The most valueable thing I’ve learned from Comm 299 is how to present myself in a better way. I have gained a lot of inspiration from this couse on how to write good resume and cover letter and how to make myself impressive in interviews.
At the beginning of the last semester, I failed all my applications for 1st year executive positions of several different clubs. From the feedback I got from the recruiters, I knew that I did not present myself in the right way that they want.
After attending relevant lectures and tutorials of Comm 299, I become more clear about the detailed problems in my previous job applications and what the things that I need to improve are. The focus of my resume and cover letter used to be only based on experiences and facts about myself without being related to the strengths and advantageous skills that I acquired from these events. From Comm 299, I learned that recruiters would like to know what I learned from and achieved in various activities besides what the activities themselves are about. I have also learned how to make the formatting more professional and how to improve the effectiveness of verbal expression. In the following lessons, I learned the basic etiquette and the important things that I need to know during a job interview. For example, I should always avoid to bring laptop or put hands on the table during an interview, which were big mistakes I made in most of my interviews before. It is necessary to do research about the company that I am applying to work in before the interview, and to get prepared to ask good questions at the end of the interview.
“Selling oneself” is an important life skill; and Comm 299 equipped me with this skill in a systematic and effective way. I am so lucky that I have taken this course. And I would like to recommend Comm 299 to everyone in Sauder.
My father works as a professor in university and part-time as the sales director of a multinational pharmaceutical company. He always manages to handle everything at the same time, and is quite successful in both of his jobs. He is an early person, and always act immediately to take on any new tasks and challenges. I believe this is the biggest magic secret to his success in career and life, and the most valuable thing for me to learn from.
About 20 years ago, a pharmaceutical multinational company was urgently hiring a sales manager at a salary 8 times higher than average. My father and other teachers in the same office saw the job posting on newspaper, and all of them were interested. However, in order to have an interview, they had to take train to another city in 5 days. My father bought tickets quickly and got his 2-day leave approved by his university while others were just simply thinking about the job. The tickets were sold out just on the following day. He was hired eventually though his colleages were actually more experienced and more competitive than him at that time. After he took on his new job, he had to travel to different cities. Sometimes he gave lectures immediately after arriving back from another city. He plans everything early ahead and always gets everything prepared on time.
“Be early”, a magic secret to success, has helped me a lot in real life. Plan early, act early. Thank you dad for teaching me this.
In April 12th, KFC launched a sensational addition to its menu——The double down. In Canada, the sandwich quickly became KFC’s best-selling new menu item ever, quickly selling over 350,000 sandwiches in less than 10 days.
While McDonalds is selling healthy salads in their fastfood restaurants, KFC is positioning itself as a real fastfood brand. KFC attracts chicken lovers with the meatiest sandwich creation ever——two 100 percent all white meat fried chicken filets topped with cheese, bacon and the Colonel’s Sauce. Unlike the traditional fastfood, it has a unique selling point as its TV commercial describes:”so much 100-per-cent premium chicken, we didn’t have room for a bun.”
Is it ethical? You will probably say no without thinking. But here’s an interesting phenomenon that totally challenges our knowledge learnt in class. “You create something that’s almost illegal and then there’s more demand for it.” Richard Michon, a marketing professor at Ryerson. Besides the product’s points of difference and innovative features we can perceive, Double Down’s negative publicity is also a major cause of the marketing success. People talk about it and make funny videos online; nutritionists cry and newspapers make criticism…Everything is actually following KFC’s “360 degree” marketing strategy——capitalizing social media for free.
Reference:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/852740/new-burger-has-fried-chicken-bun
http://www.thestar.com/article/882437–kfc-s-double-down-sets-canadian-sales-record
http://www.kfc.com/promos/commercial_doubledown.asp’http://www.kfc.com/promos/commercial_doubledown.asp’
A social entrepreneur is the one who recognizes a social problem and organize resources to achieve a change that is beneficial for the society through innovation. Scott Griffiths is the one. Recently, he was selected as CEO of the Year in the ‘social entrepreneur’ category.
Zipcar has helped change urban life by providing instant affordable mobility in 14 major metropolitan areas, 220 college campuses in the United States, United Kingdom and Canda. He tried to make the business “do well by doing good”. Using fuel efficient cars only, they charge for car sharing services at a cheap price. Through a highly innovative operation system, Zipcar achieves the goal of sustainability by making the most efficient use of resources. Since each Zipcar removes 15 personally owned vehicles from the road, Zipcar helps reduce congestion, ease parking demands and lower a community’s overall carbon footprint. Scott has been CEO since 2003 and has made Zipcar to be the world’s biggest car share company successfully.
Reference:
http://www.voxy.co.nz/business/zipcar-ceo-wins-social-entrepreneur-ceo-year-award/26/70643
Some quick facts before you read the post:
Veet is a hair removal product for woman.
Bush is a slang word for hair.
“Goodbye Bush” was an interesting ad of Veet just after Obama took over Bush’s position of the US president. This short ad informed customers what its products do and capitalized the hottest political issue at the same time. The ad commented on the fact that Obama would be taking over power after George Bush, and demonstrated “Yes ladies, our product will remove your unwanted hair.”As Brand Strategy magazine said, “We love this ad we got sent, which comes from Veet.” This creative ad was a huge marketing success. It went viral. The minute this ad went out, scans of it started to be spread widely around the internet. This ad was really cheeky but people loved it so they shared it. It’s easy to get into people’s mind even for a long period of time. How many times do you read a dirty slang term in newspaper? When I look for a hair removal product, my mind would probably jump to Veet. That’s a brand recognition due to its fantastic marketing.
