Essay 2
 
Tell us your short-term and long-term career goals and your plans for achieving them. Please be specific. Describe how your previous experience and education will help you to reach your goals (3 pages and double-spaced). What are your career goals (immediately after graduation, 5 years out, 10 years out) ?
My immediate goal after graduating with my hard-earned Master of Business Administration degree from your program will be to seek an appropriate managerial position with a state owned or joint venture enterprise in the Information Technology (IT) field. The IT field is growing extremely rapidly in China, and companies in this industry have a higher than average need for more qualified and well-learned professionals to keep up with the competition from the rest of the world. As China becomes a major player in the world marketplace and takes its place among all the other developed countries in the world, my skills and abilities learned in your MBA program will allow me to serve and eventually lead a domestic enterprise to a level of excellence that no other Chinese organization has thus far been able to achieve.

My short-term career goals include bringing my professional management concepts and practical working experiences to IT companies that will soon be confronted with intense global competition due to China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Initially, my objective is to start with some lower level, cross-functional positions, perhaps in sales, marketing, logistics, etc. to learn all about my organization’s various activities in as many different departments as possible. This will allow me to become very familiar with this particular organization at a basic level and to learn about the external business environment and the customers, suppliers and others that we deal with on a daily basis. To be a successful leader, you must not only know your own organization very thoroughly but also understand the different stakeholders that deal with your business, as well as the social, legal, economic, political and technological external environments in which your company is operating. To achieve my career goals, I will need not only the intensive education and training that your MBA program will provide but also the hands-on business experience of the real world. My previous business experience will enhance my advanced education and allow me to better learn about my new organization from the ground up. I believe that these short-term objectives will give me the best preparation for future career advancement and allow me to reach my long-term career goals.

My long-term career goals include to continue learning and developing both as a person and as a future business leader. I will also expect at the same time to advance within the organization with additional duties and responsibilities first as an employee and then as the leader of an IT enterprise in China. My undergraduate degree was earned in computer science. My nearly eight years of progressively more responsible career positions with employers such as 3M, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard has been with companies whose core businesses are related to Information Technology or other high-technology areas.

During my career, I initially started as an assistant engineer, which gave me great insight to the very basic functions of IT with the responsibilities of maintaining the software system of our computer workstations, which was related to the engineering design software for our Integrated Chip product. I later assumed a sales representative position with 3M China Ltd., which gave me valuable experience with all aspects of sales and marketing throughout the southwest region of China. My next career move was as a Sales Specialist with Xerox China Co., Ltd., with responsibilities for all aspects of sales and marketing to our major clients throughout all of China. Then, as a Supplies Market Development Manager with Hewlett-Packard, I gained further marketing expertise by developing market demand and market share, creating product awareness, and developing new distribution channels for our products. At the present time, I hold the position of Business Director for AsiaEC.com Inc., with the main responsibility of developing business for a start-up e-commerce business.

In the first stages of my career, I maintained a client base that contributed only about twenty thousand RMB in revenue to my company per year. Within just a few years, I moved up to servicing the entire country of China, with wholesale sales to clients of US$60 million. With each step in my career, I have taken on additional responsibilities that clearly show progressive and rapid career development. This nearly eight years of cross-functional work experiences have given me the confidence to pursue managerial positions with an unlimited higher and broader scope in the future. The MBA degree that I earn from your institution will give me the additional education that I need to become the well-rounded leader of an IT enterprise in China within the next ten years.