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Category: Careers

Venezuelan-born, American-raised Klara Markus had always wanted to work in the public sector, and got her start in business working for education tech startup Quad Learning in Washington, DC after graduating from Yale University. “The idea was to work with students that would benefit from focused attention, and help them transfer to universities,” Klara explains.

“I ended up being much more interested in the business side, and moved into operations and business development.” In the end, it was a growing interest in business and a stint working with international recruitment in Vietnam that sparked her interest in an MBA in Asia—“I absolutely fell in love with the region! “In a way, it was going back to where I was from, but it was also very different,” she adds. “I found that super exciting.”

In the end, it was meeting an old college friend who happened to be in the first MBA cohort at Asia School of Business that sparked an interest in the school. While the school is still relatively new—it accepted its first cohort in 2016—Klara saw “academic rigour” in the program, while its collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management also set it apart.

“I was super attracted to the fact that It was new, and as a student I would have a role in shaping the program,” she says. “I wasn’t just going to be passively sitting in a classroom—my input would help.”

From the education industry to business education

Though Klara initially started her job at education company Quad Learning as an honours adviser, directly assisting students and local colleges, she soon found that she wanted to “be involved in the decision making process, and helping shape the company,” she explains. “That meant being in a different role.” Moving up to associate director of international operations in Asia and the US, it made sense that an MBA was on the horizon.

“My background was very specific to the international education industry,” Klara reflects. “There are a handful of big players that dominate, but I wanted to broaden my experience and my understanding of different industries in the region.” Asia School of Business prides itself on its mission to develop business leaders in emerging markets around the world, especially in Southeast Asia. “It wasn’t a program in Malaysia, but a Southeast Asia program,” Klara points out.

It’s ASB’s Action Learning Projects that provide the most immersive experience during the MBA. Totalling five throughout the program, these semester-long projects can take MBAs all around Southeast Asia and worldwide working with companies from fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) to financial firms. For Klara’s Action Learning Projects, she was partnered with Astro, a media company in Malaysia; Big C, a hypermarket in Thailand; PricewaterhouseCoopers in Germany; and Unilever in Vietnam.

“One of the things I was really interested to learn was that there are different ways to run a business, and no right or wrong way,” Klara reflects. “Being in companies that were sometimes American and sometimes 100% Thai or Vietnamese, and trying to understand how to do operations—we needed to develop a common language to understand what the problem was and deliver results. “I used to just think ‘obviously we’re different,’ but that was a really interesting challenge that looking back now was really important.”

Working at Amazon

Aside from the time spent assisting real companies, Klara also managed to co-found the Data Analytics Club during her time on the MBA. “It’s a skillset that is key—we need to know how to handle big data,” Klara asserts. “We wanted to create a space where people that are really good at it can share their skills, connecting resources and people that wanted to learn more.”

In a stroke of serendipity, Klara’s post-MBA role ended up being “the heaviest role I’ve ever had in terms of data analysis”—at Amazon in Spain, working as a senior category merchant manager. Even though she’s left Asia behind, the diverse and multicultural experience at Asia School of Business still sticks with Klara. “Going into my MBA, I wanted to see other business models and learn from them, and I was able to do that at ASB.”

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

2020 is looking to be a monumental year for Asia, as the continent’s total gross domestic product (GDP) is set to overtake the combined GDP of the rest of the world. Asia’s extraordinary market growth bodes well for MBA jobs and graduates in the region. But launching a career in Asia is by no means easy, with many differences and challenges that European or US job-seekers won’t face back home. Knowing the secrets and tricks of the market can make the difference between success and disaster.

Here are our insider tips for launching a career in Asia.

1. Employers are experience-seeking

For many, choosing to do an MBA is an assurance of quality and a fast track to a top job. In the US, the MBA is an established institution, and is widely recognized by employers. But in Asia, MBA graduates don’t necessarily have the same instant recognition. It’s much more about what graduates have done practically, and the experience they’ve got. MBAs must consider their value proposition differently when applying for jobs.

“Employers look more to experience, [looking at] what is the proven ability to perform,” explains Rhoda Yap, chief operating officer and MBA career development director at Asia School of Business (ASB) in Malaysia (pictured right).  The Action Learning program at ASB ensures that students have a rigorous introduction to work in Asia’s most dynamic markets over the course of their MBA.

Each student undertakes five projects during their 20-month degree with 127 different companies including Nestle, AirAsia, and AB InBev. This involves immersion in the organization, addressing particular challenges, conducting research on the ground, and delivering actionable solutions to the company. “It gives students the opportunity to put five roles and markets on their resume by the end of the program, to show their proven ability in a specific industry or subject matter,” Rhoda underlines.

