Who is it for?
Successful candidates will be resilient self-starters with a proven record of self-motivation and self-discipline. In addition, they will demonstrate:
- Strong oral and written communication skills, including effective presentation skills.
- The ability to quickly establish effective internal and external working relationships with key people across different services/functions.
- Strong commercial acumen - the ability to identify opportunities and to follow these through to completion by working with others and discovering to the best way to achieve results.
- Project management skills – the ability to schedule and manage time and resources; maintaining a project management plan for communication and review at all times;
- A strong passion for pursuing an export development career in the food, drink and horticulture industry.
Other considerations
- It is a requirement that the Fellows are willing/able to live in a foreign country, and travel in-market at short notice and sometimes where public transport may be limited.
- These programmes offer executives with approximately 2-6 years previous professional experience an amazing opportunity. Participants learn and develop across a broad range of professional competence and knowledge requirements that equip them for a future career with the Irish food industry.
- Candidates who already have significant more years previous professional experience have less opportunity to learn from the programme's activities and are encouraged to contact UCD Smurfit Executive Development to discuss other more suitable programmes.
- When on the programme, successful applicants cannot earn income outside of their bursary payments from UCD/ Bord Bia.
- UCD/ Bord Bia cannot commit to securing visas for candidates.
- UCD/ Bord Bia cannot provide financial support to members of family or partners who may be accompanying successful candidates going on placement.
Check out our recent webinar and get an insight from our current and past participants on their experience on the programme and the career opportunities upon completion of the programme: