The prestigious career event, ‘De Delftse Bedrijvendagen’ (Delft Company Days), is supposed to serve the needs of all TU Delft students. But does it really? Many foreign students feel this mainly ‘Dutch-only’ event ignores them by failing to provide equal opportunities for securing future employment.
Delen
The 11th annual ‘Delftse Bedrijvendagen’ is the largest career event for engineering students in the Netherlands. The event is intended to serve as a meeting point for Master’s students and companies, universities and research institutes, which could result in future jobs, internships or graduation project positions.
From February to April, three separate events will be organized . Presentation Days, Workshops, and Interview Days. Recruiters from many renowned multinationals, such as Shell, McKinsey & Company, General Electric and The Boston Consulting Group, will be in Delft during the Presentation Days, hunting for talented TU students to hire for their firms.
The Presentation Days (February 14.16) will be followed by a series of Workshops (March 8-31), organized by various companies. In the workshops, students must solve on-the-job problems, which will help determine if the firm is the right one for the student, and vice versa. The Interview Days (18-28 April) then are the final days of judgment, when participating companies determine if students have all the qualities needed to join their corporate teams.
Experience and common sense show however that De Delftse Bedrijvendagen isn’t really an event that offers foreign students an equal opportunity for landing jobs. For example, of the 96 firms participating in the Presentation Days, only a handful have announced that they will present themselves in English.
The De Delftse Bedrijvendagen booklet, moreover, which is meant to attract students to the event, is published in Dutch only. “This means that although TU Delft is apparently an international university, foreign students are still expected to be pretty proficient in Dutch,” says Chintan Shah, a TU Management of Technology student from India. Given the increasing numbers of foreign students studying at TU Delft, the question is: Why aren’t De Delftse Bedrijvendagen organized to serve the needs of all TU Delft students?
According to Hugo Verwayen, secretary of De Delftse Bedrijvendagen organizing committee, the purpose of this event has always been to serve all students: “Participating companies are interested in students with the TU Delft brand, so it doesn’t matter what your nationality is. The companies nevertheless expect that foreign students are sufficiently proficient in English. And there are of course always companies that demand that their future employees be proficient in Dutch as well.”
Shah however argues that it’s unfair to demand proficiency in Dutch from foreign students who usually have only lived in the Netherlands for two years. “It’s extremely difficult for foreign students to learn Dutch in such a short time,” he says, “especially when you consider that our programs here are taught in English.” TU Delft moreover no longer provides foreign students with intensive Dutch-language courses.
Vital opportunity
Language isn’t the only and perhaps not even the most important stumbling block for foreign students interested pursuing professional careers in the Netherlands. Too often foreign students and employees alike have difficulties in arranging study or working permits. Shah contends that many companies are simply scared off by the long governmental procedures and extra efforts they must make to hire TU Delft’s foreign graduates: “The small to medium-sized Dutch firms are especially highly de-motivated by this.”
But Verwayen disagrees: “If a student has the competencies a company is looking for, the company would be more than willing to make a bit more effort to arrange the legal matters necessary. Either way foreign students are evidently disadvantaged by the long legal procedures, because with a foreign and a Dutch student of the same caliber the balance will, logically, topple to the Dutch side.”
Shah argues that this mindset “puts foreign students practically on the sideline” and he’s quite clear about the activities De Delftse Bedrijvendagen should and could undertake to really provide a valuable career event for foreign students: “The event’s organizers should show the companies the portfolios and numbers of foreign students studying at TU Delft. It’s also important to communicate to these companies that these foreign students are the ‘creme de la creme’ of the international job market, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been accepted by TU Delft in the first place.”
Shah says that if the TU is unable or unwilling to stimulate the majority of the companies to show equal interest in highly skilled foreign professionals, the university should at least make it easier for foreign students to focus on companies that are interested in them. Shah: “Why doesn’t the university clearly state in De Delftse Bedrijvendagen booklet which companies are explicitly looking for foreign students as future employees? This would make it easier for foreign students to focus on potentially interested companies and make it more appealing for us to participate in this event.”
Clearly a change in mindset is needed from TU Delft and the participating companies, as well as from the Dutch government. Shah says that the participating companies, despite being multinationals, recruit only for their Dutch branches, and not for their subsidiaries elsewhere in the world: “A career event like the De Delftse Bedrijvendagen is a vital opportunity for all TU Delft students to secure future employment, and TU Delft should therefore play a decisive role in ensuring that the event also serves the foreign students’ needs. Participating companies must not exclude our equal participation.”
Foreign students who nevertheless think they can convince companies to consider them for future employment should visit the De Delftse Bedrijvendagen website, where they can register (until February 11) for the various activities and apply for certain job openings.