2. Soft skills are key in Asia’s fast-moving environment

The rate of change in Asia is a significant challenge for MBAs, particularly for those looking to lock down jobs there. Skills are transitory—useful training five years ago could very well be irrelevant today. The emphasis, for ASB, is much more on skills that will help graduates stand the test of time in the job market, such as creative problem solving, critical thinking, and strategy.

“It’s a future-proofing skill set,” stresses Sean Ferguson, associate dean at ASB (pictured right). This comes through in the iterative approach of the curriculum. The course is split into five semesters, with an Action Learning project in each. Students repeat the same process—class, work experience, research and data gathering, presentation—to ensure they can evaluate their approaches, learn from their mistakes, and build their skills for each new semester.

“It really maximizes what the learner can gain from the educational experience,” Sean adds. Tech and consulting firms remain the top employers in the region. Tech alone hired over half of ASB’s MBA class last year, with global companies like Google and regional players like DiDi snapping up graduates. For both of these industries, a person-oriented, creative approach is beneficial.

3. Adaptability is crucial

Asia’s geography—with lots of diverse countries and cultures in close proximity—is both an advantage and a challenge for MBA students looking to maximize their international experience. Grads must be prepared to navigate the differences of each culture to successfully launch a career there. “It’s about the adaptability of a candidate, and their ability to understand the nuances of cultural difference, and how each culture gets things done,” Rhoda imparts.

The Action Learning program might take students to Vietnam in one semester and to Japan the next semester. Given the highly localized focus of the placements, and the research projects which accompany them, adapting to new cultures is key. “It really builds their flexibility muscles,” Rhoda underlines, “Employers look for that because they want to be sure that whoever they hire will flourish wherever.”

4. The recruitment cycle is different

Asia’s rapid growth has considerable implications for hiring and recruitment. Employers don’t work in recruitment cycles like they do in the US, but rather on a more instant, real-time basis. This requires that students start to network and prepare for employment over a longer period. It’s what Sean describes as the “seeding, tending, and harvesting” model of applying for jobs, ideally timed perfectly to coincide with graduation in April.

ASB’s network is indispensable to this. The school, through its corporate partners and the Action Learning program, has strong links to over a hundred regional and global employers. Moreover, due to its affiliation with MIT Sloan School of Management, MBA graduates gain an Affiliate Alumni status, giving them access to MIT Sloan’s vast and influential network.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

I run a technology company, managing a team of 8 people. We focus on developing mobility technology solutions such as fleet management for commercial trucks and e-scooters for security guards. Before I joined ASB, I was concerned about how the time away would impact my business. Is it worth earning an MBA and spending 20 months away from the company?

I thought, If I hand off the company, how would employees react? Would they still believe in my vision and continue to work for me? On the other hand, if I continue to run the company the same way, would the company grow into what I dreamed for it? If I applied the knowledge and network I gained at ASB to my company, would it make a difference? Would I move toward my dream?

My company’s growth was facing a bottleneck. I was desperate for a breakthrough. So I chose to believe that ASB would be the right next step. The decision came with a cost and eventually a fruitful payoff for my business of at least RM 500K in the first year of my MBA. Needless to say, it was the right next step. I still remember the day when I first announced my decision to earn a 20-month MBA. My partners and employees were shocked. Some of them lost faith and left the company the next month.

One of the employees told me that the founder is the soul of the company, and that if the founder is not there, the team will not hold together. It was tough for me to see multiple team members leave the company. Despite the hardship caused by the departures, I could more easily identify who my most loyal partners and employees were. I knew I could entrust those left with the handover of my responsibilities while I was away. The shakeup was part of the cost of earning my MBA.

On the other hand, I have gained an important asset in the ASB network. During my first semester, I worked to raise a seed funding round for my company in my free time (not during class time). I asked for company evaluation help from one of my classmates, who was a finance analyst pre-MBA. With their help, I managed to close a seed funding round of RM 300K for 15% of the company’s shares.

It was exciting for me to achieve my first funding milestone for the company. During my second semester, I was referred by a classmate for a software project which was valued at about RM 200K, which I passed to my team to execute. ASB is full of potential business opportunities, both within its own community as well as its robust ecosystem of corporate partners and Action Learning hosts.

Further, ASB’s MBA equipped me with the SMART and SHARP skills that I needed. One of the most useful courses for me was in negotiation. I learned how to prepare for negotiations using a systematic approach, one I now use for negotiating share disputes and contract terms in my business. Another valuable skill I gained was financial modelling using Excel. It is useful for me to simulate the profit and loss of my company based on different product sales estimates.

