April 10, 2023
Adam Ji is currently a student in the MS in Organization Management and Strategy (MSOMS) program Class of 2023. After completing a bachelor's degree in finance, Adam saw the MSOMS program as an opportunity to build complementary business and soft skills to be more competitive in the finance job market, as well as a chance to return to China to start his professional career. “I systematically studied finance and participated in many internships during my undergraduate career. I learned that as a business student, it is essential to have professional financial knowledge, but even more important to have interpersonal skills because business behavior is not a cold number and instead, it is produced in countless negotiations and communication,” he remarked.
The MSOMS program allowed Adam to develop these communication and negotiation skills from the start of the program. For example, the very first course of the program, Business Communication, turned out to be one of his favorites, as it created a foundation of communication skills that he built on and practiced throughout the other courses in the program. “It’s a fantastic experience to take the Business Communication course taught by Professor Jason Ortiz, who strongly encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone and helped me become a more dynamic and persuasive communicator,” he shared.
Adam hoped to leverage this combination of hard and soft skills to find a job in the financial industry, and began to look for jobs immediately after the program started. Over the past eight months since the program began, he applied for over 100 jobs. “You must constantly pay attention to your targeted industry and define your own goal and purpose before applying for a job. It is your best interest to apply for a position when the job posting is just released,” he said, “My strategy was to take notes of those online application questions from jobs posted by big companies, respond to them and save my answers so that I could always adjust my responses later for other positions. This effectively increased my speed of completing the online job applications.”
Adam emphasized the importance of utilizing the resources of the Center for Career Development during the job seeking process: “The Career Center has provided us with a spreadsheet where recruitment timelines for major companies are listed and updated regularly. I also subscribed to the Career Center Wechat account so I was able to pay close attention to on-campus recruitment sessions or job postings.” In addition, he highlighted the experience of meeting with the career advisors: “I often attended the walk-in hours and booked one-on-one consultations. The advisors provided valuable insights into the Chinese job market. When I had a hard time making decisions on which offer to choose, I also consulted with career advisors on different career pathways and employment benefits.”
Adam eventually secured an offer from a large securities company where he will work in the investment banking department. His job duties will include assisting the issuer in its initial public offering, refinancing listed companies, and providing financial advisory services for mergers and acquisitions of listed companies. “I was very fortunate to get this job. Along with the growth of my work experience and the expansion of my network resources, I hope that I will be able to help an enterprise develop in different dimensions, assisting the company in listing and financing from the perspective of the company's CFO,” he said.
Reflecting back on his job seeking experience, Adam shared: “I would advise students to be more clear about their targeted industry and role before looking for a job at the same time preparing a list of positions that interest them. The most desirable position in the industry will always be posted first, and then other jobs with similar nature in that industry will be posted. One should allocate the time effectively and prioritize different positions based on his or her own interest.”