ESSEC Global MBA | ESSEC Business School

Jia Lynn, student of Luxury Brand Management track shares her experience on the collaboration for a study on Shanghai Luxury buyer market

What's your story?

I am from Shanghai , I always lived in Shanghai before I moved to Paris. For most of the women in my country, turning 30 feels like the biggest milestone ever, and for me, starting my MBA in Luxury Brand Management at ESSEC Business School as the cherry on the top of this new decade.

I have worked in the Luxury industry for almost 5 years. In my previous experience at Tod’s and Stella McCartney, I know I learnt a lot and the experience was enriching but there was always something missing, and I knew I needed to find that something, and this MBA seemed to be my missing link and pushed me to quit my comfortable job, to take up this challenge.

Tell us about the project you worked on and why was it so close to your heart?

I worked on a project in collaboration with Spark Ideas LLC to find out what’s the impact of Covid-19 on the sentiment and behavioral change among luxury women shoppers in Shanghai. Our first mission was to identify the Shanghai women who are luxury shoppers and willing to participate in this study because this was different from a regular Q&A type of survey. The idea was to go deeper and engage with these women which was time consuming for them and hence we needed full commitment.

And as I’m a native Shanghainese and a luxury insider, I was sure that no one else could’ve been a better fit to pursue this project. The project ran smoothly and very quickly we finished all the recruitment and went on the study part. I gained some fresh perspective as I moderated the case and was directly talking to the different women and I learnt a lot about the Shanghai luxury market, which is always going to serve as a great asset to me for the future. At the same time, it was also challenging to work in a global set up with the different time zones, since Malinda, the founder of Spark LLC was in New York, I was in Paris and our participants were far away in Shanghai, but that was the fun of it and we managed to complete the study in one month. It was truly an unforgettable experience.

How did you find this opportunity? And what are your key takeaways from this experience?

Picture : Soft skill session before their networking soiree

All this goes back to the beginning of march, when Covid-19 hadn’t hit us yet and we had one of our “Get-Out-of-Cergy” networking soirees, organized by ESSEC, where we get the opportunity to network not only network with fellow students, alumni but also Industry experts and that’s where I met Malinda, the Founder of Spark Ideas LLC. We had no discussion about the project then, but we had a swift and engaging conversation. One week later, thanks to our director, Patti Brown, we learnt that she is looking for someone from Asia and with an understanding of the Asian market (specifically Shanghai) for their opinion of their new mobile platform, and I readily accepted and caught up with her very quickly. We hit it off instantly and she asked me if I would be interested to join them for a case-study on Shanghai Luxury market and I am so happy that I kept an open mind and was willing to take it up as this was a great experience overall.

Tell us about your present experience during the MBA?

I still remember that one year ago, when I chose ESSEC as my final choice, I knew it was a great decision as we would have a lot of opportunities to connect with luxury brands, and it turned out to be a lot more than just that.

Thanks to our career services director Anthea Davis, for the savoir-faire sessions every two weeks, visits such as the Hermes scarf factory in Lyon, the Atelier Lesage with Chanel, and VCA jewelry workshop among others. I wouldn’t have had them anywhere else as the heritage that ESSEC Business school brings along cannot be replicated.

Back in the class, I was still amazed by how diverse our cohort is, it’s always good to learn from others and their culture. And I’m glad that we could have some professors who not only had the knowledge of the luxury industry but also the rich experience from the real business world which helped us understand the practical business implications as well.

We never get bored as there was always something to do be it the capstone project, the different networking events. We met a lot of people, not just alumni but also the different industry experts from varied industries with different professional & ethical backgrounds and Patti, our director was always training us and finding the best people to train us to approach these experts in the most professional way. I learnt a lot and I am still learning and this MBA has been a life changing experience !

Station F - The world’s largest startup facility!

By Visakh Ram, ESSEC Global MBA 2019-2020 | Strategy & Management major

Station F has its name derived from a former rail freight depot called La Halle Freyssinet, which was remodeled into the present-day Station F. The facility expands over 34000 square meters and houses around 1000 startups.

Station F’s partners include:

Facebook,
LVMH,
Google
Microsoft
among other big names.

Our ESSEC #GlobalMBA students got an opportunity to visit this enormous campus and got a chance to interact with the leaders of some brilliant and innovative start-ups.