Additionally, the Disciplined Entrepreneurship course gave me a better sense of direction for the company through utilizing Bill Aulet’s 24-step market validation framework. The list goes on and on.My MBA has been a life-changing experience for me. ASB is an extraordinary and unconventional school where we can design our own goals and  experiences. This is my MBA, and I believe this could be your MBA too.

Have questions about Michael’s story? You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

Singapore-based unicorn startup Grab recently announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft. For tech giants like Microsoft, Southeast Asia’s rapid tech growth presents an exciting opportunity for expansion. Roughly 51% of the region’s population are active internet users. Southeast Asia boasts a tech economy currently worth $50 billion, which is expected to increase fourfold by 2025.

For Deepika Mahankali, a Microsoft APAC regional business growth manager, keeping an eye on Southeast Asia’s growth is her everyday job. But it was her MBA that drew her to the region in the first place and gave her the springboard into this thriving digital economy.

Switching from tech to business

Deepika’s fascination with tech started at school, when she decided to earn her bachelor’s in computer science. She jumped straight into a role at Cisco, a cutting-edge internet of things company, where she was working in network security in Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley. But her focus was too tech-niche, and she wanted to expand her knowledge.

“I was mainly focused on one part of the business and one solution—security—and I wanted to broaden my skillset to know what else would be required to run a business like this,” Deepika remembers. What she sought was an overview of business—a generalist approach that would complement her tech skills and allow her to progress further in a tech company. “At a certain point, I realized an MBA would be ideal for me because that would help me take my career to the next level and make a career switch,” she notes.

Building new businesses

The MBA program at Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur offered the perfect balance of a general management degree with exposure to tech that you would rarely find in another top program. In particular, she raves about the opportunity to get hands-on experience working with technology. “I never thought I would be learning coding and app development during my MBA,” she says.

During one semester, MBA students get the chance to work on their own business ideas with access to the ASB resources on offer. Deepika was able to test and experiment with her own app idea and build a prototype. “The MBA helped us step into careers, not just in business, but in digital business,” she stresses.

Learning through projects

The tech specialization was also backed up by the rigorous experience that all MBA students get through the Action Learning Program—five real-world consulting projects over the course of the program. Primarily, the breadth of experience was incredibly beneficial to Deepika. Working in everything from telecommunications at Maxis to fast-moving consumer goods at Nestle, she accumulated a variety of experiences and situations that have helped build her business profile.

“In interviews [in situational judgment scenarios], I had so many examples from the Action Learning projects that I could relate back to and share, to show how I handled certain situations,” she mentions. In addition, she gained experience working in various countries around Southeast Asia, seeing how they do business and understanding cultural norms and niches.

This forms a big part of her job at Microsoft. “Now, when I’m working in different countries in APAC, I have a good understanding of their cultural emphasis on business, which really makes a difference. This is something you wouldn’t get by just sitting in class and listening to your lectures.”

Eye toward the future

With her eye keenly set on tech, Deepika never had any doubts about staying in Southeast Asia. The ASB MBA, set in the heart of Malaysia, a fast-growing market in the region, showed her the endless possibilities in the region.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

Retraining and switching careers, once seen as impractical or even unthinkable, has become common practice for millennials. A study by LinkedIn showed that those who graduated between 2006 and 2010 had, on average, 2.85 jobs in the five years after college. For many applicants, an MBA is an opportunity to discover a new path on their professional journey.

There’s a name for these candidates—career revitalizers. For Sherilyn Ooi, an MBA was her ticket to career revitalization, helping her navigate the switch between law and business while gaining the practical experience and network to transition from one profession to the other.

An opportunity to switch

Sherilyn was always drawn toward business. Working on mergers and acquisitions with international organizations, government agencies, and large multinationals, she saw the global scale of business, as well as the many facets of the transactions they facilitated. The problem was, as a corporate lawyer, her opportunities to delve into business were limited.

“I never saw the end-to-end process, or what drove the process and the transaction,” Sherilyn remembers. She knew she wanted a change and a chance to experience new industries. Staying in the legal profession wasn’t going to offer this. So just three years after graduating, she snapped up the opportunity to study at Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur.

Grasping the fundamentals

Through her MBA, Sherilyn learned to change her way of thinking about problems from a legal context into a business context, and, more importantly, to fill the gaps in her knowledge. “When you work in a technical field like law, it’s easy to think that’s the most important part of a business transaction,” Sherilyn notes.

