Fourth year International Business and Modern languages student, Andrew McEwan, is currently on exchange in Mexico City.
While over there as part of his course, he successfully won an internship. Elaine Collinson, director of undergraduate international programmes, said, "This clearly demonstrates how well we are preparing our students for the challenges they face in working in international business settings and developing their cultural awareness."
Andrew explained, "At ITESM, there are many opportunities to integrate the academic theory that one learns at University with "real world" application. During my second semester, I took advantage of this with an internship in a communications agency and by taking a class called "Cátedra Empresarial (Business Seminar) Grupo Bimbo".
"Grupo Bimbo is virtually unknown in Scotland but in Latin America, Bimbo is as well known as Coca-Cola. With a 90% share of the bread market in México, and a strong presence in the US, China, Spain, Portugal and every country in Latin America, Mexicans grow up with the brand. The company has diversified into crisps, sweets & biscuits to such an extent it is difficult to buy a snack in México without it being made by Grupo Bimbo.
"The class not only made me aware of this, but a different director from the company came each week to give a seminar (of three hours) on his/her aspect of the business. From the business culture to metrics to distribution to strategy formulation to internationalisation strategies to how weekly board meetings were run, we gained an insight into how business was done in the company. We were put into multi-disciplinary teams and our task was to come up with new strategies for objectives that they set us. My team's objective was to create strategies to increase the growth of biscuit sales by 4% within Mexico City by 2015. Other teams had projects for the bread sector and projects to improve internal communications within the corporation.
"As a multi-disciplinary team, we could all contribute our strengths. Fortunately, due to my work experience in the communications agency, I was able to contribute more than I expected to during the rather intimidating first seminar. Both experiences helped improve my Spanish, especially my business vocabulary, as well as my marketing knowledge.
"As the only multi-cultural team, we had the added challenge of integrating different working styles and priorities. This was, for me, the most challenging aspect of the project. I found myself re-reading notes from the "Managing Across Frontiers" class I took at Strathclyde in order to understand and work through the differences that we had and I learnt a lot as a result. Being in the same university for three years can lead to a sense of security about the way in which you work. Working with people from ITESM, Grupo Bimbo and the communications agency challenged my norms and made me reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the working styles that I came across, including my own.
"What, at first, impeded us, in the end strengthened our offering. As we progressed through the heats, quarter-finals & semi-finals, we gradually started working more efficiently with the help of our mentors. The finals were in the HQ of Grupo Bimbo in Mexico City in front of the directors where we gave our presentation in a mixture of English & Spanish and we were able to utilise evidence from Europe and the Americas to support our strategies. Our team won the competition and I have been offered an internship in Grupo Bimbo over the summer where I hope to build on what I learnt during last semester. It was an amazing experience to work with so many people and build my skills outside the lecture hall and it was exactly the sort of experience that I wanted when I chose to study IBML at Strathclyde".
Andrew has an online blog where he shares his experiences of his time in Mexico.