Luke Joyce
The highlight of my time at Maynooth was joining the Snowsports Club where I met many lifelong friends. We travelled to a different country each year for a skiing trip.
Entrepreneurship Student of the Year 2019. Involved in GAA, Snowsports, Aussie Rules and Boxing clubs.
The community feel around Maynooth's campus is fantastic, everyone knows each other and there was always a great buzz about the place.
Modern business practices taught to me in different modules has allowed me to start my own business, while enjoying rapid growth, year on year. Learning to network with different students also gave me the know-how and social skills to network in my business life, which has been invaluable to me.
Do it! It's a great university with the perfect study-social balance. It was by far the most enjoyable few years of my life.
I started my own business during my studies at Maynooth and continued on with this business upon completion of my degree. I now own and operate this business - TheCleaningCompany.ie - and have multiple staff employed. We are an exterior cleaning firm (window cleaning, gutter cleaning, power washing etc.) who cater for both commercial & domestic clients. We currently operate in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath.
My career highlight to date would be the filming of our services by RTÉ for their Home Rescue tv show.
My current role involves the management of employees, marketing, admin and sales calls.
The most interesting and challenging aspect is learning to constantly adapt and change as the company grows. The changes can be very exciting, but also quite scary.. so it's a thrill!
I started the company.
Keep an open mind. Students and graduates need to expand their horizons when it comes to internships and career prospects. When I graduated, the vast majority of students were only interested in graduate programs with large, multinational companies. Although these are great graduate programs, I always felt there was far more value in learning the ins and outs of a job role/business by working in a smaller firm. However, I remember when students were choosing graduate jobs, they often scoffed at smaller firms they hadn’t heard of. I believe that working in a smaller firm offers much more value as you get into the nitty gritty of the firm and how each element runs, while getting a much broader understanding of small-medium businesses.