The core curriculum at ASB took Sherilyn through the fundamentals of business, demonstrating the varying considerations at every level, and ultimately how to balance multiple priorities as an operations manager. “I gained technical knowledge about how to understand a business and how to analyze information in terms of the decision I am making,” Sherilyn stresses.

While all aspects of business appealed to her, it was only after a core module on the MBA in operations management that her interest was piqued by operations and supply chains. As the hub of many Southeast Asian operations facilities, Malaysia turned out to be the perfect location for her to expand her experience and network.

Understanding nuances through experience

Fundamentally, her ability to switch careers was boosted by the opportunity to get hands-on industry experience. ASB’s Action Learning program requires students to complete five consulting projects over the course of their 20-month MBA, working in teams with companies to address real-world problems. This allowed Sherilyn to expand her interest in operations and see how theory can be practically applied by large corporations.

Through a project at Esquel Group, based in Penang, she discovered how one of the world’s largest clothing manufacturers runs its operations across the world. Here, she worked to improve operational efficiency, as well as develop leadership skills. Another project, this time in strategy, took her to one of Thailand’s biggest hypermarkets, helping them develop their e-commerce platform to take on global competitors like Amazon.

Having experienced operations across Southeast Asia’s major economies, Sherilyn learned the way business varies from country to country and region to region. “It made me understand the nuances of cultural context and background,” she underlines. “We forget how much variety there is in how you collect information and how you communicate, and that’s as crucial as objective data.”

“Come with an open mind”

Having completed her MBA, Sherilyn’s career revitalization is successfully on track. She is now contracting with Google Malaysia as a key account specialist, managing clients in the FMCG industry. For those looking to make the same successful switch as her, she emphasizes the importance of exposing yourself to every kind of expertise and discipline to get a aerial view of business. And most importantly, she says, “Come with an open mind.”

“I try not to think about [how many hours I spent preparing] because the answer is a bit scary,” Katherine, a Class of 2018 MBA graduate and consultant, says. After a moment of reflection, she adds, “I probably spent 40 to 50 hours over the course of a few months preparing for the interviews.”

In the ASB Podcast with Sarah-Ann Yong (on Spotify and Apple Podcasts), Katherine explains how she prepared for her interviews at McKinsey, a prestigious global consulting firm. She now works for the firm in supply chain and service operations, completing projects that take her all over the United States. She gave the following recommendations for each step in the job search process, which helped ensure her success.

Step 1: Determine the fit.

The consulting interview process is not for the faint of heart. It can be arduous, full of late-night phone interviews and long bouts of waiting. This is why Katherine’s first piece of advice is to decide whether or not consulting is the right fit for you. The job application process is only a preview for the work itself, which can be overwhelming and exhausting, with long hours and constant travel.

To determine whether she would be cut out for the work, Katherine talked to multiple employees of McKinsey and other consulting firms before she started her application. As in many business schools, the process started in the Career Development Office (CDO) at ASB. The CDO connected her with employees at McKinsey, and she also attended Kuala Lumpur-based events for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and other firms to get a sense of the culture and what types of employees succeeded at each firm.

And although most consulting firms have a straightforward application process, the name of the game is still networking. Katherine considers this the toughest part of the process. “The key is following up and finding the people you connect with the best,” she notes. “Not only are they the ones who might help you find a job, but it’s also an indication that you might be a good person to work there and have a good experience despite the crazy hours and long travel weeks.”

Step 2: Perfect the application.

Like most companies, consulting firms have standard online applications that all applicants must complete. The submission includes a resume and cover letter, which Katherine notes are important to customize for each firm. “The cover letter should explain why you’re interested in a particular company and what qualities you have that make you the best candidate,” she explains. Those who receive a response from the firm are asked to take an aptitude test, which assesses math and language skills, before beginning the interview process.

Step 3: Nail the case interview.

Those who are invited to interview should be prepared for multiple rounds of interviews. For example, Katherine completed six case interviews before receiving an offer, as well as preliminary interviews. “You spend 20 minutes doing a behavioral interview where you’re asked about a situation when you encountered a challenge, had a difficult teammate, or made an impact,” she explains.

“Then they ask 40 minutes of case questions where you dissect a business problem, try to come up with different solutions and analyze data.” Preparing for case interviews was a lengthy process for Katherine, with practice interviews with the CDO taking place every week for the duration of the summer in addition to peer interviews. In addition, she used Vocaprep, an online tool that teaches consulting frameworks and mental math and offers practice case scenarios.

