Rakuten looking to get global and the discriminating Japanese consumer

This month I am attending a lot of send-off parties held by various investment banks, consulting firms and HR agencies for people going to business school abroad. The parties are an opportunity to hear the experience of Japanese students that went abroad to get their MBAs and eventually came back to Japan to work.

Some of the companies have made good impressions on me. Rakuten, operator of Japan's largest online shopping site for example, is making a big push at the moment to acquire foreign, or overseas trained talent in their quest to become more “Global”. Some of their recent overseas initiatives include bids to purchase Buy.com and France’s PriceMinister. Rakuten is also tied up with the Chinese search engine Baidu.com. They will be attending the Boston Career Forum (BCF), the largest career forum for Japanese/English bilinguals to help them find that talent. One attractive point the company has is all the company’s internal communications are in English.

One company that has really caught my attention is Unilever Japan. Unilever, as you may know, markets brands such as Lipton Tea, Dove, and AXE. Unilever Japan, like Rakuten, is making a big push to get “worldly” people working there and will start an MBA Summer Intern program for the first time in Summer 2011. At the seminar we were able to talk to people in Unilever’s Tokyo office from various backgrounds and their experiences at the firm. There are a lot of opportunities to work in the company’s offices all over the world. What was most interesting to me, however, was hearing about the difficulties breaking into the Japanese market. Japanese consumers are notoriously discriminating. It takes a lot of tinkering to get everything about a product right. The launch of AXE Body Spray, for example, was much later than the launch in every other countries. AXE’s racy ads needed to be toned down, the shape of its can needed to be changed, as well as the actual strength of the product. Here is an interview with one of the people I met at the seminar.

I must admit I wasn’t thinking too much about marketing before going to Unilever. After meeting with the people there and hearing what they had to say about their experience, it definitely sounds like a fun opportunity. We’ll see how the cards play out, but I do want to look into it.

I am signing a lease for my new apartment this morning and will be moving in the weekend of July 23. Just in time for the start of orientation on July 26. I will be living in downtown LA in the financial district. Going to try and go car-less in LA for the first semester at least. Hope it’s not too big of a deal.

Only 3 weekends left in Tokyo now. Not much to do at the moment outside of arranging for my things to get sent home and selling/giving things away. If you need anything for the house I might be able to set you up with something!

College majors don't matter, Rankings do

There are a good amount of new articles on MBA related topics popping up on Bloomberg Businessweek this month. Two in particular caught my eye.

The first’s main topic isn’t on MBAs or Business Schools. It is on CEOs that didn’t study anything related to business at their undergraduate institution. I actually always tell young people that ask me for career guidance that choose a major that you like and know you will excel in because in the end your college major really has no bearing on where you end up. The only exception is if you want to be an engineer, you pretty much have to study engineering. As I mentioned in my last entry, Steve Jobs didn’t even graduate from college. He is not the only one: Bill Gates (Harvard) and Larry Ellison (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Chicago) of Oracle dropped out of school as well.

So let’s say you plan on finishing your university degree and not sure what to study. This article provides inspiration for you to choose a major that you want to study as opposed to one you think is best to put on your resume. It even suggests you might be better off going with a degree totally unrelated to business. Just some food for thought for you young people that tend to think your college major really means more than something. A lot of times it’s not as important as you think.

The second article is on MBA rankings and how they pertain to your future salary. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“On average, MBAs from the top 45 B-schools will make around $2.5 million in base pay and bonuses over the course of a 20-year career. But there are great differences between the total compensation of the schools at the top of the list compared with those closer to the bottom, especially as MBAs move deeper into their careers. An MBA grad from Harvard, for instance, will earn nearly $4 million over the span of two decades. A grad from the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business will earn less than half that. Newly minted MBAs at some top programs, such as Yale, earn high starting salaries but experience only a minimal increase over time. At other schools, such as the University of Connecticut, MBA grads more than double their salaries over the 20-year period.”

Of course there are tons of other factors that come into play, but it is an interesting read nonetheless. The article can be found here.

