The great thing about facility management is that it is a very broad field of work. After you graduate you have a great deal of options considering what type of organisation you want to work and in what field of facility management you want to apply yourself.

Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps!
Studying abroad was a great experience. I attended the University of Northern Arizona and specialised in hospitality management. Following I managed to get an internship with one of the worlds largest providers of branded casino entertainment, Harrah’s Entertainment. I was with the ‘Rio all Suite Hotel and Casino’, located on the strip in Las Vegas for 5 months and was able to work on the first World Series of Poker tournament hosted by the Rio. This was definitely one of the best experiences ever!

Corus Staal BV
After writing my graduation thesis for Corus Staal BV they offered me a position and I moved to Amsterdam. Currently I work as an accountmanager which is my third position within this company. Corus is a large steel production company formally known as ‘Koninklijke Hoogovens’ and is currently under Indian leadership. In my job I am responsible for the development, realisation, implementation and performance of several facilities services that we provide for our internal customer. Since I am working for such a large company I still have great growth opportunities and therefore the ability to continue my learning curve both national and international.

Furthermore I am currently on the board of IFMA Young, focussed on young professionals within the International FM environment and F-MEX, a foundation focussed on taking FM to a higher level within the Netherlands. Sharing knowledge is a great thing and therefore I am very happy to be supervising a graduation project executed by a very talented student from the Hanze University IFM program at the moment and I hope that many will follow in her footsteps.    

IFM gave me the opportunity to develop myself on a personal and professional level. Prior to my start I was not sure whether that was the right education for me, but after spending 3,5 years I am convinced that I could not have picked a better school. The courses are diverse and at the same time specific into the field of Facility Management, therefore I got to learn the different sides of Facility Management and the correlations among them.

I spent a year abroad which was an amazing experience I will never forget. I went to study Tourism in Macau, China for 5 months, there I met many international and local people, learned a lot and gained a great professional and personal experience also in adapting to a different culture.
The whole trip was a great experience which I will never forget. For me Macau is a place  where you can find many interesting and entertaining places, learn a lot, meet a lot of people, have a great time and get to know another culture!
The rest of my year abroad I spent in Bulgaria where I worked for a company which specialized in student recruitment and worked closely with several international universities. The five months placement helped me to experience the working environment and apply my theoretical knowledge gained so far.

Choosing the international stream of Facility Management has been one of the best choices I’ve made so far. When I heard about this international study programme during an Introduction Day I was immediately curious. I knew that I wanted to study Facility Management, but the English version was exactly the challenge I was looking for. 
The fact that you get to gain knowledge of cultural differences and get hands-on experience in working with people from different nationalities is something really valuable in today’s global workplace.

Are you interested in Facility Management and are you looking forward to an international career? Don’t let the language barrier scare you off. Simply come visit us and talk to some students who already engage in this programme or attend one of our lectures.  

The reason I have chosen to study “International Facility Management” is the fact that I don’t want to study business only and manage people from behind a desk.  I like to work together with other people and see that my efforts bear fruit. In addition to that, the international classes and the programs taught in English are not very common in Germany, my home country. This degree program offers a wide variety of activities and fields I can specialize in. That was certainly a big plus when I decided to go to the Netherlands. Studying in Holland is slightly different compared to being a student in my home country. The education involves a lot of group work where I work actively on projects with my class mates. So the learning process does not only consist of memorizing literature. Personally, this has been an important factor when I decided to come to the Hanze as well.

The first time wasn’t always easy for me, because the teachers with different cultural backgrounds have different attitudes towards teaching. Finally I think handling these kinds of incidents is also a good preparation for my future life. When you have to deal with people, processes do not always run smoothly. Furthermore I really appreciate the opportunity to study one semester in China. This will be a completely new experience for me and I am looking forward to it tremendously. After my study abroad, I will do an internship in a company, hopefully again in another country. The Institute of Facility Management has a big international network I can make use of, or I will simply find a company on my own.