On July 23, the 2016 special CDO orientation activity for part-time MBA students was held. Nearly 400 part-time students of the 2016 Fudan MBA Program got together at the weekend despite the sweltering summer heat.

First, Director of the CDO Chunhui SHEN introduced the CDO’s career development services to the students in detail. The CDO cooperates with more than 2,000 enterprises and provides students with clear career planning and guidance through career development tools such as “one assessment, two major forums, three types of supervisors, four kinds of consulting, five major series and six channels”. A series of career talks on admission consulting, career development consulting, soft skills and job hunting skills will guide students’ self-positioning in the workplace in several rounds and at several dimensions.

Next, Managing Director, China at Willis Towers Watson Ms. Smilla YUAN made a theme speech titled “Nirvana and Rebirth in the Workplace – How to Judge the Hour and Size Up the Situation, Understand Yourself and Achieve Career Success Through MBA Study”. Ms. YUAN introduced the history and current business scope of Willis Towers Watson, and proceeded from her 16-year individual career to talk about her workplace experiences of transfer among different functional departments and improvement in the same company.

Then, CDO’s senior advisor Ms. Ming ZHANG and Ms. Smilla YUAN made a summary of more than 100 previously collected questions that students were most concerned about and carried out discussion to answer students’ questions on career development. The first type of questions is “change”. Ms. YUAN said that under the trend of cross-boundary integration, students’ opportunities of change of professions might come from not only inside enterprises, but also outside enterprises. As for “change”, Ms. Ming ZHANG emphasized the importance of self-consciousness in the course of career development and the positive influence of good self-recognition on career planning. The second type of questions is “entrepreneurship”. Ms. YUAN advised the students to carry out full self-assessment and risk assessment before engaging in entrepreneurship.

The CDO’s distinguished senior advisor Dr. Zongguo CAI then shared a speech titled “New Challenges Facing MBA Students”. Today, the significance of MBA degrees to students is more based on dreams and clear career plans. Dr. CAI advised the students to clearly see the general trend of social development and industrial trends on a gradual and rational basis under the guidance of visions, reasonably evaluate their advantages and disadvantages, clearly know their abilities highly needed by others and take corresponding actions with respect to professional knowledge, soft skills and social intercourse, and encouraged them to try to work with wisdom and delight.