CNNMoney.com published the top 100 companies business school students most want to work for. Not surprisingly, Google topped the list for the fourth year in a row. Why Google? Well here’s what CNNMoney says:

“Well, who wouldn't want to work for a company that offers free meals, massages, as well as onsite laundry and oil changes? ‘But the creative culture is another big draw. People want to work here because they know they'll be doing innovative work,’ says company spokesman Jordan Newman. Employees are encouraged to learn skills outside of their specific field, by taking French lessons at the company's so-called Google University, for example. Says Newman: ‘There's a strong emphasis on growing here.’”

What was surprising about the list is that 3 investment banks made the list.

“’Being a part of the rebuilding of the investment banking industry is really appealing,’" said Camille Kelly, vice president of employer branding at Universum. ‘The opportunity to work at a company when it's on the road to recovery is a great chance to make an impact at your first job out of school.’”

The full CNNMoney list can be found here.

And speaking of Google…

It's all about connecting the dots

I have a good buddy W.E. in Japan that is applying to business school this fall. He asked me about b-school interviews. For me, they weren’t difficult at all. The questions at each interview are basically the same: Why do you want an MBA now? Why this school?

Then one of my newer friends S.I. posted a commencement speech Steve Jobs did at Stanford five years ago. S.I. is a university student here in Tokyo, and is dropping knowledge on me via facebook. Thanks, S.I.

Jobs says it’s all about “connecting the dots” when tying together dropping out of college to his success at Apple.

“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Business school applications are all about “connecting the dots.” I had no idea I’d be going to USC in two months when I moved to Japan 5 years ago. He’s right though when he says it is very clear looking backwards. I can tell you exactly why I am going there now, and how everything I’ve accomplished to this point leads to that path. The b-school application process is a very painstaking process, but once you finish it you know exactly who you are, what you can and can’t do, and what you will be doing with that information going forward. Even if you don’t get in anywhere.

Jobs goes on to give more insight regarding getting fired from Apple.

"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

This is where you really need to have faith in the stars aligning themselves. I’ve had jobs that I have liked, not loved. Will I get myself to that elusive job? Well, that’s why I’m going to back to school. Only time will tell but I’m following Mr. Jobs advice by not settling.

His whole commencement speech can be found here.

People keep asking me if I’m coming back to Japan. What nobody realizes is that Japan is pretty much home to me. Except for a short stay after university, I haven’t lived in the house I grew up in since I was 17 years old. It’s very possible I fall in love with Southern California but up to this point I’ve never enjoyed life more than my 5+ years here in Tokyo. Not even close. I wish my friends and family from PG County, Baltimore, NYC, etc. could have been here for the ride.

I met a guy last night that went to HEC Paris. He is from Argentina. He’s been here almost 3 times as long as I have and I asked him if he’s going to be here in the long run. He said yeah. He told me his reason in Japanese – Tokyo is sumiyasui. Sumiyasui translated directly into English means “easy to live.” The translation doesn’t really do the phrase any justice however. It’s more like as Miss N.S. says, “a great place to live.”

T-minus 2 months till LA and I still don’t have a place to live. Nor a car. Should I be worried?

I know I’m forgetting something, but I’ll leave it to next time.

Everyone could use a Bob in their life

As I mentioned in my last post, there are tons of ways to go about deciding what’s best for you. One guy who has been invaluable to me in my decision making process is my friend Bob from the gym.

Bob is about 50 something. He’s the local head of a foreign marketing company in Tokyo. One of the most down to earth people you’ll ever meet. We run into each other in the gym once or twice a week.

When I met the Director of Admissions of Smith for dinner in early February, I wasn’t sure what to wear as it was a Friday night and I wanted to be able to go out afterwards. Plus it was the first time to go to a dinner with such a person, so I figured why not ask Bob. He seems to know his stuff. Bob said to wear a blazer, dress shirt and that I could go with jeans as long as they were nice. I went with that recommendation and it seemed like it was okay. My offer wasn’t rescinded at least.

