Alumni@IBS Alumni from the International Business and Management School

of Hanze University of Applied Sciences

1990-2014

Jan Liefers

Kristina Hildebrand

Dec. 2014

Contents

Where did the alumni from IBS go to? .................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Research question ............................................................................................................................... 3

Data form the Hanze University .............................................................................................................. 7

Data from LinkedIn group members ..................................................................................................... 10

Position .............................................................................................................................................. 11

Global dispersion ............................................................................................................................... 15

Degree ............................................................................................................................................... 17

Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 18

Recommendations ................................................................................................................................ 18

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Alumninet members from BW (17) .......................................................................................................... 4 Figure 2: Alumninet members from IBMS (86) ...................................................................................................... 4 Another source is to be found in LinkedIn, currently the most widely used professional networking social medium. The information to be found on LinkedIn is controlled by individuals and is therefore not standardised but can be seen as a valid source on the current job description, since users have an personal interest in accurate and up to date Figure 3: Alumni from BW (17) ........................................................................................ 4 Figure 4 http://press.linkedin.com/about 23-10-2014 .......................................................................................... 4 Figure 5: Total number of graduates per degree and program .............................................................................. 7 Figure 6: Total IBS alumni per year ......................................................................................................................... 8 Figure 7: Total number of IBS graduates per gender .............................................................................................. 8 Figure 8: Total number of Master alumni per year ................................................................................................. 9 Figure 9: Total number Bachelor alumni per year .................................................................................................. 9 Figure 10: Alumni per year .................................................................................................................................... 10 Figure 11: Current Job category ............................................................................................................................ 11 Figure 12: Current jobs IBMS alumni .................................................................................................................... 11 Figure 13: Only Bachelor degree from IBS ............................................................................................................ 12 Figure 14: Master degree from IBS ....................................................................................................................... 12 Figure 15: Master degree outside of IBS .............................................................................................................. 12 Figure 16: Number of job changes ........................................................................................................................ 13 Figure 17: job changes per graduation cohort ...................................................................................................... 13 Figure 18: Current country .................................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 19: : Countries per continent ..................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 20: Alumni on the global map .................................................................................................................... 16 Figure 21: Highest degree ..................................................................................................................................... 17 Figure 22: % of graduates with a Master .............................................................................................................. 17

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 2

Where did the alumni from IBS go to?

Introduction IBS Groningen was the first international and fully English taught school at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. It started in 1990 and in 1994 the first students graduated.

Now, 20 years after its first alumni set off to pursue a professional career it would be nice to see what the careers of these alumni have been. Where are they, what are they doing? Are their positions reflected in the curriculum? How international are their careers?

The immediate reason to do this research was the development of the three year program of IBS. One of the design principles of the program is to connect to the current job market. Therefore a research was needed.

The national platform also has undertaken an extensive research on employability. We were not aware of this fact at the start of our research, but fortunately we have received some of the raw data. The research on employability done by the national platform has been sent by email and asked 98 questions on personal and company background and the match of the study with regard to the job market. Some 100 respondents from the IBS Hanze University of Groningen replied. Since the research outcomes have not been published we cannot quote them.

Research question Our main question is: what is the current job situation of the alumni from IBS Groningen?

Several sub question can be related to this.

• How many students graduated in the various years? • What are the most popular jobs? • Where do alumni work and what is the career path?

To investigate these and possible other questions reliable sources have to be found.

One source is the database of the Hanze University, comprising all students that ever graduated. This can be seen as a valid source on all alumni. This database basically comprises names, dates, gender and degree title. The data used was obtained the 22nd of Oct. 2014 and comprises the data until 30th of Sept 2014.

The Hanze university of Applied Sciences has set up alumninet.hanze where alumni can register. The results indicate however this site is not very popular among alumni. The BW counts 17 and the IBMS bachelor alumni shows 86 members (15th of dec. 2014). The two Master degrees show 2 and 5

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 3

members respectively. The information from the Alumninet site is limited to only the name and location. (source: http://alumninet.hanze.nl/nl/opleidingen?school=348)

Another source is to be found in LinkedIn, currently the most widely used professional networking social medium. The information to be found on LinkedIn is controlled by individuals and is therefore not standardised but can be seen as a valid source on the current job description, since users have an personal interest in accurate and up to date information.

A more convenient source is to make use of the group members International Business School Groningen. This group has currently well over 1100 members, of which some are still a bachelor student or faculty, but as a whole serves as a good representation of the alumni. A bias might be expected with regard to Asian students as can be demonstrated by Figure 4, provided by LinkedIn, although the fact that Asian students who graduated from IBS or most likely to have become acquainted with social media like LinkedIn.

Figure 3 http://press.linkedin.com/about 23-10-2014

Figure 1: Alumninet members from BW (17) Figure 2: Alumninet members from IBMS (86)

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 4

A research from Y. Song, 2012 (Network of networks: Uncovering the secrets of entrepreneurs' networks) showed LinkedIn is a social medium that is positively connected to business success.

