Essex Apprentice 2011

“I think I have the potential to be “THE ESSEX APRENTICE” because I am willing to commit to projects, I am creative and I like seeing something I have started succeed. I like to improve on my business ability, testing my skills and putting my business intuition into practice” Dean Bardawil, Oct ‘11

James Thornton, Craig Stephens, Ashley Rudge, Camilla Thoresen, Dean Bardawil, Hentley Ignatius, Leonidas Basatis, Kunal- Patel, David Stanbury

After a month of hard work by the candidates, the Essex Apprentice has finally come to an end. A second year student in BSc Business Management, Dean Bardawil, proved his great business sense through various challenges and gained the title of the Essex Apprentice 2011.

Set up 2 years ago by the VP Education at the time, Saad Mohammed, The Essex Apprentice is a competition designed to improve the employability of the contestants by developing their marketing, business, problem solving and planning skills. At the same time the competition is geared around raising money for a charity.

This year 20 students were shortlisted to take part of the competition; they were divided into 5 teams competing in 3 different tasks.

For the first task the teams were asked to develop a marketing campaign and promotional strategy for a product sold in one of the Students’ Union outlets; they were limited to a budget of £50 and had to come up with innovative ideas in order to make the most of this money.

For the 3 teams that proceeded to the second task, the challenge was to carry out the marketing campaign that they had developed during the first week, with the aim of obtaining the highest return on the sales of their products. In total, the three teams managed to make a profit of nearly £600 from their sales on squares.

For the final task, the remaining 5 candidates were competing individually (with the help of volunteers) against each other. They were asked to fundraise for the Princes’ Trust Million Makers, moving themselves from the conventional fund raising methods and focusing on understanding the trust that they were raising money for. In total, £3029.68 was raised in one week, whereby the winner, Dean, raised 1/3 of this amount.

All in all the competition was a huge success; the candidates put such a great amount of time and effort into the challenges that were thrown at them, and truly did develop in terms of employable skills through participating in the Essex Apprentice.

Finally, a big thanks to the Vice Chancellor at the University of Essex, Colin Riordan, for making this years’ Essex Apprentice happening through his kind sponsorship of £2500 towards this year’s competition.