Enforex (Ideal Education Group)

Placement organization

Name of organization: Enforex (Ideal Education Group)
Town/city: Madrid
Country: Spanje
Website: http://www.enforex.com

Name of student: Yoline Muller

Specialist area: ITTI
Placement period: 2014-2015

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Spanish Language School
Organization’s activities: Enforex is one of the leading and prestigious companies specialised in teaching Spanish as a foreign language with 24 academic centres in Spain and Latin America. Each year Enforex welcomes more than 35,000 students of various ages and nationalities. The history of Enforex began in 1989 in Madrid as a Study Abroad agency in Spain “English Courses for Executives”. In 1992, a Language School in Madrid for local Spanish students has been opened to follow English, French and German courses, and in 1995 Enforex Spanish language school for foreigners was established. Since then the company has been rapidly growing and obtained prosperity by opening schools and summer camps in different cities of Spain and Latin America, signing partnership agreements with other schools, providing additional accommodation services and publishing its own course materials. From 2007 Enforex has been integrated into the Ideal Education Group (IEG) which is the leading organization specializing in teaching Spanish and one of the top five language organizations in the world. Ideal Education Group has been developed by Antonio Anadón in 2005 and he created further 25 sister companies under different trademark portfolios, of which Enforex and Don Quijote the most well-known are. Along with their extensive network of Spanish schools, IEG incorporates university placements, study abroad organizations, educational foundations, international summer language camps, accommodation placements and numerous other small businesses to support the group.
Target group of the organization: International University Students (30%), Adults (25%) Teenagers (20%)
Company culture: Informal
Friendly
Majority of people are Spanish
Most of them are around the 30 / 40 years old

Number of employees: 50
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Well to be honest in the contract were more tasks described than I actually had to work on. In this respect did the organization not totally meet the agreements we made beforehand. Besides that they do have meet the other agreements such as payment, holiday etc.

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? I am cooperating at the E-team department which is responsible for the online marketing
Brief description of your daily activities: The main tasks for me was to check the current company website on any written (Dutch) mistakes and to translate (from English to Dutch) a whole new section for their website.

Furthermore, I got some other marketing tasks from the manager of the marketing department in Malaga, because her intern did not came and therefore she had a lot of work to do. Tasks I worked on were to:
– Upload promotion videos on websites of agencies
– Fill in all the course information (prices, accommodation possibilites etc.) on website of different agencies
– Copy and upload statistical information about the customers in excel and in other special programs

However, as I just said, I got these tasks because of the fact another department of another company (Academia Columbus) had a lot of work to do. Probably the next intern who is going to work at this department would the main task be to do translations.

Brief description of your company assignment: I did a competitive analysis where I researched and analysed the 3 main competitors of Enforex.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Because of the fact my tasks were not very complicated I did not needed much supervision or explanation about the tasks. However, everybody in this company is very friendly and if you have any questions they are always willing to help you. There is a relax atmosphere, without much stress or hurry to finish something.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? independent, flexible
Additional company requirements for this placement? writing skills (as the main tasks is translations), SEO (knowledge about keywords)
English: Intermediate
Spanish: Basic
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: airplane, car, train, bus

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? internet (www.idealista.com)
How did you go to work every day? by foot (I lived 5 minutes from work) but if you live further away is the metro very easy to come verywhere.

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? No
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents: /
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? /
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance? /

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? No (it is not needed to do your job, however as not many Spanish people speak English would it be good of course to know the basics)

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 120
Accommodation (monthly): € 350 – 400
Local transport (monthly): € A public transport card for one month cost 35EUR (till 22 years) and 50EUR (23 years and older) However if you do not need the metro often you can buy a card with 10 trips for 12,20 EUR
General costs of living (monthly): € 300
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? 300 EUR per month
4-week Spanish Language Course of 2 hours a day

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
Did not prepare anything actually
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? No, it could be that people have to use to the working hours which were from 09:30 – 18:30, besides that nothing specials which would have influence my performance

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: yolinemuller@hotmail.com

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: I do not have specific recommendations regarding the work.
Maybe about finding a room. I found my room at www.idealista.com and had payed in advance already for my room so I was sure to have a room. However, there are mannyyyyy rooms available here in Madrid so what a lot of students do is sleep for the first day in a hostel and visit that day many different rooms so you can see the room and the neighbourhood first before you actually pay already for something where you are not sure about if it is good or not.
I was lucky that I had a very nice room, but I know another girl who would have prefer to book a hostel and made the choice here when she was in Madrid.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Madrid is a nice big city with a lot of leisure possibilities
– nice parks
– cultural things to see (palace, musea, nice buildings etc)
– different neighbourhood which each their own ´style´
– Old beautiful city Toledo which is 1 hour with the bus
– unfortunaltey no sea:p but there are swimming pools
– lots of nightlife possibilites, clubs,bars, everything!

It is definitly not a city where you will get bored.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link