It may sound like a lot of work, especially for business school students unsure about consulting, but Katherine notes that case interview preparation can also be useful when applying in multiple industries. “Get started early with Vocaprep and practice interviews,” she says. “Even if you decide halfway through that you don’t want to do consulting or you find something else you’re excited about, the way you think because of the consulting framework is invaluable in any interview process.”

She also recommends working with peers to prepare for the interviews. Students shouldn’t view the process as a competition for a limited number of jobs, but rather a collaboration, so as many people as possible can get into the best firms. “At the end of the day, you’re going to be on a team,” she notes. “With that mindset, doing practice interviews with my peers kept things going well for me.”

Finally, she argues that having flexibility is key when scheduling interviews. Because she applied to positions in the United States, she often interviewed around 10 PM Kuala Lumpur time, or in the morning for her recruiters. Though these interviews were exhausting, the recruiters appreciated her flexibility.

Step 4: Be patient.

The full interview process for a company like McKinsey will take place over several months, which can leave students mired in anxiety and self-doubt. Katherine’s preparation and networking began over the summer. Though she filled out her application in September, she didn’t interview until the end of the fall semester or receive her offer until she was close to graduation.

Because of this, she recommends balancing job search activities between consulting and other fields, continuously networking and applying to other positions while waiting to hear back from consulting interviews. This allows students to consider other options early on in case offers from consulting companies don’t arrive.

Bonus Tip: Stand out from the crowd.

Because there are many business school students from similar backgrounds applying to consulting companies, it is important to figure out how to stand out from the crowd. Katherine believes that part of the reason she received an offer from McKinsey was her unique experience at ASB. “I had done these Action Learning projects and I had lived in Southeast Asia, which isn’t the typical profile for an MBA candidate applying to McKinsey,” she says.

“This kept them interested in my profile.” She also advises maintaining a unique personality even while completing case interviews. Despite the temptation to give a perfectly prepared answer to each question, she warns against being “too robotic.” Instead, students should think of the interview as a conversation, paying attention to the flow and rapport with the interviewer.

Bonus Tip: Use Action Learning projects to prepare.

For Katherine, the Action Learning projects at ASB were the perfect preparation for consulting. For example, during her MBA, she worked with a multinational pharmaceutical company to improve its supply chain. Looking back, she felt that the skills she developed on this and her other projects were helpful preparation for similar consulting engagements.

Further, the breadth of projects she worked on at ASB gave her the ability to learn and shift gears quickly, preparing her for the constant changes in projects, teams, industries, and functions she experiences at McKinsey. Because she had completed similar projects in a short time frame, she was able to “ramp up” more quickly.

“You get put into a new situation and have a short amount of time to define the problem, develop a game plan to solve it, build trust with your host company counterparts, and implement the solution,” she says. “Each situation is ambiguous and it is easy to lose sight of the objectives if you aren’t careful.”

On the job

Katherine believes the most rewarding aspect of consulting is the people. Over just a few months, she has seen her clients develop into better leaders, accomplish their goals, and transform their organizations. She feels energized seeing her clients’ excitement over the progress they are making. She also appreciates the teams she works with.

“McKinsey is filled with incredibly intelligent, driven, creative people who are dedicated to doing right by their clients,” she says. “I enjoy solving problems with my co-workers, cracking jokes in the team room, going out to dinner, and doing ridiculous team bonding activities.” So for Katherine, despite all of the work and waiting, the consulting interview process has paid off in a big way.

Uber has dominated the taxi market since its inception, delivering 5.2 billion rides globally in 2018. But in China, they do things differently. While Uber’s venture into China in 2013 flopped, losing around $2 billion in three years; its competitor, DiDi, acquired Uber’s China operations and is now considered one of the world’s most valuable startups. As DiDi looks to expand into new markets, as well as developing driverless car technology, it’s eyeing up top-caliber business professionals to bring into the company. But what does it take for MBAs to land a job at a tech giant like DiDi?

A renowned degree based in Asia

Career success in his home country of Brazil, with a top role at Anheuser Busch Inbev, wasn’t enough for Diego Benito, and he knew he wanted an international career. “I always had this feeling that I should work somewhere else,” Diego remembers, “And leverage the impact I can have through working in other communities and societies.” The MBA at Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur offered exactly this—an international experience in a powerful growing economy, combined with the reputation of MIT Sloan with which the school is affiliated.

The school’s reputation attracted excitement and attention from employers like DiDi, who constantly searched for talent with experience in Asia. This reflects quite a shift, Diego notes, from previously US-centered recruitment. “Historically there has been an exodus to the West—to places such as Silicon Valley. This is changing, with schools like ASB preparing students to work in this [Asian] environment,” Diego says.

