Darren Budd from BSF

Darren Budd visited the University to talk to us today, Darren is the commercial director of BSF and came to talk to us about his experience, what BSF do and our own careers.

He gained a degree in chemistry and decided to move his career into venture capitalism where he studied five years in Germany. After that he started working for BSF where he progressed within the company to become commercial director. He informed us that BSF is a materials company and that they produce products that apply to everything from the fabrics making our seats to treated photo paper.

He gave us an example of how science and business meet. He told is that BSF worked on making a beer bottle that was blue, traditionally beer bottles need to be protected from UV light to keep it at a good quality, the coating that protects from UV light is brown but they needed to create one that was blue. This is where the business side comes into play, they needed to create the blue coating because women who were surveyed said they didn’t like drinking from a brown beer bottles but would if it was a more pleasant colour like blue.

He tried to engage with the class by asking what we wanted and then specifically chose a student and asked what they wanted do to after the course had finished, I said that it was a bit harsh to put her on the spot like that and he replied by saying that this will happen to us in the science and business environment. This is a fair point and although it feel awkward being put on the spot like that it is something we have to get use to outside of academia. Steve made a reassuring comment that at this time in his education his aim was to go see Barcelona play and at the summer did someone’s patio so that’s reassuring to know that someone as professional as Steve was in that place.  

This developed into careers advice which is always helpful. Darren suggested that we consider all careers in science and especially outside of science. Being open to working in various areas in science will increase our opportunities. He also put an emphasis of working outside of science like banking or insurance, doing a science degree reflects that we have good skills because the course is so demanding technical and that we will have skills that a lot of industry’s will find desirable.

We were told that though there is demand for scientists the competition is fierce and that it’s important to try and stand out from the crowd like having experience and they recognise the skills from previous experience and value people who have worked in STEM. Finally he said that basic skills like learning to interact with people one to one and having good communication skills and making eye contact is extremely important. I found this talk interesting that because Darren is such a highly promoted professional and information from his perspective is always insightful, while I didn’t like the idea of putting people on the spot about our ambitions it is some thing we will have to be use to and it gives us some thing to think about in terms of our ambitions, he provided good careers examples and interview techniques which is always good to have.