Building A Career In Europe: Why Real Business Exposure Matters Now More Than Ever

For international MBA candidates seeking careers in France and across Europe, professional networks, employer visibility and real-world experience can be just as important as classroom learning. Through job shadowing, company projects, hackathons, and direct engagement with business leaders, the EDHEC Global MBA helps participants build both.

Every year, professionals from North America, Latin America, Asia and beyond arrive at EDHEC with a similar ambition: build an international career in Europe.

The challenge is rarely academic. Most candidates already possess strong professional credentials and years of experience. The real question is how to develop the network, market understanding, and employer exposure needed to navigate a new professional environment.

The EDHEC Global MBA addresses that challenge through an experiential approach to learning. Alongside strategic business foundations, participants work directly with companies, executives, entrepreneurs, and recruiters throughout the program. From job shadowing and consulting projects to hackathons and company treks, the objective is simple: create meaningful opportunities to engage with the European business ecosystem before graduation.

“Moving to another country is an upheaval that extends far beyond the simple change of address. It’s also a radical change in your perspective, your network and often your ambitions,” says Sandra Richez, Program Director of the Global MBA.

She speaks from personal experience.

“Having moved from the United States to France myself, I understand how transformative an international experience can be. Building a career in a new country presents unique hurdles, strong qualifications aside; it also demands exposure to businesses, meaningful professional relationships and the confidence to operate in unfamiliar environments.”

According to the programme’s latest Career & Professional Development Report, more than half of its Global MBA graduates changed location, 79% changed function, and 33% completed a triple jump across geography, industry and role.

“That is why things like experiential learning play such a central role in the EDHEC Global MBA,” Richez concludes. “Our role is to create an environment where those experiences happen, and where talented professionals can be empowered to transform international ambition into tangible, long-term opportunity.”

WHY REAL BUSINESS EXPOSURE MATTERS WHEN BUILDING A CAREER IN EUROPE

For international candidates, entering a new job market often means learning a new set of professional norms, expectations, and networks.

An MBA can provide that business knowledge. And yet, building a career in Europe requires something more practical: understanding how organizations operate, how leaders make decisions, and how opportunities emerge.

That is where experiential learning plays a central role.

For EDHEC Professor Karin Kollenz, action learning means “using real cases, life cases, things that are happening in business right now.”

Companies bring projects that reflect their current priorities, whether those involve sustainability, AI, growth, transformation, or operational challenges. Students are expected to move beyond theoretical analysis and deliver recommendations that organizations can genuinely use.

“The projects that companies give us are often projects that are kind of, you know, what’s on the top of the list right now in terms of concerns that companies have,” explains Professor Kollenz.

The result is an MBA experience that keeps participants connected to the realities of business throughout the year. Rather than waiting until graduation to engage with employers, students begin building those connections from the moment they arrive in Nice.

CONNECTING MBA PARTICIPANTS WITH EUROPEAN COMPANIES AND BUSINESS CHALLENGES

The EDHEC Global MBA integrates experiential learning throughout its 10-month format.

Participants take part in live company projects, the Sustainable Impact Challenge, company treks, networking events, the Global MBA Hackathon, tailored MBA projects, and job shadowing opportunities. Each experience develops a different skill set while increasing exposure to organizations operating across Europe and beyond.

Professor Kollenz sees these experiences as one of the program’s defining strengths.

“It’s already a really intense program but then beyond being intense in terms of the duration and the number of courses that you’re taking, now it’s that you’re kind of in the driver’s seat.”

Students are regularly asked to tackle strategic questions for organizations, often before they have even completed their MBA.

“You’re sort of like put right in front of employers, right in front of companies that maybe one day will be your clients, maybe one day will be your employers.”

For candidates hoping to work in Europe after graduation, those interactions create valuable opportunities to build confidence, visibility, and credibility in unfamiliar professional environments.

ACCESS TO EUROPEAN LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE VIA THE GMBA’S JOB SHADOWING INITIATIVE

One of the most distinctive experiential learning opportunities within the EDHEC Global MBA is job shadowing.

Each year, selected participants spend five days alongside a senior executive, observing leadership in action and gaining direct exposure to organizational decision-making.

For Global MBA participant Melba Melton, the experience became a defining moment in her transition from U.S. public-sector law to European business.

Before joining EDHEC, she spent nearly a decade as a government ethics and compliance attorney, most recently advising more than 130 federal agencies on governance, anti-corruption standards and financial disclosure requirements.

She joined the MBA with a clear objective: exploring how that expertise could translate into a governance role within the European private sector.