Practical, hands-on experience

Pursuing an MBA can mean taking one-to-two years out of work to focus on education, leaving a gap in students’ resumes. For MBA students like Diego, the Action Learning Program at Asia School of Business—five consulting projects over the course of the program—ensures that students have consistent hands-on experience throughout their MBA program. “It’s not like you take two years off your career—you are constantly accelerating and widening your career horizons,” Diego stresses.

Diego’s projects exposed him to the exciting Southeast Asia tech market, which is growing to meet the demands of an increasingly online population. Placements at Traveloka, a travel-booking startup based in Indonesia, and Zarla, an e-commerce platform in Myanmar, found Diego working on-site to create real solutions to the problems that these organizations faced in their expansion.

Part of this experience was dealing with the daily challenges that businesses face in this evolving market, and learning how to make decisions that address these challenges systematically. One course in system dynamics, during the four weeks that all MBA students spend at MIT Sloan, gave Diego an understanding of how to make decisions with a wider goal in mind, rather than tackling problems one-by-one. For an employer like DiDi, viewing the bigger picture in a problem-solving scenario is invaluable.

Understanding the complexities of an Asian market

The rate at which the Asian economy is growing and changing was one of the big draws for Diego to study at Asia School of Business. “Asia has the biggest opportunities right now, [with] millions of people emerging from poverty into the middle classes. These people want to consume, they want access to things they didn’t have before,” Diego points out. DiDi’s mass appeal comes from its multiple platforms, offering bike sharing and bus services, alongside ride hailing, all through one app.

A sophisticated understanding of the complexities of Asian economies is crucial to gaining market share. The American model, as Uber will attest to, doesn’t work. Working and consulting with regional businesses during the Action Learning Program gave Diego a practical understanding of how problems differ from country to country. “You have to learn how to adapt and localize the product,” Diego underlines.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

As soon as you meet Calvin Woo, it’s easy to tell where his interests lie. As part of ASB’s MBA Class of 2019, Calvin’s unconventional background centers around entrepreneurship and social impact, two of his long-term passions. He formed his entrepreneurial mindset at age 11, when he asked his parents to buy him a gift and they told him he had to work for it instead. “Nothing comes free,” he jokes.

Still, he is grateful that, as the firstborn son in a Chinese Malaysian family, his parents allowed him to pursue a career in social enterprise, though he credits this in part to his adolescent negotiation skills. “I didn’t have that pressure of being an engineer, doctor, or whatever,” he says. “They let me do what I wanted to do.”

Over his school breaks and during the summer months, Calvin took odd jobs at a family-friend’s logistics company, using his relative invisibility as a young kid within the firm to learn as much as he could about how the business worked. He talked to everyone who would listen, including interviewing truck drivers about their routes and driving strategies.

Through these inquiries, Calvin was employing the principles of Action Learning years before he would enroll at ASB. In this case, it was his way of learning how to build a company. He started his first business as an undergraduate, printing t-shirts for clubs and organizations at his school. Through this experience, he learned invaluable skills such as negotiation and stakeholder management. Most importantly, he learned how to overcome the anxiety that comes with building something on his own.

“It’s about finding the right opportunities and jumping on them,” he advises. “Act now and fear later.” After this first taste of running a business, Calvin knew he could never work for anyone else. He was only unsure of what kind of business to start until he discovered the world of social enterprise. An English Education major, Calvin was concerned about the educational landscape in Malaysia and wanted to improve it.

In the library, he flitted between the education and business sections, unsure how to connect the two disciplines. A conference at MaGIC first inspired him to explore the bridge between social impact and business. There, he learned about the organization’s programs, eventually enrolling in its 2015 bootcamp where he met several like-minded individuals leveraging business to solve social issues. Not only did he learn a lot, but he gained access to a valuable community.

The first social enterprise he worked with as the Head of Programs was an afterschool program targeting high-need Malaysian students between ages 15 and 17. The organization partnered with universities and training providers to give students better-quality ways to spend their time after school, as well address gaps in their learning not covered in a normal school day.

“We saw how education can be done differently,” Calvin says, reflecting on the experience. “We saw that there were limitations to what the government could provide, especially in quantitative and analytics skills, which was one reason why I came to ASB.” And when Calvin started a social enterprise on his own, he encountered another issue that affected every double-bottom-line organization: he was unsure whether to register as a for-profit or non-profit entity.

This binary classification system didn’t make sense for his organization, causing him to wrestle with an identity crisis and eventually shutter the business. To Calvin, social enterprise means much more than providing earned income for otherwise traditional non-profit organizations. It’s a holistic way of thinking about business that takes a larger set of stakeholders into account, with the primary social mission fitting neatly together with a secondary financial mission.