Turns out Bob went to Harvard to get his MBA. You would never know that by the way he carries himself, at least if you’ve met someone else from that b-school. Since then he’s given me tons of advice regarding my search. The day of the dinner he gave me some great questions to ask and just a few days ago he told me why Marketing was such a popular MBA concentration (you’re basically not pigeon-holed as much as with other concentrations). Bob also had a son that went to USC so he knows a little about moving to the area like don’t register your car in California. The insurance premiums are crazy expensive. He also happens to know the person in Tokyo handling alumni relations for USC so hopefully I’ll get a chance to get introduced.

This week has been quite busy and will continue to be until the end of the week. I started a temp job at a company trying to create software that helps inexperienced investors currency trade. My job is to research similar companies in the US and gauge interest in potential partnerships.

The director of the MBA program I applied to at the University of Hawaii is also in town. I met with him for lunch today. He’s an Economics professor although he only teaches MBA students. Very nice, smart man. We met for lunch and I asked him as many questions as I could in the short time we had. I am scheduled to attend the program’s graduation ceremony in Tokyo tomorrow before returning to the night shift at work.

On top of that my sister and fiancé are in town. I went from unemployed to super busy in a span of a few days. Not complaining though. If you couldn’t tell, I am a happy boy.

Oh, and one last thing. Here are the 2010 grad school rankings from US News.

Cost doesn't matter

Probably the best advice I’ve received thus far came from the Foster MBA Admitted Student newsletter. Ironically, it probably pushed me away from their program. In the newsletter, Dan Poston, Assistant Dean for Masters Programs at UW says:

“Cost doesn’t matter. How can I say such a thing? Because I firmly believe that a free ride to ‘Anytown U’ cannot possibly match the value of a top MBA program, even if you must borrow every cent of the tuition. If a degree from School A leads to exactly the job you want and a degree from School B does not, does that $20,000 scholarship from School B still look like a good deal?”

There are two types of people that go to business school. The first are people that go to improve their skills so they can be better at their job now. The other group are career changers. Regardless of what category you fall under, you need your investment to lead you to the job you want. Even if you are getting a free ride, you are investing two years of your life in your 20s or 30s.

I fall under both categories. I worked in Financial Communications and Investor Relations consulting where I helped companies from different secotrs/industries/countries tailor their communications geared toward their investors. My goal is to do the same type of work in Japan, but in-house (i.e. for one company as opposed to clients). It is completely possible that I change my mind while in school, but this is what I would like to do at the moment.

There are two ways to look for a job in b-school: via on-campus recruiting or networking/finding one yourself. Unless you’re Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton, most companies that recruit on-campus are companies that are based in the same geographical area as the school. For example, 75% of students in Smith’s Full-time MBA program that graduated in 2008 chose jobs in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast region, while 70% of the same class at USC/Marshall’s program stayed on the West Coast to work.

Not many companies recruit for their in-house investor relations positions. They are usually filled internally or handpicked from investment banks that helped the company raise capital. Even if they do recruit for them, they aren’t going to business school campuses. There just aren’t enough positions for that. What this means is that my job search is going to be done by me, myself, and I as I would like to come back to Japan when I finish, and the job I want falls into a niche category.

So if I take cost out of the equation, what factors do I need to look at when choosing a school? I need a school with a big international alumni network. It also needs to have a good ranking as Japanese people really care about rankings (although American people do too). The school’s career services center also has to have a good record of placing graduates in international jobs. As mentioned earlier, there will be no recruiting for the job I want at any of the schools I got into. However, they must be able to provide as much assistance where necessary.

I am currently in at 3 schools – Maryland, USC, and UW. Given the criteria mentioned above, USC/Marshall is the best fit. USC has the largest population of foreign alumni of any university in the U.S. Its ranking is about the same as Maryland’s in most polls, sometimes better sometimes worse. A greater percentage of its graduates work abroad than the other schools I am considering. Marshall also has a greater focus on international business. They are the first business school to require its students to travel abroad.

So as it stands at the moment, I’m going to LA and pretty excited about it. I do have an interview with Hawaii this week and do not have to make my final decision on USC until next month, but Maryland’s $1,000 non-refundable deposit is due on April 8 and I do not have any plans to pay it, nor do I plan on asking them for an extension since I already asked them one to make it April 8.