To find out who of all alumni from IBS would have a LinkedIn profile would take a serious investment in time. Every individual name would have to be entered in the person search and checked if they are IBS alumni. Since a rather large proportion of females tend to change their names after marriage this would mean a very labour intensive process.

The two researchers have collected all data from people who are a member of the IBS Hanze group “International Business School (IBS) – Groningen”. This group comprised of 11431 members. The members were checked if they actually are an alumnus. The following data was gathered:

Surname; first name; current job description; current company; country of company; graduation date; highest degree achieved; institution where the degree was acquired, number of jobs; contact information.

The name and date were checked with the official Hanze UAS information.

The International Labour Organisation published a list2 (International Standard Classification of Occupations ISCO–08) which offers a good reference for a category list.

Looking at the Managers, Professionals and Service and sales workers on this list a good 34 job descriptions can be found that might be related to the work expected to be performed by IBS alumni. By looking at the first few hundred of job descriptions on LinkedIn it became clear that the list is not easily applicable. Below you see a selection that we thought could be relevant to the business job market of the ILO list.

1120 Managing Directors and Chief Executives 1211 Finance Managers 1212 Human Resource Managers 1213 Policy and Planning Managers 1219 Business Services and Administration Managers Not Elsewhere Classified 1221 Sales and Marketing Managers 1222 Advertising and Public Relations Managers 1223 Research and Development Managers 1324 Supply, Distribution and Related Managers 1345 Education Managers 1346 Financial and Insurance Services Branch Managers 1420 Retail and Wholesale Trade Managers 2310 University and Higher Education Teachers 2411 Accountants 2412 Financial and Investment Advisers 2413 Financial Analysts 2421 Management and Organization Analysts 2422 Policy Administration Professionals 2423 Personnel and Careers Professionals

1 (accessed on 10-11-2014) 2 http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/ wcms_172572.pdf

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2424 Training and Staff Development Professionals 2431 Advertising and Marketing Professionals 2432 Public Relations Professionals 3311 Securities and Finance Dealers and Brokers 3312 Credit and Loans Officers 3313 Accounting Associate Professionals 3314 Statistical, Mathematical and Related Associate Professionals 3315 Valuers and Loss Assessors 3321 Insurance Representatives 3322 Commercial Sales Representatives 3323 Buyers 3324 Trade Brokers 3332 Conference and Event Planners 3333 Employment Agents and Contractors 3341 Office Supervisors

Although this list might be a good start for classification the problem is that people don’t use this list and there are many jobs that cross the lines and have components of more than one.

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 6

Data form the Hanze University

The database of the Hanze shows a total of 3239 alumni that have graduated since the start of IBS in 1990 until September 2014. The numbers can be found in figure 5. In its history a variety of degrees has been offered, both on the bachelor as well as the Master degree. 87,8 percent of the students has a bachelor degree, 12,2 % a Master degree. 4 are counted double, that is have both a bachelor and a Master degree from IBS Groningen.

Figure 4: Total number of graduates per degree and program

Over the years there have been various programs for the two degrees. Roughly since 2004 the bachelor stops using the specialisation as a different degree, so no conclusions can be drawn as if only a minority ever choose finance.

The first alumni graduated in 1994. As can be seen in Figure 6 the numbers show a slightly fluctuating but rising tendency.

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 7

Figure 5: Total IBS alumni per year

The number of female and male students has been rather balanced. Over all the percentage of males is 48.5% and 51,5% is female. Per year there are variations though as can be seen in Figure 7.

Figure 6: Total number of IBS graduates per gender

IBS offers both bachelor and Master programmes. The first bachelors graduated in 1994, the first Master students graduated in 1995. The Masters studies was a double degree cooperation with the University of Strathclide, Glasgow, Scotland. The course was issued by HanzeConnect.

As for the Masters programs there are also some changes in time. The oldest is “International Management, Master International Business” which has been used until 2001. Since 2007 the common degree name is Master of Business Administration and Master in International Business and Management. It clearly shows a period with the cooperation with Strathclide and one without.

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Figure 7: Total number of Master alumni per year

In Figure 9 you can see the development of the number of all Bachelor alumni. By comparing the overall alumni from Figure 6 with the Figures 8 and 9 it shows the two degrees somewhat balance the overall rather steady development.

Figure 8: Total number Bachelor alumni per year

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Data from LinkedIn group members

In the LinkedIn group (“International Business School (IBS) - Groningen”) we found 738 out of 2844 alumni which is 26% of all bachelors. From all the 395 Master students we found 63 which is 16%.