However, he recognizes that balancing the two goals is an art, and a tricky one at that. The solution? “There should be systems in place that support the growth of these types of organizations,” Calvin says. “Social enterprises face a lack of clarity arising from their legal classification. The current policy doesn’t favor them at all.” After earning his MBA, Calvin hopes to help create a legal structure that will support social enterprises, enabling them to pursue these dual purposes.

He believes the ASB curriculum will prepare him for this work by teaching him to navigate between big-picture thinking and addressing everyday business challenges. “A few classes helped shape my mental model, such as Joe Santos’s global management course and Loredana Padurean’s entrepreneurship framework,” he notes. “I can now look at the same issues from multiple perspectives.”

Calvin also sees ASB’s diversity as a unique learning opportunity. For him, interacting with people from different countries was a way to learn more about himself. “I now feel more Malaysian than I had before,” he notes with a touch of humor. He has learned to embrace differences of opinion among his classmates, claiming that unique perspectives provide a more comprehensive view of a problem and result in more interesting and productive discussions.

His favorite example of this is from working in a team with classmates from different backgrounds and nationalities on an Action Learning project for Bangkok Bank. He credits the success of the project to the fact that some of the team members had banking or financial modeling experience, while others had a more entrepreneurial background. At the project’s conclusion, the bank’s president considered implementing several of the team’s recommendations.

“ASB is unique because the school forces a diverse group of individuals into a common working and living space, so we are able to engage more closely,” Calvin says. “Building these deep relationships is invaluable in itself, because it got me to where I am today.”

Trust plays an instrumental role in Asian business. Business relationships cannot be built instantly; they require effort and commitment. The Chinese even have a word for it — guanxi — a personal trust on which relationships are built, often based on a sense of moral obligation. “Asia is relationship-driven”, muses Benjamin Archangeli. “If people are going to trust you, you have to show that you are willing to eat their food, to learn their language, and to put in the time, otherwise they won’t take you seriously.”

Building business relationships in Southeast Asia has been a journey for Ben. It began when he opted to study his MBA at the Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur. After graduating, he joined Esquel Group in Vietnam, a leading cotton garment manufacturer supplying global brands, including Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren.

He attributes his success with Esquel to the immersive ASB program, where he learned to adapt to new environments and build those all-important relationships focused on trust and communication.

Why Asia School of Business?

For a long time, Ben was keen to follow the path less traveled. As a mechanical engineer, graduating from Kettering University in Michigan, he moved to Houston, where he worked for an oil and gas service company in varying manufacturing roles. Despite his engineering background, he was drawn to the business side of these roles. All the while, he looked-up to his older sister who had successfully built an international career across Europe and Asia.

He was inspired by his sister but, even more so, he was restless in Houston. “I didn’t want to be doing something that everyone else was,” Ben recalls. His career needed a new direction. Earning an MBA had always been at the back of Ben’s mind, and to do so at the Asia School of Business seemed like the perfect opportunity to jump-start his own international career.

Southeast Asia has a booming manufacturing industry, in which Ben was eager to be involved to maintain and strengthen his engineering roots. “It was important to me not to completely abandon engineering and manufacturing,” Benjamin emphasizes, “But to build on that skill set.”

What did the MBA provide?

As a starting point, Kuala Lumpur was a “great gateway to the region,” with a balance of Asian and international cultures which made it easy for a Westerner like Ben to integrate. Importantly, the MBA program at Asia School of Business laid the foundation for him to begin building the business relationships that ultimately led to his career with Esquel.

An impactful part of the program was the Lean practicum, which gave students direct exposure to Asian manufacturing operations. Ben and his classmates spent one intense week at Aerospace Composites Malaysia, a supplier of Boeing and Hexcel, implementing improvement projects with local engineers and managers. This involved hands-on work in the factory, as well as time spent evaluating the problems the factory was facing and coming up with tangible solutions.

Learning about the “real world” challenges that businesses face equipped Benjamin well for his future career. But it was the Action Learning program from which Ben benefitted the most. Each semester student teams are paired with companies across the region to work on real-world projects. For Ben, this involved projects with AirAsia in Kuala Lumpur, and his current employer Esquel, in Vietnam.

“Other MBAs maybe have summer programs where you can travel, but usually it’s only for a couple of weeks. You don’t really have that same immersive experience,” he says. Ben met his current boss during an Action Learning site visit at the Esquel factory in Vietnam, “At the time I was just excited to be meeting the engineering director, but I didn’t realize it was actually my first interview.”

