Stanimira Dimitrova's placement year success story

Second year BSc Business Management student Stanimira Dimitrova is about to start a whole new chapter of her life at Nissan UK.

We’ll be following Stanimira throughout her placement year at Nissan’s Maple Cross site in North West London but we caught up with her straight after she discovered she’d been selected for the prestigious placement programme.

Nissan Placement Programme

This is the greatest achievement of my whole entire life. I’ve secured a place on the Nissan placement scheme and I am going to be working for them for the next twelve months which is incredible.

I wouldn’t have done that without the help of the support services at Essex or without the help of Vicki Doughty (Placements Manager) helping me throughout the entire process. A lot of people were encouraging me and supporting me and it’s been an incredible journey.

I am so excited to move away for the placement year. I am buzzing. It’s like a whole new chapter of my life.

I am so excited to live in London for a year. I am not going to be in Uni for the year. I’m going to be working! I might have more free time so it’s going to be good. I’ll see how it goes but I am really excited.

Being an Essex Business School student

It’s an absolute honour to be part of Essex Business School.

It’s incredible and everyone here is so kind and they take out of their time to help you and to push you forward so it’s a great experience to be part of such a great community here. I love Essex Business School!

It’s been amazing, it gives you so many opportunities for so many great things and it’s not just for placement years. Everything, if you want to do a summer internship, if you want to do like everything is open to everybody. It’s been incredible. I’m so blessed to be here.

Studying as an international student

Coming to a different country to study was exciting. I didn’t know what to expect but I have been really enjoying it. I love my life here.

At the start I would say it was a bit of a challenge because I had never been to this country before so it was a major change in my life. I would say it was a bit stressful but then I came here and I felt at home and really warm and I didn’t feel like I was very far away from home. I felt like I was closer than I have ever been so I never had that homesick feeling.

I adapted really quickly to the atmosphere and to the routine of going to classes and lectures. It’s been a good experience and I am still enjoying it, I love it here.

BSc Business Management

I genuinely love my course. I was a bit sceptical about my first year because I was like “oh my gosh” we are learning all of these things that I don’t know much about and I was a bit confused but then second year came around and it was much more in-depth and focussed and I have modules which I truly enjoy.

I enjoyed the digital marketing and social media module. It was really eye opening into the digital world and the things that we are going through as a society and the way that each company is literally built online.

The digital marketing and social media lecturer, David MacGregor, is incredible. He has inspired me a lot because in our first lecture he introduced himself and he also introduced everything that he had been involved in and when people share their career paths it inspires me a lot and impacts on my mind-set and my decisions and it makes me consider what direction I want to go. He shared what he had studied and the companies he had worked for and how he got there. It was really motivational.

I also found the marketing and management module really interesting where we had the chance to build our own marketing plan from scratch. That was really interesting and exciting and I feel confident that I could do it on my own if I decide in future to open my own business.

I’m still considering my options for what I do after final year. If I go into working in a teamwork based role that requires an extravert with a communication element in a dynamic environment where I won’t be bored (I have to always have something to do) then I’ll work.

I haven’t decided yet what I want to specialise in yet so I don’t know about further study. I still have some time to think about it.

Best Essex experiences

There are so many experiences at Essex that I have enjoyed. I am currently doing two jobs on campus, one of my jobs is Employability Ambassador. Last year we had the Careers Fair and it was exciting to work for a major whole campus event. I was part of the promotion team so I was giving away flyers and then I was working at the event so it was incredible to see just how everything was working backstage and then how everything was delivered on the day.

I am part of the Christian Union society and one the biggest events that we organised was a Christmas Carol Service. It was an incredible experience being part of the organisational team and communicating with people and designing the flyers and I enjoyed every single minute of it.

I am also part of the Student Engagement Team here at Essex Business School and here we organise events for all of our students and one of the last events that we did was EBS taking over Rollerworld. That was really exciting. A lot of people showed up and everyone was smiling and everyone had fun so it was really good.

Career aspirations

My course has definitely changes my career aspiration because prior to studying here I was thinking of going into finance or maybe banking but now I am trying to explore opportunities related to marketing and I applied for positions which included marketing or with a major marketing focus.

I think the strategy side of marketing is something that definitely suits me because prior to my course I thought of marketing as just something where you have to have special skills which you apply but now I think that marketing is not just for people who think outside of the box but it is also for those who are more strategy based.

My motto

Treat everyone with kindness and love. Because I feel like one of the most important things is how we treat the people around us and it is so important in my opinion, to be kind to everyone and one of the challenges for humanity in general is treating kind the people who are not treating us so kindly and I feel like that’s something that I live by and apply in my life every day.