The graduates divided per year, (figure 10) split per degree, shows a fair likeness with the overall graduated students (Figure 9), so it can be concluded that the group in LinkedIn is a fair representation. To interpret the graph of the Masters (Figure 8) correctly one has to know the first Master was organised by Hanze Connect, not as a part of IBS as a school. Therefore these alumni do not have a connection to IBS.

Figure 9: Alumni per year

We will discuss first their job position, then their degree and finally the country in which they work.

By counting the number of job mentions one gets an idea about the job mobility or career path. In average all alumni had 3,5 different jobs.

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 10

Position

Looking at all 801 alumni the following list shows the distribution of their current position, also in a graph.

It is clear the most popular categories are Sales (97), Marketing, (95), Finance (92) and Management (70).

With management the more general management is meant. Account, project and product management are treated as different categories.

The jobs categorised as marketing show a substantial part deals with online marketing.

Another interesting find is the fact only 0,9% mentions to be unemployed (or in between jobs or on parental leave).

The majority of jobs, when looking at the job descriptions shows a wide use of applied skills (project management, monitoring tools, negotiation, online marketing expertise etc.)

The job categories displayed in a graph shows clearly where the major arrears can be found, Skipping Tourism as a specialisation seems to have been a wise decision.

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Figure 11: Current jobs IBMS alumni

Figure 10: Current Job category

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Figure 12: Only Bachelor degree from IBS

Figure 13: Master degree from IBS

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Figure 14: Master degree outside of IBS Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 12

As Figures 13, 14 and 15 show the most mentioned jobs vary per degree. For IBS master students the most popular job is business development and management. For the group who are in the process of getting or got a Master elsewhere, that is other than the Hanze it is studying (for the most recently graduated) and finance.

Figure 16 shows the number of job changes. The average is 3,5 per average career. More relevant is to see how the number of job changes is influenced by the date of graduation the table below (Figure 17). It shows the bandwidth of changes widens over time.

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Figure 15: Number of job changes

Figure 16: job changes per graduation cohort

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Another aspect that could be established is at what company do the current alumni work. We will show the most mentioned ones with the number of employees from the IBS alumni.

Company No. Company No.

ABN AMRO 5 ING 7 Accenture 3 KPN 3 Aegon 4 PMCS GmbH & Co. KG 3 BearingPoint 3 Philips 5 Deloitte 4 Rabobank 6 Google 4 Randstad Professionals 3 Hanze University 5 Storm Marketing Consultants 3 Hellmann Worldwide Logistics 4 Unilever 3

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Global dispersion

The last issue is where the current jobs are located, or where do our alumni work. Figure 18 holds the numbers.

Figure 17: Current country

The alumni state in general where they are currently working although in 35 of the cases this was unclear. In all 766 other cases we could find 63 different countries being mentioned covering all continents. In fact even a former exchange student reported working on Antarctica but exchange students were not counted as IBS alumni. As you can see in Figure 19 they can be found in all continents. By looking at the individual alumni it shows that not all that work in the Netherlands are of (originally) of Dutch nationality. Although we have not calculated this, the spread of alumni working international is greater than shown.

Figure 18: Countries per continent

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When we present the same findings but now on a map it shows a nice dispersion over the globe.

Figure 19: Alumni on the global map

Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 16

Degree

Of all alumni in the IBS LinkedIn group 63 graduated with a Master degree from IBS. In total 239 eventually got a Master or PhD degree at another university bringing the total of alumni on Master or PhD degrees at 301 (see Figure 21). Figure 22 shows there is not a clear relation between the year of graduation from the bachelor and the tendency to continue with a Master. When you correct the data for the cohorts with the smallest number of alumni (2006 and before 1995) a rising tendency can be seen.

Figure 21: % of graduates with a Master

In total 100 different Master courses were mentioned. The 10 most mentioned universities can be found below, where it strikes that Lund, Sweden, is an increasingly popular destiny for recent students.

No. Master 63 Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen; MBA 44 Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / University of Groningen 12 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University 12 Lund University; M.Sc. 7 Nyenrode Business Universiteit 6 Anglia Ruskin University MA Business Administration 5 Sheffield Hallam University; Masters Degree, International Business 4 UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School Dublin 4 University of Amsterdam, MSc 4 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MSc Figure 20: Most mentioned Masters

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Figure 20: Highest degree

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Conclusions

• The curriculum reflects most of the jobs offered , apart from Sales. • Sales is serious business. • In the majority of jobs applied skills are required (management, negotiation, • The alumni from IBS work globally. (Hidden behind a single number is in fact an even more

international picture to be found: ) • Unemployment for IBS Alumni is low (<1 %)

Recommendations

• The international character of the alumni is an USP that deserves to be exploited more. • Make use of the list of alumni to get into contact with alumni (guest speaker, stepping stone) • Make use of the group for more two way communication about the Bachelor and Master

program and the connection of the program to the profession • Sales deserves more attention in the curriculum

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Alumni@IBS 1990 - 2014 19