Today’s guest is Marek Vamberský, Marketing Manager at Unicorn University and a graduate of the bachelor’s programme in Business Management. Marek started working in marketing while he was still a student. He also gained experience in the HR team at Unicorn. Today, he combines the perspective of a graduate, a marketer, and someone who understands young people at the beginning of their careers. Marek, welcome to the podcast.

Hi.

Looking back today, why did you choose Business Management at Unicorn University at the time?

My decision was based on my previous experience. I attended a hotel school in Poděbrady, worked in gastronomy, completed internships in Switzerland, worked in London, and after graduating from secondary school, I spent a year in Canada. Things were going well there, I was progressing in my career, and I worked as a chef in the hotel restaurant The Kake in Banff National Park in Alberta. It was a great job, but over time I realised that I no longer wanted to continue in gastronomy. I didn’t want to work from morning until night, be on my feet all day, have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, and never have free weekends with my friends, especially since I’m not really a “party animal”. I realised that a more traditional nine-to-five office routine would suit me better—sitting at a computer in a high-rise building and coming up with ideas.

No one in my family has a university education, so I wasn’t sure at all whether I would be able to handle university. I was looking for a programme that would build on the foundations I had from secondary school—marketing, management, and accounting. I found the Prague University of Economics and Business and Unicorn, which was still called Unicorn College at the time. The Prague University of Economics and Business felt like a mass university to me, with hundreds of students in lecture halls, while Unicorn College offered smaller working groups, smaller classes, and closer communication with lecturers and teachers. It also had a marketing campaign built around a graduation ring, which was a strong motivator for me as someone who likes jewellery and watches. Another advantage was being able to do the interview online from Canada.

I saw it as a somewhat risky investment—I wanted to give it a try for the first year, with the idea that if it wasn’t for me, I wouldn’t continue. I wanted an education in economics and management, and that was what the school offered me. The paradox was that I only found out after starting my first year that Unicorn College was primarily an IT-focused school. I did have to catch up on maths, but more than 90% of the students were IT people, whom I had never really been around before, and that was a huge experience for me.

Did you already know during your studies that you wanted to move into marketing, or did your path develop gradually?

It developed gradually. I knew I was a good waiter because I could sell people a non-alcoholic Cuba Libre even when I had neither cola nor rum. That made me think my career might lead towards communication. My family is very practical, so if I wanted to live in Prague, I had to earn the money for it myself. In my first year, I found a part-time job in a shoe shop on Wenceslas Square. I enjoyed the job, but I wanted to move into an office environment and do something that involved more thinking than physical work.

In my second year, thanks to Ms Boháčová, who taught marketing, I realised that advertising appealed to me—the idea of figuring out how to communicate a message and describe a product in a way that makes people want to buy it. Through her, I arranged an internship at the McCann advertising agency during the filming of an online series for Maybelline with Monika Bagárová, where I worked as a runner. But I found that production was actually quite similar to gastronomy—at three in the morning, you can find yourself taking an Uber across Prague looking for a cymbal. During the shoot, however, I noticed the client’s marketing manager in a suit, sitting with a laptop and a coffee. That was when I realised I didn’t have to physically produce advertising—I could be the person coming up with it.

I also enjoyed helping the university at Gaudeamus fairs and Open Days, where Unicorn’s recruitment team had a stand as well. I told them I was interested in marketing, and eventually a position opened up for an HR Marketing Assistant. Step by step, I worked my way up to the point where I was helping develop the content for a new general video for Unicorn University and was involved in the filming itself. Every experience—even a bad one—is valuable because it shows you which direction you do not want to take. Thanks to that, I was able to focus during my studies on the subjects that had the greatest potential for my future.

What shaped you the most during your studies—professionally, academically, or personally—and did it influence your later career path?

What shaped me the most was being surrounded by students from IT programmes. People naturally see the world from within their own bubble—as a waiter, you see the chef and the restaurant manager; in a shoe shop, you see the sales assistant and the warehouse worker. At university, I suddenly found myself among IT people, and that really broadened my horizons. I realised that in a real company, it is not just about sales—there is always someone building the website, managing databases, communication, mailings, marketing, budgets, accounting, and strategy. I understood that a company’s communication needs clear rules so that everything does not become inconsistent and fragmented. I also realised that every role requires a specific skill set. Some roles are more extroverted, others more introverted, but everyone has to pull in the same direction as one team. I still carry this broader perspective with me today.

What from Business Management turned out to be genuinely useful in practice, even if you may not have realised it while you were studying?

The practical exercises and workshops within the courses were very useful. We had to work in teams, create strategies and budgets, prepare assignments for IT specialists, and wrap the whole project in a business framework. The lecturers were professionals from practice, so they were able to give us continuous feedback on why something would or would not work and what needed to be added. As a result, our outputs were genuinely applicable in practice. Some of my classmates even started building their own businesses through these workshops. They put together teams for marketing, operations, and finance and created functioning companies.

Is there anything that real work taught you differently—or more harshly—than university did?

Definitely. At university, you are in a theoretical and somewhat abstract environment where you can set facts and figures in a way that makes sense and works on paper. In a real company, however, you encounter things that go beyond theory—for example, company culture and the human factor. People have different personalities and require an individual approach: with a more sensitive person, you need to take things step by step, while with someone who has a “no bullshit” attitude, you can get straight to the point. In marketing, there are brand guidelines, a specific communication context, or changing target groups. A three-year bachelor’s degree is simply too short for someone to get to the very core of everything. What often surprises people most in practice is that they have to deal not only with marketing and advertising themselves, but also with getting along with colleagues, leading a team, and working effectively with management.

When you talk to students or applicants today, where do you think they most often underestimate the difference between studying and real work?

Students tend to think that if they learned something at university and got a top grade for it, they fully understand it. In practice, however, it is difficult to accept that the best possible process cannot always be implemented immediately. Sometimes you need to take a thousand small steps before things start working properly. You have to come into a company, understand its context, and adapt your knowledge to reality. You cannot simply push your know-how regardless of the company’s size, industry, market, target audience, available systems, budget, or location. That requires a huge amount of patience, which people fresh out of university do not always have.

What would you recommend to Business Management students who want to gain as much of a head start in practice as possible while they are still studying?

Start working while you are still at university—through internships, part-time jobs, or other work experience—and continuously compare theory with practice. At the same time, it is important to stay focused on your studies and not unnecessarily delay completing your bachelor’s degree. Be willing to adapt, step outside your comfort zone, try new things, and build up a broad range of experiences for the future.

When you look at prospective students today, what do you think they are doing right—and what should they think through more carefully before choosing a university?

It is great that applicants are using modern tools—AI, comparison platforms, discussion forums, and communication groups such as Discord or Facebook—to gather information. This helps them set realistic expectations, which increases the likelihood that they will successfully complete their studies from the first semester all the way through to graduation.

Who would you recommend the Business Management programme at Unicorn University to, and who do you think it might not be the right fit for?

I would recommend it to anyone who wants to pursue a career in economics and management and gain plenty of practical experience from professionals working in the field. One major benefit is the mandatory 550 hours of professional practice, which genuinely prepares students for the job market. The university is open to anyone who is willing to work on themselves.