Over and Over

Hola, my handful of readers.

It's been pretty cold in Beijing with some slight snow fall, but nothing spectacular (thankfully). Perhaps that will come later in December or January.

Several months ago, I wrote a rather negative coverage on the MBA Career Development Center , and have been told that the Class of 2013 is also quite unhappy with them. However, I do need to admit and say that the CDC has improved quite a bit since last year - and if the uptrend continues, then the future classes of Tsinghua SEM will be in a much better position that my classmates and me.

What have they done? Well, before we get all excited, McKinsey and Goldman still don't recruit Tsinghua MBAs, average salary is still somewhat lackluster and terrible things still happen. But what have they done?

The Good

1. They've increased visibility with larger corporations that have in turn come to do MBA specific recruitment - BP, Nestle, and several Chinese banks as well as other corporations (I don't remember the exact names) have come on campus for MBA specific recruitment. That means, I don't have to sit around with 150 undergraduates listening to junior positions that are available and only to be told that they will consider MBA graduates but aren't really looking for any.

2. They've stepped up the resources - there is an additional person (Kathleen Zhang) on the CDC now who has a Canadian MBA who specializes in helping foreign MBA students. Well, I haven't gone to her for advice yet, and I probably will over the next month or so, but it's nice to know that there is a somebody specializing on foreign students.


The Bad

1. There was a huge fuss going around last week. A classmate of mine (who I personally know and worked with) was on the verge of getting a fulltime offer when somebody wrote a poison pen letter dissing him. Long story short, the firm withdrew the offer and told him no thanks. Unfortunately, the CDC says they can't do anything (or maybe, they're discussing it with the firm, but last I heard, nothing was done) and my classmate is basically screwed over.

Well, from what I heard, he could have possibly received a verbal offer, and while that is not binding, it shows very little class from the firm to rescind the offer based on a letter - I do hope that they had a stronger reason than that. Personally, I think my classmate is a great guy, smart, hardworking but a little shy with the ladies. But really, he's a good guy.


The Funny

1. In the past several company presentations I've attended, I can almost always count on a classmate to raise a hand and ask "So, when you talk about compensation, how much are you wiling to pay?" Or something to that effect. It's hilarious when you see the look on the recruiters' faces, a very wtf moment. I guess they never expected that they would be asked that upfront at a recruitment session - however, I think it puts everything into perspective, after all, students do want to know how much they're going to potentially earn and a decent firm should be able to give a range, unless they feel that they're going to pay very little and are too embarassed to say so.

But by and large, the recruiters will tend to hmm and uhmm. and say something to the effect of

i. You'll be getting a competitive package.
ii. It's a total compensation package, so look at the training and other "benefits and opportunities"
iii. And when finally pushed, they'll admit it's a local package.

But really, skip the bullshit. At this point, we've been to enough company presentations, talked to enough people and recruiters to know it's probably going to be a high end/hybrid local package. Why don't you just put the numbers on the table and talk instead of why it's still worth joining the firm?


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Dowster & Vagabond feat. Cat Knight & Dr. S - Over n Over

Failure

Most people, mainly do an MBA because for some reason, they believe that it'll give them opportunities that they didn't have before, because they would learn new things or even maybe because they will meet new people (network). But there's one thing that the MBA program (at least at Tsinghua) doesn't teach you.

How to overcome failure.

From day one, you're bombarded with case studies of companies and people, problems they faced and how they overcame them - or it's upt to you to analyse it and decide what's the best method they could have used to overcome it to achieve success. You're in competitions where nothing matters except getting the best score (sounds a lot like the GMAT). In the MBA world, winner usually achieves success and takes everything.

But unfortunately, in the real world. In the real world, failure happens - what happens when you fail? Sometimes you lose money, you lose a job, you lose a promotion, you even lose the girl. But the important thing is what did you do after the failure?

What went on in your mind the moment you realised you failed at something? How did you plan to overcome it? Maybe the lack in MBA education is that it doesn't address failure - comprehensively, or rather, at all. But yet, failure does exist, and it's a common thing. Especially in business. After all, how many tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of businesses and ideas/products/services fail each year?

We learn the many frameworks and theories that can be applied to remove risk and the unknown. That can be applied to better understand the situation, to develop a solution. But that is not full proof. People need to understand how to manage failure, perhaps even more so than how to be successful. As many articles have pointed out, failure is a great part of success - most people who are successful have failed at some point, but not all failures become successes - why? What differentiates somebody who is able to fail (sometimes repeatedly) but still get up and continue living and fighting for his future from somebody who fails, and just stays down?

We all want to be successful, but not everybody will be successful. Most of us will fail at some point, the question is, how do we manage our failures and become successful?

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Avicii - Penguin (Club Mix)
Randy Mortimer - Penguin (Club mix)

I prefer Randy's version. Anyway, most clubs are playing that. But they're both good songs.