“I did not want a theoretical MBA,” she says. “I wanted one that would get me into rooms I could not otherwise access.”

That opportunity arrived through a week of job shadowing with Bucherer, the international luxury retailer.

The experience offered a front-row seat to leadership discussions around hiring, expansion, budgeting and organizational priorities. More importantly, it revealed how strategic decisions are actually made.

“I learned that the most substantive work happens in the margins. Not in formal presentations, but in how a question gets reframed before a decision is finalized; in the dynamic between people in the room; in the instinct to slow down on certain things and move quickly on others.”

The experience also challenged her understanding of the skills required to succeed in a private sector leadership role.

“The Bucherer week sharpened it considerably. I went in with a clear target role: compliance and governance in a private sector context. But I came out with a better sense of what I would actually need to become to be useful in that environment: someone with legal rigor, yes, but also commercial awareness and the ability to build trust across organizational boundaries.”

For international candidates seeking careers in Europe, those lessons can be difficult to acquire through classroom learning alone.

HOW LIVE PROJECTS CREATE VISIBILITY WITH EMPLOYERS AND ENTREPRENEURS

The Global MBA Hackathon and other live consulting projects provide another route into the business community.

Every year, MBA participants work on strategic challenges submitted by major companies and growing start-ups. Teams analyze the problem, develop recommendations, and present their solutions under tight deadlines.

For companies, the experience offers fresh perspectives. For students, it provides direct contact with decision-makers and exposure to real business priorities.

One company that experienced this first-hand was PropTexx, an AI-powered proptech [real estate technology] start-up.

CEO and Founder Steffan Gunnarsson partnered with EDHEC MBA participants to explore new growth opportunities and revenue models for the business.

His expectations were quickly exceeded.

“After having worked with the students here, I’m impressed with the quality of the brain power in place.”

He was equally impressed by their ability to connect theory with practical business thinking.

“Practicality kicks in because they’ve been exposed to practice and you feel that.”

The project generated both validation and new ideas for the company. Students explored potential expansion markets and provided insights that the leadership team had not previously considered.

“There was a lot of deep dives into what markets would be the best ones and why these markets would be good for us and these are things that we did not know.”

The collaboration proved valuable enough that Gunnarsson began exploring additional opportunities to work with EDHEC.

His conclusion reflects the value that MBA participants can bring to organizations.

“If any other company is wondering how to get an outside view, 360 angle view about their business, I don’t see a better fit than a group of students with a good understanding of business.”

For students, projects like these demonstrate their capabilities in front of potential employers while building practical experience they can draw upon during interviews and networking conversations.

BUILDING EUROPEAN BUSINESS EXPERIENCE BEFORE GRADUATION

The Sustainable Impact Challenge offers another example of how experiential learning supports career development.

Working in teams over three months, participants tackle real business issues presented by organizations ranging from start-ups to multinational companies.

Students define project scope, conduct research, engage with stakeholders, and present strategic recommendations. Along the way, they develop leadership, communication, teamwork, and problem-solving capabilities in a practical setting.

Professor Kollenz believes these experiences leave a lasting impression because students are responsible for delivering outcomes that matter to actual organizations.

“Taking real applied learning or applied learning cases and situations really helps the learning stick when you’ve really exercised all the different areas of analyzing research and actually doing and putting it into action for an actual company.”

The challenge also provides participants with concrete examples of impact they can discuss with future employers.

Rather than describing what they learned in a classroom, students can demonstrate how they applied that knowledge to a genuine business challenge.

FROM MBA CLASSROOM TO EUROPEAN CAREER

Building a successful career in Europe requires more than strong academics.

It requires professional relationships, market awareness, cultural agility, and the ability to demonstrate value in unfamiliar environments.

The EDHEC Global MBA is designed with those realities in mind.

Whether through a five-day job shadowing placement, a live consulting challenge, a company trek, a hackathon or a strategic project, participants spend the year connecting what they learn with where they want to go next.

For Professor Kollenz, continuous exposure to business is what makes the experience distinctive.

“There’s really very little place to hide.”

Students are expected to contribute, engage, and take ownership of their development from the outset.

For many graduates, those experiences become steppingstones to entirely new careers, industries, and countries.

The numbers reflect that impact. More than half of recent graduates changed location, nearly four in five changed function and a third achieved a triple jump across geography, industry and role.

For professionals considering an MBA as a pathway into France or the wider European market, real business exposure is not simply an added benefit.

It is often the bridge between ambition and opportunity.

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