Independent University Newspaper
Copenhagen Business School

Popular searches:

Independent University Newspaper

Copenhagen Business School

Occupied with the unoccupied: How to juggle a business, a part-time job and studies at the same time

You probably know the feeling. You’ve spent hours and hours writing the best application for the university course or job of your dreams. You’ve taken a good picture of yourself, and you’ve modified your résumé to make the layout look great, and you’ve sorted out the chronology of your former jobs. You send it and then...

News |   24. Jan 2019

Kasper Christensen

Journalist

… after a few days, you either receive a mail that says: “Thank you for your application. Unfortunately, we found another candidate…” or you just don’t receive any answer at all. You think to yourself: “If they just met me, and saw how well my skills match their needs, they would have hired me instantly”.

Well, you’re not alone – and this is one of the main issues of the application process that CBS students Emma Due Bitz and Mads Koch Petersen want to solve. They’ve each created their own start-up business that focuses on overcoming the obstacle of the application for many qualified candidates. CBS WIRE met the two ambitious administrators to talk about their start-ups, and how they manage to juggle being students and hard-working entrepreneurs at the same time.

The business of helping people to write about themselves

Mads Koch Petersen is 20 years old. He studies International Business at CBS and in addition to that, he runs the entrepreneurial company Mimer together with three of his friends. Mimer is an online platform that connects applicants with writers. If people want to apply for a job, a university course or a scholarship, they can get in touch with a writer who can write the application for them. To some, this might seem like bucking the system. But according to Mads Koch Petersen, the company helps solve essential problems with the written application as a gateway to job interviews.

“Usually, the daytime is reserved for study and work, and we work on Mimer in the evenings and on weekends. So we usually concentrate on Mimer from five o’clock till midnight,” siger Mads Koch Petersen, CBS student. (Photo: Mette Koors)

“For example, we had a woman last year who wanted to study to become a nurse. She was dyslexic and not good at writing. So we wrote her application and she got into the nursing school. She was an excellent applicant, and she had all the qualities that the school was looking for. But due to the difficulty she experienced as a dyslexic, she would have had problems getting in if she wrote the application herself,” Mads Koch Petersen says and continues.

“Therefore, the reason it’s important to solve our applicants’ problems with their applications is that schools, universities and employers may lose out on a very good candidate.”

But how can a company be sure that it’s a ‘real’ application and not just the work of a skilled writer who has made the applicant’s qualifications look more ostentatious than they should?

”We only communicate facts. We don’t make anything up. We just make sure that a person’s strentghs shine through. Look at it this way: How would a company assess someone if their skills did not come across in the application? We try to level the playing field,” Mads Koch Petersen points out.

Show, don’t tell

While Mads Koch Petersen and Mimer help applicants to describe their skills and competences to educational institutions and employers, Emma Due Bitz aims to help applicants show their abilities to potential employers.

“It’s been hard – and it still is, and you can’t have the same social life as your fellow students and friends. But working on Casefair this past year has given me so many great experiences,” says Emma Due Bitz, CBS student. (Photo: Mette Koors)

Emma Due Bitz is 23 years old and has a bachelor degree in International Business and Politics at CBS. Together with her boyfriend, Simon Gundersen, they founded the company Casefair that seeks to qualify the use of cases in the process of recruitment. This happens in a cooperation between Casefair and the companies that are looking for new employees. They design a case specifically for the recruitment process, which the applicants must solve to show how they would complete an assignment that is typical for the specific job.

According to Emma Due Bitz, there are several problems with job applications. They tend to have the same keywords and say very little about the concrete abilities the person has. It also takes a lot of time to write and read an application. Therefore, Casefair seeks to break away from the standard application by replacing it with a case as a gateway to job interviews.

“The problem about the application is that it says absolutely nothing about the candidate. A lot of applications are also very standardized: We all write them in the same way, we’ve all learnt which words to use – you have to be ‘detail-oriented’ and a ‘team player’,” Emma Due Bitz says and continues:

“At the same time, a lot of applicants reuse their applications for different jobs or spend too much time on thinking about what the employers want to hear, which has very little to do with the job. Therefore, all in all, the application doesn’t possess much value. So what we want to do is to make better use of the time spent. With a case, you have the opportunity to distinguish yourself from other candidates by showing how you would solve a task that is relevant to the job.”

But how do you prevent cases from becoming just as homogeneous as the standard application?

 “The individual case reflects the job the candidate is applying for. It showcases the unique aspect of what it means to work for this company in a specific role,” Emma Due Bitz explains.

