Business and MBA graduate Daniel shares his experience

With a desire to pursue a career in the business world, Daniel Collins chose to study BA (Hons) Business and Management at the University of Central Lancashire. He now works as an Implementation Consultant at Makepositive, where he works on projects to build or improve customer relationship management systems for large corporations using a software called Salesforce.

During his time at University, Daniel set up a start-up business called Impulse with other UCLan students. He aimed to build a technology solution to solve a problem for students living on campus. This led Daniel to starting his career journey, with business and technology at the heart of it.

Talking about the start-up, Daniel said: “We managed to turn our idea into a business. It was a real learning experience for us whilst studying and helped us to secure roles after graduating.”

After completing his undergraduate degree, Daniel went on to study a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at UCLan.

After leaving University, Daniel worked in Liverpool at an early-stage venture capital fund investing in tech start-ups and then left to take up his current role at Makepositive

Talking about how his experience at UCLan has had an impact on his current role, Daniel Said: “A lot of the things I learned whilst studying my degrees have merit when it comes to working full-time as a consultant.”

Recently, Dan spoke to current students at UCLan as part of an Alumni careers event series for Business and Management students. Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of our BA (Hons) Business and Management course, Dr Michael Summersall, said: “The event with Dan was brilliantly attended and the feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive. They loved how he made everything feel real and didn’t paint a picture that just focused on the positive, but really emphasised the journey he had been on.”

Michael continued: “Students noted how important it was to not be afraid to take risks and look outside of their degree for all the opportunities available at UCLan.

“The alumni event itself was one of a series of events that we put on to support students with employability skills, whilst at the same time giving our alumni community an opportunity to talk about their career journey. I can not emphasis enough just how important these events are and students really value the opportunity to hear from alumni about their experiences after graduation.”

When asked what advice he would give to those wanting to do something similar, Daniel said: “I would recommend that students try to do as many extra-curricular activities as possible. Currently there are so many students graduating with a degree and what will help to set people apart when applying for roles is to have engaged in other things beyond the degree.”