De Delftse Bedrijvendagen: an unequal opportunity employer? (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
The 11th annual ‘Delftse Bedrijvendagen’ is the largest career event for engineering students in the Netherlands. The event is intended to serve as a meeting point for Master’s students and companies, universities and research institutes, which could result in future jobs, internships or graduation project positions.
From February to April, three separate events will be organized . Presentation Days, Workshops, and Interview Days. Recruiters from many renowned multinationals, such as Shell, McKinsey & Company, General Electric and The Boston Consulting Group, will be in Delft during the Presentation Days, hunting for talented TU students to hire for their firms.
The Presentation Days (February 14.16) will be followed by a series of Workshops (March 8-31), organized by various companies. In the workshops, students must solve on-the-job problems, which will help determine if the firm is the right one for the student, and vice versa. The Interview Days (18-28 April) then are the final days of judgment, when participating companies determine if students have all the qualities needed to join their corporate teams.
Experience and common sense show however that De Delftse Bedrijvendagen isn’t really an event that offers foreign students an equal opportunity for landing jobs. For example, of the 96 firms participating in the Presentation Days, only a handful have announced that they will present themselves in English.
The De Delftse Bedrijvendagen booklet, moreover, which is meant to attract students to the event, is published in Dutch only. “This means that although TU Delft is apparently an international university, foreign students are still expected to be pretty proficient in Dutch,” says Chintan Shah, a TU Management of Technology student from India. Given the increasing numbers of foreign students studying at TU Delft, the question is: Why aren’t De Delftse Bedrijvendagen organized to serve the needs of all TU Delft students?
According to Hugo Verwayen, secretary of De Delftse Bedrijvendagen organizing committee, the purpose of this event has always been to serve all students: “Participating companies are interested in students with the TU Delft brand, so it doesn’t matter what your nationality is. The companies nevertheless expect that foreign students are sufficiently proficient in English. And there are of course always companies that demand that their future employees be proficient in Dutch as well.”
Shah however argues that it’s unfair to demand proficiency in Dutch from foreign students who usually have only lived in the Netherlands for two years. “It’s extremely difficult for foreign students to learn Dutch in such a short time,” he says, “especially when you consider that our programs here are taught in English.” TU Delft moreover no longer provides foreign students with intensive Dutch-language courses.
Vital opportunity
Language isn’t the only and perhaps not even the most important stumbling block for foreign students interested pursuing professional careers in the Netherlands. Too often foreign students and employees alike have difficulties in arranging study or working permits. Shah contends that many companies are simply scared off by the long governmental procedures and extra efforts they must make to hire TU Delft’s foreign graduates: “The small to medium-sized Dutch firms are especially highly de-motivated by this.”
But Verwayen disagrees: “If a student has the competencies a company is looking for, the company would be more than willing to make a bit more effort to arrange the legal matters necessary. Either way foreign students are evidently disadvantaged by the long legal procedures, because with a foreign and a Dutch student of the same caliber the balance will, logically, topple to the Dutch side.”
Shah argues that this mindset “puts foreign students practically on the sideline” and he’s quite clear about the activities De Delftse Bedrijvendagen should and could undertake to really provide a valuable career event for foreign students: “The event’s organizers should show the companies the portfolios and numbers of foreign students studying at TU Delft. It’s also important to communicate to these companies that these foreign students are the ‘creme de la creme’ of the international job market, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been accepted by TU Delft in the first place.”
Shah says that if the TU is unable or unwilling to stimulate the majority of the companies to show equal interest in highly skilled foreign professionals, the university should at least make it easier for foreign students to focus on companies that are interested in them. Shah: “Why doesn’t the university clearly state in De Delftse Bedrijvendagen booklet which companies are explicitly looking for foreign students as future employees? This would make it easier for foreign students to focus on potentially interested companies and make it more appealing for us to participate in this event.”
Clearly a change in mindset is needed from TU Delft and the participating companies, as well as from the Dutch government. Shah says that the participating companies, despite being multinationals, recruit only for their Dutch branches, and not for their subsidiaries elsewhere in the world: “A career event like the De Delftse Bedrijvendagen is a vital opportunity for all TU Delft students to secure future employment, and TU Delft should therefore play a decisive role in ensuring that the event also serves the foreign students’ needs. Participating companies must not exclude our equal participation.”
Foreign students who nevertheless think they can convince companies to consider them for future employment should visit the De Delftse Bedrijvendagen website, where they can register (until February 11) for the various activities and apply for certain job openings.
De Delftse Bedrijvendagen: an unequal opportunity employer? (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
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