From students to consultants, three days with pupils at IES Simancas secondary school

Two fourth-year students spent time with us to see how we work and to think about their future careers

For the past nine years, the Community of Madrid’s Department of Education has arranged the Fourth-Year+Company program in which students visit companies to learn more about the job world and begin guiding their future careers.

This year, Nae welcomed two students from IES Simancas secondary school, Alberto and Erick, who spent three days with us. They managed their time with us in the best way possible by arriving on time and taking on assigned tasks with a positive attitude. They were fully committed in their efforts and used all the tools available to produce tangible results.

Since Nae provides technological and business consultancy, the proposed task consisted of creating a benchmark of autonomous communities in order to select the most suitable ones for creating an online business that distributes fresh goods locally (like Amazon and groceries).

Alberto and Erick consulted a number of public sources, defined a synthetic index based on several magnitudes, entered the time variation dimension of the indexes, performed graphic analyses, and selected the target autonomous communities. As the last step, they defended their report before the client, which turned out to be a kind one because it was me. Like good Nae consultants, they produced a tangible result focused on action in the form of two presentations.

I rarely have the chance to interact with people beyond my professional circle, so as the mentor of Alberto and Erick during these three days, I was surprised by their ability to understand quantitative analyses and the logical process used for decision making. I was also impressed with their skills in using tools such as Excel and PowerPoint for their work.

The entire Nae team has shown its interest in the program and actively contributed towards integrating the students in the office. Many colleagues have expressed their willingness to participate in the activity. I am convinced that this will continue to be the case in years to come.

Over the course of three days, we have witnessed two parallel worlds that rarely intertwine and have had the chance to get to know each other better. I am certain that we will all remember this experience well as the days pass.