An initiator and a leader

Before entering the business school, I had the experience of leading a team. As a leader, I had all kinds of responsibilities in the team, such as assigning tasks to team members, supervising the team’s work and correcting errors whenever they happen, giving out suggestion to members for better performance, and so on. However, in this summer project, I realized what an initiator is. We have an independent task several members and I were responsible for. We did not elect a leader in this task and were quite self-ruled. However, it often happened that we still needed someone to stand out and “lead” a part of work. We are a newly-formed team, and did not know what everyone was good at, but different part of the task required different skills. Understanding the situation, I stood up and asked for responsibility for several parts of the task. This is the time when I felt very different for being an initiator and a leader. When you are a leader, you are assigned all the responsibility and roles in the team. You are required to do all the work. But as an initiator, nobody asks you to do anything. You do all the work just because you want the team to work well, finish the job excellently and help members as much as you can. If you do not keep the team in mind, you won’t take initiatives to take responsibility. In my understanding, a true leader will be someone who wants his/her team to work great, rather than someone else ask them to do so. They will not care about rewards from their hard work, and will take care of their team members for the purpose of the team, not personal benefits. A leader needs to be an initiator in the first place.

A rewarding learning experience so far

The internship is coming toward its end. I liked the experience so far. It provided me a great opportunity to go inside the industry I am interested in always but did not find enough exposure to it. With the internship, I got access to the whole eco-system of the industry, from the technology trend, to the institutions involved in it, to the major players in the market, and most important, the people working in it. They are hard-working with professional training, and always explore new technologies and research new topics. They also have enjoyment in their work and complaints. But when work begins, they bring out 100% attention and effort for it. This kind of spirit impressed me. But without the internship, I will have no way to go near to these people; we are separated by the service interface, through which I require their services and they provide them, and no more beyond the request and supply. Another important point is the potential market growth identified during the project. China developed rapidly and after these decades, the accumulated effect on people’s disposable income is very obvious. They can afford more high-end products, and in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, their GDP per capita is near developed countries. So my observation is that for emerging countries like China and India, their process to become developed countries will be a new way different form history examples; they will not follow a way we find from western countries or Japan and Korea. They are big at territory and population, and there will be no way for all the areas and people in different part of the countries to become basically equally economic developed - that will require such great resources that the earth cannot provide without sacrificing welfare of other countries. The possible development way I think may be some big cities enjoying high level of development as in rich countries, and a large number of cities having medium development level but still greatly improved from the past. This medium cities will become a big market requiring a good balance of quality and price.

One last week for summer internship

This will be the last blog that I post for the summer. It’s hard to realize that my internship with Citibank is just one week from completion and new semester is about three weeks away. Looking back to the past 9 weeks with CitiMortgage in Ann Arbor, I think it’s been a really great learning experience for me and I had some really good time during summer as well. I think for this last post, it’d be a good idea to pause for a moment by looking back this summer and to reflect on new things that I learned.

I started my summer internship on the second day that I came back from holidays after travelling half dozen countries. So I was still jet legged when I was sitting in Citibank’s conference room with other 35 summer associates for the orientation week in New York. However, it was so exciting to meet and know many new friends and colleagues from other business schools around the country. People in Citibank really made us feel welcoming to the summer internship program and we are all looking forward to it. After getting back to Ann Arbor office, I was assigned to a new project, which involves interviewing and hiring new staff for an operation center in Danville, IL. The process was tiring and I spent lot of time working on this project. But the experience was valuable to me not only because of the satisfactory results that we achieved in Danville, but also because of the exposure to recruitment and coaching process. I am sure that some of great takeaways that I learned will be of help for my future career. The final highlights for the summer were the two week group project in New York with other associates. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it was a difficult and stressful assignment for us. Luckily, all team members worked very hard on this project together and senior managers made themselves accessible to the questions that we had and provided great feedbacks on our projects. Life outside of work in New York was always exciting. I went to over a dozen nice restaurants and bars with friends during the restaurant week. It had been a great dining and social experiences and we had lot of fun.

The internship is about to finish but the learning process will never end. There will be new business challenges every day. What kind of banking products shall we offer to customers to make their life easier? How can we capture more market share from competitors in US and globally? What shall we do to be a responsible lender and make profits to shareholders at the same time? As a MBA graduate and future business leader, we should keep asking ourselves those challenging questions, work harder and smarter in an increasingly competitive market so as to make companies not only survive but also thrive in the market. Good luck everyone and see you all back in Ross soon.

