Vlerick Business School

Came here for an evening event and super glad made the effort, despite the horrid pouring rain on the actual day of the event! So this review is just for one event that I attended, hosted by Vlerick Business School as a networking/​recruitment tool, and have no idea what it’s like to actually be enrolled here!
I was sent an invite for the event by a Brussels expat group and while I understood some of the evening would be a hard-​sell and promotion for the school, the topic, which was «Negotiation lessons from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather» really grabbed me. I liked that it was about negotiation (cause we are constantly negotiating, not just at work, but also in our personal lives) and I liked that it was going to use a pop-​cultural phenomena and frankly also I wanted to know, what could a mafia family really teach today’s modern workforce about negotiation?
I was really taken aback by how many people showed up, despite the inclement weather, and barely got a seat in the easily 250 – 300 seat auditorium. The professor (can’t recall his name) was from South Africa, and while he was an academic, he was also a real-​life negotiation practitioner, working for the EU in the Balkan conflict and more recently with Russia and Ukraine. So with credentials established, it was a really thoughtful and interesting talk that followed for 45 minutes, after which we could ask questions for 15minutes. I took away a very valuable strategy about reciprocity in negotiation, which I have started using straight away, both at work and in my personal life (you will have to email me if you want to know what that takeaway is — not giving it away here!)
So after the talk, it was time to eat, network and check out the sponsorship tables — I had a lot of fun here, because the talk gave you a natural conversation entrée with strangers, and it was top-​notch food (Greek salad, vegetarian quiche, variety of hot pizzas) and drinks (wine, water, juice).
While I am not sure an MBA is the right path for me right now, I will def attend more of these events at Vlerick, as was very impressed with this talk. My one tip for event organizers would be that signage for the event could have been bigger/​better at the elevator bank, as that took me a while to figure out.