Category Archives: Bradford School of Management

Bradford School of Management International Students

Sean at Bradford School of Management

Sean at Bradford School of Management

Every year for several years I have worked with Shahid Rasul and Christos Kalantaridis lecturers at Bradford School of Management challenging students to come up with ideas to problems faced by Webanywhere. Not only does this strengthen our ties with Bradford University and help their mission to ‘Make Knowledge Work‘ but there are real business benefits to working with Webanywhere outsiders.

It is true that executives and managers in businesses can suffer from not seeing the wood for the trees and young dynamic students with fresh thinking can challenge some of your original thinking.

Our work with Christos is particularly interesting as we developed an online Ideas Market  which now spans six international Universities two of which are in the Ukraine. Clearly, our online learning solution is much needed given the difficulties posed in the Ukraine and the disagreements between Russia and the West. Indeed, Christos is meant to be visiting another University in the Crimea but given the difficult situation this will no doubt have to be cancelled. The online Ideas Market place will continue to allow collaboration between University research groups irrespective of the political unrest and diplomatic strains.

My work with Shahid’s students has been equally enlightening. Two groups of students have been helping us with the challenge of global expansion. One group focused on our go to market strategy in the USA and another group focussed on issues around the business cultures between our three global offices in Poland, the USA and the UK. It was thoroughly enjoyable watching the students present back their findings at the School of Management.

Hopefully in a few years to come we can re-connect with the international students and who knows perhaps they will run Webanywhere in China!

Sean Gilligan speaks to Invest in Bradford

I would like to share with you a video I filmed recently for Invest in Bradford, an organisation that we are proud to work with as a fast growing business in our local community.

Here I outline some of the reasons for Webanywhere’s growth, and the role of local community community support in that growth.

From organisations such as Invest in Bradford and The Bradford University School of Management to individuals such as Tony Reeves, CEO of Bradford Council, and local MP Chris Hopkins, Webanywhere has benefited tremendously from the energy, resources and knowledge contained within our local area, and are proud to repay that support by creating high value jobs and opportunities.

As I mention in the video, we are fast approaching our 10th Anniversary – watch out for upcoming announcements on our birthday celebrations!

The Leaders of Tomorrow

I have written in the past about our fruitful relationship with the Bradford University School of Management, and would like to let you know about a fantastic project we have collaborated on recently.

Bradford University School of Management

Webanywhere linked up with a group of students at the School of Management looking at entrepreneurship. As part of their final project the students met with business leaders in the Bradford area to look at the real life challenges facing their organisations, and were tasked with creating solutions.

A major issue for Webanywhere at the moment is managing recruitment. We are growing fast with new vacancies being created all the time (check out our Careers page to see our current vacancies – as you can see there are plenty of opportunities for the best and brightest!). As a result, we set the students the challenge of how to recruit and retain employees who are aligned with our company values.

I hosted a visit from the group to our offices in Keighley, providing them with an overview of our history, our culture and values, and our goals for the future. Our HR team then worked closely with the group on the specifics of our recruitment process: the type of people we look for and the issues we face in ensuring we recruit those able to drive growth and innovation

The students interviewed staff face to face, sent out staff surveys, and compiled an incredibly insightful report featuring several eminently practical solutions to the challenges we face.

I was incredibly impressed with the results of our collaboration, and I was not the only one! This Telegraph and Argus article details the positive impact another group of students from the Bradford School of Management had on this year Positive Bradford campaign.

We will be keeping in touch with the group, as it contains some exceptional individuals with bright futures, who would fit right in here at Webanywhere. We are already working on a new project with web development students at the University on an interactive online recruitment tool – watch this space!