Group project in New York

An important part of our summer internship program at Citi is this two-week group project in New York. All associates working for different business functions in commercial banking are pre-assigned to groups of 6 to 8 people to solve a real business case, come up with recommendations and present them to senior leaders at the end. It’s essentially a five-day internal consulting project designed to evaluate our performance in leadership, business acumen and teamwork spirits. It was an intense and highly pressured project, which covers five markets in three different continents, serving over 10 million potential customers.

After this group project, my internship has only two weeks left. Apart from saying time flies, all of the interns that I met in New York, including myself are anxiously waiting to see if we will get return offers with Citibank. Therefore, every team member is working really hard together, trying to come up with some brilliant business ideas that can solve the real business cases for the bank. In earlier this week, summer interns from all business functions and all study programs were gathered at the Bank’s New York headquarter for the speech delivered by Vikrum Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup. In his speech, Mr Pandit talked about the importance of integrity in the world of finance and Citi’s transition to more transparent and responsible lending since he took the helm during the global financial crisis. The conference room was filled with over 600 summer interns, both undergraduate and graduate students from all the top business schools around the country. It was a great event in the summer.

Besides work, New York is always a great place to be in terms of social life and nice food. Talking about food, I arrived just in time for the New York restaurant week, which lasts for three weeks with about 100 participating restaurants. I went out several times with my fellow summer classmate to some nice restaurants in New York and had some really good time there. Lastly, I just hope that our team presentation in front of some very senior people in Citi goes well next week. Fingers crossed.

My view of consulting

I used to think consulting is all about problem solving, which is kind of true. But consulting is more than that. It is about professionalism, no matter what you do, whether it is important or not, always deliver the result with highest possible quality. It is about relationship, building trust with clients and teammates in an intensive short period of time.  It is about commitment, dedicating time and effort to learn clients’ business and problems, always deliver what you promised.  As one of my colleague said “consulting is not a job, it is a profession, and it is a lifestyle choice.”

 After talking with my classmates working in other consulting firms, I feel all the firms are more or less the same at the business side. It is the culture that differentiates the firm. One of the key cultures at Deloitte is “Networking”. It is the best way to make yourself known to the rest of the firm. At industry, your boss will tell you what you need to do. But in a consulting firm, you don’t have a fixed boss. You need to constantly look for your next project, so it is important to build your brand and reputation in those networking event and in your project. Good news is Deloitte will organize a lot formal networking event for you. And every Friday, partners, principle and directors will make themselves available, so you could schedule meetings to connect with them.

Another distinctive culture is that you can feel Deloitte really care about you. I still receive emails from the person that interviewed me and asking how I am doing. Several Ross alumni at the firm also contacted me and ask whether they can be any help. The firm also organized many expensive training and social events for us to learn and relax.  There are many other things that make you feel you are part of the big Deloitte family.

First impression matters

If I have an appointment with some human resource people to ask for their expert advice and skills for interview, one thing they won’t forget mentioning is that “First impression matters!” Some of them will even tell you that an experienced interviewer will know whether to hire you or not within the first 30 seconds or less. Honestly, I am always skeptical about statement like this from HRs until my very recent project experiences with CitiMortgage.

As I written previously that my project involves with interviewing and hiring new people to an operation center in Illinois. Therefore, I had this great opportunity to sit at the side of the interview table that I am not usually used to and to interview candidates. After conducted over 50 interviews over the past three weeks, I suddenly realized that HR people’s words are true. From the meet and greet moment with candidates to the time they sit down and start to talk, in most cases, both my manager and myself have about 70% of certainty of whether to hire the person or not. The rest of the interview process is about seeking information and clues to justify the decisions that we made in our minds during that first half minute. The interview experience will be extremely valuable and relevant to me for my full time interview process later this year. I experienced the importance about the first impression as an interviewer and I learned few lessons that I should definitely avoid during the interview process from mistakes that others made.

My message to my fellow Rossers, first impression matters a lot, trust me! Every effort should be made to stand you out from others at the beginning of the interviews.

