Business cards

One of the first things I would advise you to do once in Brussels (or even before, as soon as you get the traineeship offer) is to make business cards. Especially if you want to get a job in Brussels after the traineeship, but also if you want to get a job in your country afterwards. In Brussels, whether while doing your job in the Commission, or after work by yourself, you will have plenty of opportunities to meet important people. People not only related to the European Institutions, but also people from the private sector, representatives of the Member States, workers of the Permanent Representations, etc. So you'll have plenty of situations to network and what I have noticed from the very beginning was that all of them would handle me a business card and I had none to give back. The Commission will not officially make them for you and, usually every year, the Stage Committee will make them for the interested trainees, for a small price. The disadvantage I see in this is that, in my session, the Stage Committee did these cards quite late in the traineeship (in June, I believe, when our traineeship started in March), the quality of the cards was not too impressive and then you end up with a card equal to the ones of hundreds of other trainees. From my experience, the week after my traineeship started I participated with my Unit in a summit where there were hundreds of other participants and representatives from all Member States. I went to talk to the ones from my country and they were all important people who seemed pleased to find a young professional from their country and speaking their language there and chatted with me for a while, namely, about what was I doing in Brussels. In the end, all of them handed me their cards and all I could say was that I would email them with my contacts. But I immediately felt like there was something missing from my part.

That was when I decided to order these from Moo. When I was in college I had an online shop where I sold stuff made by me and that's when I became acquainted with these mini cards and made some for myself. So for this time in Brussels, I went again for their services and was quite happy with the result. The price is higher than the Stage Committee ones, but nothing too expensive, in my opinion. They're about half of the size of a normal business card, so this is something unexpected that usually makes your interlocutor smile and notice when you handle them. I don't think too many people in the "Eurobubble" have them, so here's something unique for you as well. Plus, you can choose an image for them on one side (I chose the European flag for the business ones and the blog's header for the blog ones) and then your info on the back. I would advise you to indicate your personal email (and not the Commission one) in them, because that way people will still have your email to contact you once you finish your traineeship. Also, you can try to make them more "generic", as, in my case, I put my information as Commission trainee (with the name of the Unit and the DG), but I didn't hand all of the 100 cards I made during my traineeship period (also because I didn't focus so much on networking and didn't attend that many events for that purpose, I believe that if you're into that, you have plenty of chances of handling the whole 100 batch), so now I have a bunch of useless cards with outdated info. If you make them more generic with your personal contacts, they will always be of good use, even when you finish your traineeship. I made these online and shipped them to my Brussels' address (they didn't take long to arrive). I highly recommend this type of card, as the material and the picture's quality of them is quite good and I always noticed a good reaction from the people I handed them to from the fact that they're different. Then again, I would recommend you to make them even before coming to Brussels, as it happened in my case, you may start having opportunities to hand them from the moment you start your traineeship.