CMC in Global Market

Prof. Youngdahl once said that the employers are our key customers to the Thunderbird. I totally agree on his point and recalled the meeting we had at the end of last trimester. Several Taiwanese students and Frank Neville talked about how we could market Thunderbird better in Taiwan or elsewhere. We mentioned about CMC’s role in job search. In fact, CMC can serve our key customers better by providing great ex-pats to those global players.

As I know, HSBC used to have a program called “IO (International Officer)”. The program is to hire young professional with talents and potential and to send them overseas through different job rotation and reallocation. Eventually, those IO would become country managers or even higher positions. This process ensured HSBC’s manpower aligned with growing business around the globe. I am not sure whether HSBC still keeps this great practice or not. But I am certain that there must be some more companies looking for managers with global experiences and diversified exposures. T-birds can be their perfect matches!

Last fall, my first trimester, I talked to a CMC adviser. He admitted that CMC doesn’t have a lot of resources to help students find jobs outside the USA. What if we start from the headquarters in the USA? Would it be a totally different story then? We come here to learn about how to manage a company in a multicultural and international circumstance. We do practice these techniques in our daily life because of well presented diversity of student body (comparing to other schools). Employers can easily send T-birds as ex-pats to elsewhere. Emerging markets with great potential are good battle fields for us to crack in. I remember my Latin American RBE class. These classes also enhance our capabilities to work oversea.

Beside HSBC, for example, Benq, a Taiwanese company spun off from Pan Acer Group, bought Siemens cell phone division recently. The acquisition will be effective in October, 2005. The cultural differences certainly require managers with skills to handle the situation and to facilitate the process. Our CMC can take more active position to approach those key customers and to let them know about T-birds’ quality and specialties. I do believe that we have advantages over other MBA students. CMC can lead this to happen.