How to manage business, studies and life

Working nine to five, as country singer Dolly Parton put it, doesn’t quite cut it if you want to study and be an entrepreneur at the same time. However, Mads Koch Petersen and Emma Due Bitz have found a way to juggle everything.

According to Mads Koch Petersen, it’s difficult to find time to keep up with studies while running a business. Especially when you need to have a part-time job to supplement your SU and make a living. But he and his three colleagues have found the right recipe to make it work.

“Usually, the daytime is reserved for study and work, and we work on Mimer in the evenings and on weekends. So we usually concentrate on Mimer from five o’clock till midnight.”

So what about sports and going to parties and stuff like that?

“Well, we don’t want to miss out on the parties, but sports has unfortunately been neglected these last couple of years. But obviously we have to say no to certain things because there are only 24 hours in a day. However, we manage quite well, I think.”

Even though Emma Due Bitz is very hard working and ambitious, juggling a part-time job, a company and her studies has been tough. Last year, aside from work and studies, she was writing a book and was also occupied with Female Invest – an investment organization for women. It all became too much, so she quit her job and went on vacation. She came home six weeks later and started Casefair. Today, she has found a way to structure her time, although it’s still not an easy task.

“It’s been hard – and it still is, and you can’t have the same social life as your fellow students and friends. But working on Casefair this past year has given me so many great experiences and I’ve learned so much that I would gladly do it all over again.”

A big and bright future

Although being an entrepreneur is hard and takes up a lot of time, things have been going pretty well for Casefair and Mimer lately. In September, Mimer won first place and 75,000 DKK at the CBS Startup competition, and Casefair has become Growth Partners with CBS this year. The future looks bright for the two start-up entrepreneurs who are both planning to expand their businesses.

“We want to get more customers and show how Casefair can create value for both the applicant and the employer,” Emma Due Bitz says. Mads Koch Petersen and his fellow founders also want to expand their business.

“We want to increase the number of products to include scholarships and we want to focus on corporate copyright. Then we want to go international at some point as well. But let’s see when that happens,” he says with an ambitious tone and a cheerful smile.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Occupied with the unoccupied: How to juggle a business, a part-time job and studies at the same timeby

  • News

    Staff layoffs: What happens if you’re fired

    The clock is ticking. On Thursday morning (5 October), CBS employees will know if they are up for dismissal or not. But what will happen on the day? What emotional stages are you likely to encounter? And who will be there to pick you up when you are feeling the blow of being laid off? CBS WIRE has talked to HR and the consulting agency Actief Hartmanns to provide you with answers.

  • News

    Network, network, network – CBS graduates advise on getting your first job

    There are many approaches to finding your first job. Three recent CBS graduates talk about how they landed theirs. Their approaches were quite different, yet they all highlight networking as a key element.

  • News

    A-Z of the dismissals

    In these final days of September, the fate of a number of CBS employees is being decided. The final amount of money saved on salaries via voluntary severance agreements (aka redundancy packages, Ed.) and senior agreements will be known.  After this, the actual number of employees up for dismissal will be decided by management – and then the individuals will be selected.

  • News

    Layoffs break the crucial trust between organisation and employee

    CBS is laying off a number of employees soon, which will affect our university in different ways. When employees are fired without having done anything wrong, it shatters the trust between the organisation and employees, while also taking a toll on productivity, according to a CBS expert. Layoffs also affect the ‘survivors’, who are forced to adapt to a changed workload and the loss of cherished colleagues.

  • News

    Here to help – at the touch of a button and at Campus Desk

    Exam anxiety? Lost student card? I’ve wedged my car between a Fiat 500 and a lamp post, can you help? You never know what you’ll be asked next. But that’s just how the Campus Desk team like it. And if they can’t fix your problem, they’ll know someone who can. CBS WIRE asked the team about the whole range of topics they advice on every day.

  • Gif of the week
  • News

    CBS Quiz Time: Unraveling the success story

    A successful university environment such as CBS is often associated with academic pursuits, but campus life extends far beyond the classroom. At CBS Quiz Time, a student society motivated by creative thinking and social engagement, students join in a refreshing range of creativity, excitement, and social interaction. CBS WIRE talked to Celine Møller-Andersen to find out about the society’s vision, strategies and the factors that are driving its rapid expansion.

  • News

    Why so sudden? The CBS financial crisis explained

    Employees and union representatives have posed many questions in the wake of the 17 August announcement of a firing round. In this interview, University Director Arnold Boon explains how Senior Management has been working with the budget and a change of financial strategy since the fall of 2022, and why layoffs are now necessary.

Follow CBS students studying abroad

CBS WIRE collaborates with Videnskab.dk

Stay connected

Close