In the following two weeks, I will be in New York for the group projects that involve with all the other summer interns from different business functions in the commercial banking division of Citi. So it should be very exciting and I am definitely looking forward to the group project and good social life in New York.

The First Week of Internship

Now I started the internship. After the first week, it is a good chance to sit down and reflect a little about the experience so far. Basically, this is a great opportunity of learning new knowledge and utilizing existing skill set. Health care industry is big, comprising mainly of hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies. The devices section is what I am interning on. People invented an innovative way of surgery, which is more efficient and requires smaller cutting on human bodies. Patients undergone such procedures would need shorter recovery time and less pain during the operation. The smaller cutting also means fewer risks of infection and other medical accidents. Because of many advantages, this kind of technology is getting popularity all over the world, and also brings benefits to many patients in China. During the first week, I learned how the new procedure goes on, interviewed with doctors about the expansion of the new technology in China, and investigated the ecosystem of Chinese health care.  

Interacting with doctors and other people in the hospitals are rewarding, learning knowledge about human bodies and disease, and good habits of keeping healthy. When talking about curing people’s diseases with less pain for them, you can feel it is a meaningful thing. I am encouraged by new advancement of modern medical technology, and happy to know that China is keeping pace with the technological development. It is introduced that big hospitals in major cities send their doctors regularly to foreign countries to learn the new technology for around half a year.

There are some personal experiences when I observe procedures in the operation rooms. The operation looked scary at first site, but when repeated many times, they become routine and I can focus on the medical aspect of the procedure, rather than the blood scene.

Half way through the summer

It is half way through the summer and this is my last post, but it is not the end of my internship. I will stay in Lear until the end of July. Through the past two months, I have learned a lot. The internship has not only offered me an opportunity to apply what I learned in class, but also introduced me to the working environment in an American firm. 

What I have learned first is that big companies have their own database systems. Lear has several systems that are responsible for different activities. What we have learned in Business Information Technology class can help us a lot in real work. I am glad that I took the BIT 311 Excel class. A lot of daily jobs are conducted in Excel.

Also the experience has confirmed that the best way to learn is to ask a lot of questions. When I first started the project of account reconciliations, I had a lot of questions at first. However, I hesitated to keep asking the assistant controller, because I was afraid that I would interrupt her normal work. Later she clearly told me that she understood that I had just started and was more than welcome to help me with my questions. To work more efficiently, I usually went through the work first and made sure that I myself could not solve the problems.

Meanwhile there are some improvements I can do. I am still working on the fixed asset project, which is the biggest project assigned to me from day one. To finish this, I need to cooperate with the maintenance manager to tag the untagged items and modify the entries in the Fixed Asset System. However, he is always very busy and we have not finished tagging the assets yet. There is not much time left, so I definitely need to find a better way to cooperate with him. Or I should try to reach out to other people and see whether they can help.

In all, this internship has benefited me a lot. I got to know many great friends and learned from them. No matter in which company I will be working, the experience I gained today can definitely help my future adjustments to the new working environment.

Driving ahead

Lear corporation is one of the leading companies in the automotive industry. Its business is mainly focused on the seating and the electrical power management system (EPMS). The Taylor division I intern in is an EPMS division.

As a finance intern, part of my job is to make journal entries and also deal with some other financial related work. As I work, I have heard a lot of familiar famous car companies that cooperate with Lear, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Delphi, etc. Last month a German engineer from Volkswagen visited our plant, because VW is considering to further cooperate with us. I had an opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking with him in German. He seemed to be very happy about what he saw. I am sure that we can cooperate with VW more and receive more orders from them.

Michigan is the center for automotive industry. When I work in the company and attend the events, I feel that the companies in the industry are tightly connected. Last week I attended an event held by CoNext, Inforum. The organization evolved from the Women Economic Club and focuses a lot on building professional women's network. The event aims at offering an opportunity for the interns working in the automotive industry to get to know each other and start building our network within the industry early. I met some students from U of M who I did not realize are interning in the same industry as me. After mingling in the event, we felt more connected. Additionally, I met a lot of interns coming from other schools. It was very exciting to meet different people and learn what they are doing in their internships. Also, I got to know the industry better after the event.

The automotive industry is the main leading industry and  there are a lot of great companies in here. I am proud to be interning in one of these companies and gain the essential knowledge and skills for my future.