The day started with expert talks from the Station F program called founder’s club. Most of these ideas already received funding from investors. The first speech was by Marc Prempain who is the founder of Vibe. The company focuses on Tech support through video conferencing. Then we had Blaise from Nyctale, a blockchain and business intelligence firm, Simo from an apple refurbished products company (RefurbMe) and Dan from a video classifieds company (Pop Eye) explaining us their vision for their respective companies. It was amazing to see their passion and energy to discover and solve real world problems.

In a program modelled around the popular show the Dragon’s Den, we had to listen to pitches from 8 start-ups from the Station F program called the Fighter’s program.

· The first pitch was by Yama on SensAi, the startup he created so that he could help teach boxing to kids from Afghanistan, his home country

· Chanssee is a startup created to give amateur footballers a chance to be seen. It connects them with mentors and football clubs

· Montasser spoke how he would like to revolutionize the online job searching and recruitment industry by advanced location-based matching in Handy Catch

· Lovel knew that the biggest problem of the online dating world is ice-breaking. Lovel solves this by creating challenges based on interest to let its member connect quickly with their dates.

· How many of the expatriates and tourists are scared to visit a Doctor in France because of the language barrier? Do you think too many? Alia Tech tries to solve this very problem with its advance translation system optimized for Medical context.

· Are you a musician who wants to book a studio at affordable prices or a studio manager who wants to avoid ‘no-shows’ after booking? BookMyStudio is there for the rescue

· MyShowPass is a startup that help create a subscription to let you enjoy more concerts, expos and spectacles at affordable prices

· Sometimes it’s better if someone else could tell your crush that you are a good match for him or her. Josh could become that someone. The app gives anonymous suggestions to help you out.

While most start-ups decide to talk or present, there was one which found another way of pitching – Food! Meet my mama served delicious Iranian food during the cocktail. The startup trains and brings together woman skilled at cooking to deliver great food.

We went across the amazing campus. Some of us even have plans to become Entrepreneurs or work for companies at the Station-F. It was a great visit. Thank you ESSEC, along with Carina and Yama for organizing this.

Takeaways from our Entrepreneurship Course

By Priya Verma, ESSEC Global MBA Strategy & Management major 2019-2020

What is entrepreneurship? Is it for me? How do you assess the potential of an idea? How to develop your idea into a $1M opportunity? How do you develop a business plan? How can you be an entrepreneur in a corporate environment? Should passion be the main factor motivating you, or is there a point to stop? How do you run a business with a small budget?

These are a few of the questions which the course on Entrepreneurship by Prof. Jan Lepoutre helped us to answer.

The course started with everyone talking about their previous entrepreneurial experiences. Entrepreneurship is not just about establishing a new business; it’s about exploring an opportunity, learning in the process of doing and managing risks simultaneously. Running a successful business is not just based on chance or luck. Failures or hurdles are the part of the process and one should know how to tackle and implement appropriate contingency plans.

Developing an entrepreneurial mindset - Keeping the ultimate goal in mind

We learned that entrepreneurial thinking is effectual as one needs to imagine possible new ends using a given set of means. If there is an unexpected situation, then turning that into an opportunity serves well. The goal is to maximize profit for the whole value chain (all the people involved), not for an individual to whom the idea belongs or who stated it.

Always trying to put things to action is the best way to ascertain your ideas and helps you understand the feasibility and viability of the plan. Therefore, start with whatever resources are available in terms

of knowledge, competencies, budget, and network. When it comes to business, risk is a huge part of pursuing anything new. One should know how to manage that risk over time. Uncertainty could be managed by talking about ideas.

Importance of your network

Another observation from the course was that your network plays an important role as through these connections one could leverage the knowledge they could offer, expand collaborations, and grow further.

Anything is possible!

From the ideation stage of trying to find a need of an expat in France, we learned that it doesn’t take many resources to start with something. There were various needs like finding a hairdresser familiar with your taste, finding people with similar cultural backgrounds to connect with, getting things from your home country which are difficult to find here, etc. I am inspired by the abundance of opportunities out there.

We also had an opportunity to interview some successful entrepreneurs. The common learning was that all of them started with the minimum resources available and were able to successfully grow

because they pursued regardless of the hurdles by figuring out ways to make things work.

From learning about how to gather resources for running a business to how a powerful pitch should clearly state the concept and consequence, the course covered everything. It’s important to emphasize how the idea creates value.