How did the MBA fast-track his career?

For Ben, Asia became not just a place to study, but a place where he could build an international career. While he considered employment elsewhere, he viewed working in Asia as a “long-term gain”—a place where he could build relationships and challenge himself. This relationship-building had been helped by the diversity of his MBA class. As one of 13 represented nationalities, he had quickly learned to adapt his communication skills to fit an international context.

“If someone doesn’t understand you, that’s not their problem; that’s your problem,” Ben advises. He applies this communication mindset to problem-solving in his current role as Technical Engineering Manager.

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This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

Sitting in a leather armchair in the St. Regis hotel, Raghav Narayan had just come back from a visit to a factory in a far-off Malaysian town. He had heaved a sigh when he arrived, explaining that these days his entire life was a whirlwind. This week was the rule, far from the exception. Hailing from India, Raghav has had anything but the standard career trajectory.

He has trained and worked as a lawyer, as well as starting his own businesses and even doing a stint at Google. Earning his MBA at ASB was a way to realign his career path with his growing interest in the financial sector. “I was very clear that this was what I wanted to do,” he says between sips of his drink, reflecting back on the experience.

Southeast Asia turned out to be the perfect place for Raghav to make this career switch, as he was hired straight from ASB into the Kuala Lumpur office of a Dutch private equity firm. He reasons that finding a job in the industry here was easier than it would have been in other regions. “In Asia, you don’t have to follow the traditional path because it’s flexible,” he says. “It’s easier to take higher-level positions.

Elsewhere, I would have to work in investment banking for a few years before going into private equity.” During the course of our catch-up, another of his colleagues walked in and introduced himself. As it turns out, this was a common after-work destination for the whole company, located within walking distance the office. Raghav doesn’t mind this, and in fact loves spending time with his co-workers both in and outside of the office.

“For me,” he says, “they’re the people I’m closest to in Malaysia, so I will usually hang out with them before anyone else.” To him, his close relationship with his colleagues is a by-product of the intensity of the industry. More than just a job, he considers finance a “lifestyle,” and warns to anyone considering investment banking or private equity that they should expect and enjoy this intensity. Those who hope for standard 40-hour workweeks should look elsewhere.

“You need to love what you do,” Raghav explains. “I go to the office at 8:30 AM and leave at 10 PM because I love my work. Everything is tied to outcomes, so It doesn’t matter whether the partners are around, things need to get done. Because the job is self-managed, you cannot do it without hard work and discipline.” Raghav spends much of that time in the office doing two things: learning and meeting people.

The former entails acquiring an unfathomable amount of knowledge about an industry in a short period of time. For example, he was recently approached by a local pharmaceutical company aiming at national expansion. He knew nothing about the industry but made sure that before he met with its directors, he had learned everything he needed to speak about it intelligently.

This ability to absorb knowledge quickly was strengthened through the MBA program at ASB. Termed “drinking from the firehose,” much of the curriculum comprises of intensified versions of courses where a lot of material is packed into a short timeframe. This is especially the case when visiting MIT professors teach at the Kuala Lumpur campus.

When he’s not gathering intelligence on various industries, Raghav is meeting a wide variety of business owners across the region, often exploring multiple opportunities within a week. “It’s great, because everyone wants to sell to you,” he says. Recently, he has looked into acquiring a packaging company as well as a family business. He claims the process of determining what offers to take is one of the most exciting parts of the job.

But he doesn’t spend all of his time in the office. Often, he travels on-site to recent acquisitions to monitor and manage the firm’s portfolio companies. The factory he just returned from is one such visit. There, the firm hired a new general manager, so Raghav plans to visit often to help ease his transition into the role. Though at first Raghav knew nothing about manufacturing, now he feels comfortable giving direction about everything from strategy to purchasing.

The biggest issue, he claims, is convincing the employees to accept change. He admits, “They’re used to doing things in a particular way, and are sometimes opposed to change.” This sort of advisory work isn’t new, as he has gained experience through completing five Action Learning projects at ASB, often dealing with proposing change to large organizations. Notably, he completed his Summer Action Learning Project at OCBC Bank, giving him an insider’s look at the banking industry.

Now, after working in finance full-time for several months, Raghav has come a long way from where he started. Tasks that used to take him three hours now take only one hour, but he laments that his bosses are still much more efficient as a result of their many years of experience. However, Raghav believes that he’s only at the beginning of his learning process, and looks forward to continuing to grow in the industry. “Eventually,” he says with a smile, “I want to get better to the point where I can create a massive amount of value for the company.”