Client engagement started!

Deloitte has a formal process of defining summer goals and project scope. All the goals should be made SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). Then I will review the goals with peer advisor, my consoler and my project manager. They will also provide some suggestions for the goals, then I will update accordingly. After everybody agrees on the goals, I submit them to HR. My summer performance will be measured against those goals. It is a very transparent process.  

For the second week, I was on the beach which means I am not working on a client engagement. At that time, I did some practice development work, which is doing some research on a specific topic and increase knowledge of the firm. It is a very intensive project. I ready technology white papers, industry report, companies’ financial report and analyst report to get familiar with the topic and also collect raw materials for my deck.

Starting from the 3^rd week, I was staffed on a client engagement project. This project is to help client build an information technology roadmap to align with company development strategy. At the first week of the project, we conducted a series of interviews with stakeholders to understand the current situation and future needs. It is a really nice experience, not only that you could talk to many people from the management team, but also a great way to learn consulting. There is a small tip when conducting interview. One of my job scopes in the project is to collect raw materials, so I take meeting minutes during the interview. As non-native English speaker and freshman to the industry, I know it will be difficult to follow the conversation at the beginning. So I suggested my supervisor to record the meeting with my phone. My supervisor thought it was a good idea, but we have to check with clients before we do that. It turned out to be a great help, because the meeting schedule is very intensive and there is indeed a lot of new information. The recording helped to fill in many gaps in our meeting minutes. 

Well, here comes the boss. My supervisor is from Ohio. You know what I mean. But he is really a nice guy. He gives me many tips about client engagement, and told me many fun facts about the firm. At my side, first of all, I try to focus on my job and get the work done. I also try to be honest about my progress, asking for advice and help if needed and updating my progress regularly. 

Exciting first week

It has been a very busy but fruitful week! I started by flying to Atlanta for my 1st stage - 3 days training. I am very excited to find that we have interns from almost all 50 states of US. There are several Rossers in the crowd.

We had a series of workshops led by experts to introduce the company culture and some methodologies and tools that could apply to work. We were divided to different groups to simulate the real consulting team to solve a business problem. This exercise gave us a general idea of consulting and also prepared us with some basic steps to approach problems. After the training at the second day, we had a great networking and dinner event with some partners.

We finished the first stage training at the third day, and then I flied to my home office – San Francisco for my second stage training. San Francisco is a very beautiful city, built on mountains and besides the Pacific Ocean. I really like the weather here. It is a bit cool but very refreshing.  Its public transportation is very convenient. I commute to the city by taking BART (like subway).

I am very glad to find that I was assigned with a peer advisor who just joined the firm about one year ago. He could help me with any problem I may have during my day to day job. I also have a counselor, who is a senior level person in the firm and he can help me to plan my career path in the firm and point out direction for me. Most importantly, he will be the person evaluate me in the end of the internship.

The Last day of the training is a community event. This year we went to a charity organization to do some volunteer works.

More than just work

It has been more than a month since I started my internship in Lear Corporation. I have learned a lot during work and enjoyed working with my coworkers. They are all quite humorous. The social life here is quite enjoyable. 

Every week we try to schedule a lunch to gather all the employees in the office together. Although probably not everyone attends the lunch, we can still have about ten people every time. The lunch gives us a chance to communicate with each other and learn about what is going on in the other departments. 

Cute cat from the animal shelter

What I like most here is that we have a “Casual Friday” rule. Every Friday we can wear jeans and T-shirts, which requires us to donate at least one dollar every time to an organization that changes every month. Last month we donated about 200 dollars to the Animal Shelter in Taylor. Some coworkers and I visited the animal shelter when the HR person sent the money there.  The cats and dogs there were all adorable. Also they need more volunteers to be there, so we decided that we would help there sometime this month to walk the dogs. 

Besides, Kim from the HR department has worked on getting discounts for us to go to the gym nearby. She has got us a great deal. It’s only a $10 dollar sign-up fee and $5 monthly fee for us to go to the gym nearby. It is kind of hard for me to maintain going to the gym, but I am trying to go there at least once every week during lunch time with my colleagues. I definitely need more exercise.

In all, I am enjoying myself right now. The social life in Lear gives me a lot of fun and I am glad to work with my colleagues.