I am quite relieved that the whole process is almost over, but I do have a lot of things to worry about going forward. Mainly where I’m going to live, how I am going to get a car, etc. Luckily, this isn’t the first time I am moving to a big city. At least I can speak the local language there! I also have a good amount of friends in LA (that I would hide and would hide me!) to help me out with the process.

How do you measure success?

The Beers for Books event at IBEX was a huge success. Thank you to everyone that helped out especially Romano, Gary B, and the pole dancers that worked for free. We raised almost 30,000 JPY for Room to Read. Special thanks to my boy JG whose been one of my closest friends in Japan through thick and thin. From time to time we piss each other off, but after all these years we’re still friends.

One of the things I am doing to evaluate the schools I am applying to is reading student blogs. I came across an entry from one of the students at Texas. It was about their opportunity to meet superstar investor Warren Buffet. Here is an interesting excerpt from the entry:

“There was one particular story that Warren told that really had an impact on me. He told a story about an old woman who befriended him several years ago who took a while to open up to him. She had escaped the Holocaust, but before coming to the United States and settling in Omaha, she had been in a concentration camp in Auschwitz with her sister. Unfortunately, her sister didn’t make it out alive, but this woman had been one of the lucky ones. As Warren told us this story, he described how at some point the woman had said to him, ‘I’m sorry I have been slow to open up. It is hard for me to get close to people, because when I evaluate my relationships with them, I always ask myself, ‘Would they hide me?’’ In jest, he remarked that there were several people in his life whose cover he’d intentionally blow (”HE’S IN THE ATTIC!!”)….But Warren went on to equate this to how you measure success…not by how much money you have, or how many letters are after your name. Warren paused (for emphasis), and asked us simply, ‘How many people would hide you?’”

The rest of the entry can be found here, but I found it a pretty interesting way to evaluate success. I never thought about it, but I have close to 1,000 friends on facebook and I wonder how many would hide me. JG and DC def would. I’d hide them in a heartbeat too.

No word from Texas. I read the fine print on their admissions website and it said 10-13 weeks after submitting my application online. We just entered the 10th week, so I’m sure that’s what admissions will tell me if I send them an e-mail asking them what’s up with my application. Question is: should I do it anyway? I don’t know the etiquette for asking admissions about where your application is when the waiting period hasn’t ended yet. Does it hurt my chances? I think I’ll give it until the end of this week and if I don’t hear back by then, I’ll give them a little nudge.

Why I like Japan

I’ve been back in Tokyo since last Friday. I didn’t think I was jet lagged but I slept all day on Monday and was up all night on Monday night. Last night I barely slept as well. We’ll see how today goes.

At my USC admissions interview, I was asked why I like Japan. I guess I don’t really talk about it that much, but I have certainly thought of it and was ready to answer the question. What I like best is how its traditional culture, for the most part, coexists in harmony with its modern culture. Just taking a walk outside you will see signs of westernization within seconds. There are McDonald’s and Starbucks everywhere but isn’t that for the better? LOL. What I mean though is how Japanese people still spend time with their families over the New Year’s holidays, participate in tea ceremonies, visit temples, etc. They certainly do non-Japanese things, but what I like is how the traditional stuff is always available to do, and people freely choose to do them.

No good updates at the moment. UT says that I should hear back from them 4-6 weeks after my interview. The 6 weeks will end this Friday, Texas time. I should hear back from USC on April 1. It’s all a waiting game. And annoying one at that. So at the moment I am filling out financial aid forms and reading books. I bought Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and two books by Malcolm Gladwell. Haven’t made much progress on any of them.

Finally, just a reminder that my last bartending gig is this weekend. Proceeds will be going to the Beer for Books charity. Details below. Please stop by if you’re free!

Beer for Books - Cocktails & Dreams finale
When: Sunday, March 21 at 8pm
Location: IBEX Roppongi - ARIES BLD 4F, 3-15-24, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Map
Entertainment: Live DJ spinning hip-hop and R&B, pole dancers
Cost: FREE
Phone: 03-3746-1075