International Business

Depending on your career motivation and interest you choose one of the four specialisations: Supply Chain Management, Management & Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales or Business & Languages. For all specialisations, you can spend the third year abroad, with one semester at a partner university and one semester of work placement at a company.

• Supply Chain Management
During this specialisation you develop skills to streamline processes, with a focus on logistical aspects such as customer relationship management, IT, resources planning, operation management, control of good flows and warehouse management.

• Management & Entrepreneurship
Analysing and creating processes that enable companies to start or to grow is what this specialisation is about. You develop a keen eye for the role of personnel within organisations and the interaction between different internal and external stakeholders. You learn how to assess market opportunities and to set up a company.

• Marketing & Sales
This specialisation focuses on the main business and management factors that affect a company’s propensity to offer services or products that fit the demand of customers and clients. You learn how to use appropriate sales and negotiation techniques, how to develop a growth strategy and conduct market surveys in order to assess market opportunities and competition.

• Business & Languages
Here you concentrate on multi-lingual business environments in which intercultural communication is the main tool for achieving business and management goals. You prepare yourself for dealing with ever changing business settings in an international context by acquiring business knowledge and a high level of communicative skills, not only in English, but also in two other modern languages (French, Spanish, German or Dutch).

You spend 25% of your studies working at a company of your choice gaining practical experience: one semester in the third year and one semester in the fourth year. We expect each International Business student to spend at least one semester abroad during the minor, internship or graduation.

The first semester of the fourth year is dedicated to the completion of the knowledge and skills related to your field of specialization and to preparations for the graduation internship, which you will carry out in the last semester of your studies at HZ. You can also carry out the graduation research anywhere in the world.

After completion of your studies, you can work anywhere in the world. There is an increasing need for well-trained managers with international experience, as such, you’ll be a desirable candidate for companies all over the world. You’ll be able to work in positions such as international marketing professional, international market researcher, export consultant, purchasing manager and logistics.

With a HZ diploma you can continue with a Master’s programme. If you wish to do a Master at a research university in The Netherlands, you may be required to follow a pre-Master’s programme.

Pre-master's programme
HZ offers students the opportunity to take part in a pre-master's programme, allowing you a faster track to enrol in a master's programme at Tilburg University. This way you can obtain your acdemic master's degree in 1.5 to 3 years. After the selection procedure you will start a bridging programme in the fourth year of your Business-MER programme. You do this in Tilburg in preparation for enrolling in the desired master. If you want to participate in this programme, you must have passed your propaedeutic phase and have a weighted average of all examination marks of 7.0 or higher.

 Possible Masters with this Bachelor programme

•  Master in Information Management
• Master in International Management
• Master in Marketing Management
• Master in Marketing Research
• Master in Strategic Management
• Master in Supply Chain Management