Reference:
http://brandstrategy.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/goodbye-bush-says-veet-in-cheeky-ad/
Jaguar-Land Rover, which is now owned by Indian company Tata Motors, is trying to capitalize on the emerging automobile markets such as China. However, it faces a human resource management problem——the company is having trouble to move its talented managers and their team to China to facilitate the achievement of the company’s objective in Chinese market expansion.
Jaguar’s human resources director Des Thurlby tries to pursuade the managers to work abroad by telling the link the job oversea to future reward and recognition——failing to move overseas would not rule a candidate out of a board position, but promotion was far more likely if an employee had worked overseas. Though the strategy itself follows positive organisational culture that motivates by rewarding and takes care of workers’ personal growth, they are still reluctant to move out. If it does not work within the time allowed, I believe it would be wise for him to either improve the tactics to the strategy (for example, giving them tangible short-term “well-specified” reward and recognition if this is more likely to be attractive), or change another strategy (perhaps it’s more feasible to hire local managers).
References:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/71593,business,jaguar-staff-told-to-move-to-china-or-risk-promotion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8134971/Jaguar-tells-managers-relocate-to-China-or-risk-promotion.html
Established by Mike Broderick in 2002, Turning Technologies has become a global leading company in the Audience Response Industry. Over half of the U.S. colleges and universities are using Turning Technologies’ response solutions on campus. It grew exponentially, 3707.9% from 2004 to 2007. I was astonished by its speed wealth creation resulted from not only the entrepreneur’s investment but also his vision of changing the phase of the industry by innovating new products continuously.
As the entrepreneur, Mike Broderick has been dedicated in creating innovation throughout the company. As he said in the video(see below), the only way to compete in the global market place is to be the smartest and “have the best”. And that comes from smart people who are able to take the real risks and do incredible things. I think having the will to take risks and to lead the industry through innovation, rather than to simply copy, are great entrepreneurial characteristics that can lead to huge success. This can generate new demand, and thus avoid increasing fierce competition in the existing market.
Video:
References:
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/company/
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/company/history/
Source:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/08/stories/2010090853261900.htm
The fixed production cost report has some mistakes.
The major problem the committee appointed by the Arecanut Research Development Foundation made is that they took interest expenses and establishment costs into account to calculate the fixed production costs(as what is shown in the second paragraph). Interest expenses is a financial charge and should not be considered. And the establishment cost is a sunk cost so it should be capitalized instead of being included in the fixed cost every year.
Also, it is improper to treat fixed production cost per kilo of white or red arecanut as a indicator of the effieciency of fixed production cost control. Arecanut is an argriculture product. How good the harvest is unpredictable because the amount of harvest is much depand on the uncontrollable weather and temperatures of the year. Therefore, fixed cost per kilo can experience an unfavourable increase even it is better managed. I would say fixed production cost per acre is a better indicator for judging the fixed cost control performance after expansion if arecanut trees were planted at the same density. By avoiding distractive variables, this allows fairer comparisons to judge——whether the expansion is beneficial on controlling production fixed cost.
Reference source:
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/6962327.html
Diagram source:
http://money.163.com
In April, Beijing Auto Expo opened with the theme of “Imagining the Green Future”, and sent a signal of potential trend of car manufacturing in Chinese market. Here are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that green auto manufacturers should consider before entering Chinese market.
Strengths:
The labour and raw materials costs are low. If manufacturing plants and selling places are both in China, considerable transportation cost can be saved.
Expanding to a new market can increase businesses’ risk-bearing ability.
Weaknesses:
Companies outside China have limited information and knowledge about the industry.
Marketing and R&D costs can be high; and most of them will be irrecoverable sunk costs.
Opportunities:
China is the world’s largest auto market. People’s demand for cars is predicted to have a sustained and fast growth as their income (affordability) increases every year.
Chinese government provides financial incentives to encourage new-energy car manufacturers. 
Chinese Oil price is high so cars with less oil consumption are desirable.
Chinese green car market is not saturated.
Threats:
Future uncertainty in Chinese government policies and fluctuation of exchange rate may exist.
Future cost of labour and price of raw materials may rise because of inflation.
Reference source:
http://resources.alibaba.com/topic/531563/KFC_s_localization_strategy_in_China_.htm
KFC is the most popular fast food restaurant in China, though it only ranks 7th in the US market where it comes from. I think a major reason of the success is its great brand positioning. It leveraged points of parity and difference at the same time.
KFC recognized itself as a fast food restaurant, when it first entered Chinese market 23 years ago and people had no idea what the westerners’ fast food. Knowing that Chinese people love to eat chicken, KFC introduced its products by creating an image of “The US Fried Chicken Expert” in customers’ mind. Using “chicken” as the frame of reference to attract customers, it also emphasized on its unique US-flavor taste.
As more competitors like McDonalds entered fast food market in China, KFC speeded up research and development and come up with attractive new products continously to reinforce its market leader position. It became the first fast food restaurant with an idea of product localisation, as its advertisement shows——”We produce fast food that caters to Chinese taste”. KFC involves more Chinese ingredients and recipes into new products successfully; and most of them were still designed based on what KFC was famous for——fried chicken.