To conclude, I would say that the course has been a surprising and inspirational journey. It has pushed me to pursue something cause close to my heart in the future.

We would like to thank Professor Jan Lepoutre for making the course interactive and insightful.

#ESSECGMBAExperience #MBACareers

Interview Practice Sessions in the ESSEC Global MBA

By Terrence Huang Yu, ESSEC Global MBA Strategy & Management major 2019-2020

Interviews are one of the most important aspects of the job search. The key to success in interviews is mainly about how to present yourself and your strengths, knowing the company well, and demonstrating how you can bring value to the role.

As part of the Global MBA at ESSEC, there is significant training and coaching on the career aspect offered by the school. One of them is a training on interview skills. There are several rounds of interview trainings, where we practice the general interview, the fit interview, the case interview, and salary negotiation.

Marie-Laure Dahan, our Career Services Consultant, manages the Career Services activities and initiatives for Global MBA participants, and also gives several workshops on various topics. During her seminar on interview skills, she went through the skills and tips for various forms of interviews including online interviews, group interviews, assessment centers and so on.

To prepare for an interview, there are several steps:

Know yourself and your values
Research the company
Practice the interview with your peers and professionals
Prepare your attire and know what to bring on that day

After the interview, it is always good to send a follow-up note thanking the interviewers for their time.

In terms of fit questions, one of the best strategies to answer them is the STAR approach, meaning situation, task, action and result.

Situation: Describe the situation you were in or the task you needed to accomplish
Task: Describe the challenges and expectations.
Action: Elaborate on the specific action you took.
You then conclude with Results.

Many candidates often forget to mention the results. However, the results are very important. The interviewer wants to see what you've achieved, in order to assess the value you can bring to the company. A solid record of past achievements is a huge competitive advantage.

Besides the interview skills training sessions, there are also mock interview sessions with recruiters from the industry. After the session, the recruiter gives us feedback on our performance with regard to five criteria:

Business attire/Grooming
Posture/Body Language/Eye Contact/Smile
Enthusiasm/Energy
Clarity/Conciseness/Structure
Concrete/Specific Arguments & Facts

The interviewer will also give feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the interviewee. These comments are very valuable for my future interviews. I enjoy such activities and my career plan has become clearer after all these exercises.

Ireland : An Island with an Ocean of Opportunities

By Bhawna Periwal, ESSEC Global MBA Strategy & Management major 2019-2020

Many MBA participants pursuing an MBA in Europe are often looking to make a career switch to Europe. Have you ever considered pursuing a Career in Ireland? In our recent private talk with Auriane Thomasset, we uncovered the ocean of opportunities that Ireland can offer.

With a population at just over 4.88 million, its largest cities Dublin and Cork are home to some of the most sought-after companies. Known as the Silicon Valley of the EU, Dublin is home to tech giants like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, etc. Even more so, Ireland is likely going to be the next hotspot after Brexit, the fate of which would be decided by the next UK General Elections. It is expected that post Brexit, there would be relocation of banks to Ireland and increase in Foreign Direct Investments in Ireland. Barclays, Wells Fargo and Bank of America have relocated their EMEA headquarters and will pursue their hirings.

So what is in it for the Global MBA Strategy & Management majors?

With the presence of major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Smartbox, and Intel, there is huge opportunity for strategy professionals inside the tech sector. Accenture, Deloitte and PwC also hire for management consulting in areas such as Digital, Data and Analytics, Technology and Corporate Finance.

What about the Visa process?

Professionals possessing critical skills identified by the Government of Ireland can apply for a Critical Skills Employment Permit. Eligible occupations under this type of permit are deemed to be critically important to growing Ireland’s economy, are highly demanded and highly skilled, and in significant shortage of supply in their labour market. Examples of occupations that have been included in the Critical Skills Occupations List include: IT project and program manager, IT Business Analyst, Management consultants and business analysts specializing in big data analytics with skills in IT, data mining, modelling, and advanced maths, and Business and financial project management professionals specializing in finance and investment analytics, risk analytics, credit, fraud analytics or related and relevant specialist skills.

For any other skills not classified as critical, the employers will need to conduct Resident Labour Market tests.

Work Holidays Visa for up to 1 year can be availed by professionals up to the age of 30 for selected nationalities.

Below are the links to other Irish jobs and recruitment agencies: