FLUX Awards provide innovative opportunity for students to shine

By Claire Sweet, Student and Education Ambassador of CIM South West Board

OVER the past couple of months, I have had the tremendous pleasure of being involved in Plymouth University’s annual FLUX events.

Organised by the university’s Careers and Employability Service, FLUX is a fast-paced, exciting event for anyone interested in business. It gives students across a broad range of subjects the chance to come together and create a team to produce a business plan within 24 hours of an initial brief, picking up key skills along the way such as team work, commercial awareness, presentation skills to name but a few and is a great opportunity to add something a little different to their CVs as they begin to further their careers.

Sponsored by Santander Universities, the event begins the night before with the students being briefed on a particular business. The students then have less than 24 hours to work together and generate ideas on the task given. The teams then had to utilise the Marketing, HR, Finance and Strategy professionals to assist with their proposals. They could ask us any questions around our specialist subjects and use this information to help build their plans. The teams then presented back to the professionals and the winners were picked.

With the winners of the Autumn and Spring FLUX competitions coming together for the big March finale, I was astounded by the amount of talented students and the fantastic ideas they presented.

The final gave students the opportunity to come up with a plan to increase awareness of the charity Barnardo’s and Stage 4 BSc and MGeol Geology students Charlotte, Lilli, Sophie, Emma, Tom and Harry, of Plymouth Ground Solutions, did a fantastic job and were crowned this year's FLUX winners being rewarded with a cheque for £600.

Congratulations to everyone involved, it’s a fantastic event and I’m already looking forward to next year!