webových stránkách iknow.vse.cz.

 

Tak co, prijdete?