“The key is adaptability,” says CUHK’s director of MBA admissions Lawrence Chan. “Firms like our model of developing people who can work in a Chinese or Asian environment, but who also have strong Western management training and who can hit the ground running.”
It shows. 91% of the Hong Kong school’s MBA grads find roles within 3 months of graduation, with a mammoth 120% average salary increase according to the Financial Times.
Among them, 2015 MBA graduate Job Watcharaumnuay. Having worked in finance in his native Thailand, and inspired by a brief stint on Wall Street, he came to CUHK to take his career to the next level. After graduation, he joined multinational security services firm G4S and now he works in mergers and acquisitions for the Charoen Pokphand Group, Thailand’s largest private company.
“[CUHK is] the best geographically situated school in Asia for finance,” says Job. “It has the biggest range of alumni of all the schools in Hong Kong, and that gives me a huge advantage.”
CUHK boasts an international network of over 30,000 alumni, who serve as a source of mentorship and investment, as well as opportunity, for ambitious MBAs.
Salvadoran student Gerardo Salandra graduates this August. In April, he was recruited by one of CUHK’s most successful alumni to become CEO of a marketing technology startup in Hong Kong. For Gerardo, who turned down Google in favor of a marketing technologist role at a tech startup prior to his MBA, it’s a career dream come true.
“Without the CUHK MBA, I wouldn’t have been able to land the job I wanted,” he says.
While CUHK’s MBA program is the longest-established in Asia, Gerardo is representative of a new, millennial generation of MBA students prioritizing making an impact in their careers over financial gain.
“The goal is no longer to make money,” he explains. “We focus on what we can leave behind and what impact we can have in the world.”
Fellow millennial MBA Antoinette Bailey agrees. She wants to grow her network in Asia and develop her social enterprise which sells locally-sourced leather goods to fund women’s education in Ethiopia. An MBA at CUHK - the first MBA program in Hong Kong to offer an entrepreneurship concentration - was the perfect place to do so.
“You have the prestige of schools like Harvard and Stanford where you can learn and take electives about doing business in Asia,” says Antoinette. “But I don’t think you can appreciate how that translates on a day-to-day basis without actually having been immersed in the culture.”
It’s an attitude which has brought many to Hong Kong’s shores. The current MBA cohort is 82% international, with over 20 different countries represented. And many see Hong Kong as the ideal launch-pad for a global career; a place where cultures converge and East meets West.
“It was a natural decision for me to join CUHK,” says Atsushi Sugiyama, a Japanese MBA student who’s using Hong Kong as a base to expand his family’s recycling business into the wider Asian market.
“Hong Kong is the gateway to mainland China, and CUHK has the longest history and the biggest alumni network in Hong Kong.”
RECAPTHA :
e5
4b
b0
cb
