How Automation Helped These Students Jumpstart Their Careers

One of the biggest challenges college students face these days is getting work experience in their field before graduating. 

Sadly, it’s not rare to hear about students struggling to find a job after graduation. In a time where companies are also struggling to hire this shouldn’t be happening, but it is. 

Fortunately, some universities around the world are taking action to remediate this situation. 

A good example is the case of Germany’s Bremerhaven University and its “Founding, Innovation, and Leadership” program, which gives the students the opportunity to launch a real company and experience all the hard work involved in growing it. 

This is one of the reasons why we’re excited to share this story with you. 

The other reason is that some of the students in the program are using Make to drive their businesses forward, and finding great success at it too.

Let’s take a look at their story, and how Make plays a central role in it.

Solving real problems with real tools

Bremerhaven’s University program is an innovative entrepreneurship course that encourages students to create a company and solve real problems for real clients. 

On top of learning business theory from professors, students can put their newly-acquired knowledge in practice by launching a business of their own, which is what five Bremerhaven students - Christian Eva, Daniel Pischang, Jeff Ho, Francis Müller and Hakim El Khoumssi - did.

After analyzing the market, they decided to launch a digital services company focused on helping German businesses become more efficient through automation.

“We automate and digitize monotone processes in small and medium businesses, and turn paper-dependent companies into fully digital, efficient ones”, said Christian Eva. “We mostly work with regional temp agencies, because they often need help with digitization and automation. To automate the processes we use Make, but also other no-code tools like WordPress and Jotform”. 

This is another proof of how our platform empowers people whose competitive disadvantages (such as the lack of professional work experience) have put them between a rock and a hard place. 

So, how are the Bremerhaven students using Make, and what was their automation journey like?

Automation: The word is out

According to Christian Eva, it was a fellow student who inspired them to use Make to solve the problems local businesses are facing. 

“Through automation, we started to recognize problems we did not see before. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities that we did not know it existed”, said Eva.

Their first project consisted in automating a cumbersome HR process for one of their customers: Managing sick and annual leaves. 

As it turns out, their customer was using paper and spreadsheets to process leave requests, and spending too much manpower and time at it.

The solution was to create a dedicated internal website for the company. Every employee would receive his/her own login data and do the following:

• Record timesheets and send them to the employer

• Apply for vacation leave and check how many vacation days are available

• Report sick, and upload a sick note from the doctor

• Download important documents and guides

• Check important company news and messages

Thanks to Make, all those processes are completed automatically. 

At the same time, the customer receives every input in real-time instead of having to wait for days (like they used to).

For the students, the result led to a realization.

“Once we saw the automation working, we were astonished by the speed and impact it had on the company”, said Eva. “It was a great feeling to see a happy business owner - just being poured in gratitude by automating old-fashioned processes is the best feeling”.

A better chance at business and life

By offering this program, Bremerhaven University is doing what every college should: Give their students a better chance at life.

In addition, Make is fulfilling its promise of helping companies of all sizes to grow and scale like never before. 

Christian Eva illustrates it better than anyone:

“We had no real business before automation. We started a lot of things, like building websites or offering online coaching programs, but nothing really worked out for us, until we heard of no-code tools and automated processes”.

Most importantly, every college and university in the world has the opportunity to drive similar efforts thanks to the Celonis Academic Alliance.

As it happens with business and education, all it takes is willpower - and a little love for automation.