My Working Experience in Business - Essay Example

My Working Experience in Business I never thought of studying economics and business growing up. My favorite subjects were art and architecture. About three years ago my interests turned when I found a part-time job in a furniture store. I started working as an apprentice, learning about crafting, painting, and assembling furniture. After a few months, I was promoted to work in the sales team. My working experience as a sales representative was an absolute eye-opener for me. The majority of work was in renovating our show room. I was involved in some basic store operation, such as accounting, and inventory control. I also provided ideas about advertising and furniture design. Running a business became an art by itself for me. I felt more interested in learning to run a business that makes good money promoting art, than doing artistic work alone. While the work experience developed my interest in business, I believe that the Business and Economics program offered by the University of California would provide me the essential knowledge needed to pursue a business career to the next level. As a person who grew up as an aspirant of art, innovation and communication skills will be the two most significant personal attributes that I will bring to the University of California. I believe that my work experience as a sale representative where I was involved in renovating the product lines and the showroom, has demonstrated my ability to introduce and implement new ideas. On the other hand, my experience as an officer of the International Business Club at the Mountain Sac College also enabled me to develop the communication skill needed for a successful career in the business world. When I first started working for the furniture store as a trainee, I was in fact among a group of young people who were hired to bring new ideas to an aging business. At that time, my boss just inherited the store from his uncle. He was trying to revive the fortune of a furniture store whose products were big, well-crafted, durable, but not attractive to new and young customers. To better understand the need of young customers, my boss decided to hire a group of young people, including myself, to give him new direction of improving his business. Since I did not have any sales or office experience, I was hired as an apprentice. My boss not only wanted me to learn about crafting skill but also made good use of my artistic background to help him refresh our furniture design philosophy. After a few weeks of work, together with another senior craftsman in the shop, we made some proposals to change the design of our furniture. One innovative change introduced, since nowadays most of our new customers live in apartments, was furniture that is compact and can fit in tight space easily, such as folding tables and chairs. We even went further and make our furniture expandable – for instance, we made wooden cabinets that can stack up with special hinges; we designed desks that can be purchased alone, or can be purchased with a set of drawers and cabinets that can be attached or detached from it. Just like purchasing a car or a computer, the customer can “configure” the desks before buying it. These new products and new sales models were very successful – more new customers were drawn to our store, most of them were young city dwellers, and of course, sales improved remarkably. My innovative abilities have allowed me to bring a unique perspective to business. Business is no longer boring or uninteresting. I have learned that business is more than numbers and profits. Business can be as creative as you make it. I think my personal innovation can benefit not only myself, but my fellow students if admitted to your fine learning institution. I have also come to the realization that some of my skills were inadequate for a business career. One of the skills I needed to develop was my communication skills. Often I felt that I had some great ideas about furniture and advertising, but I just did not know how to communicate that idea effectively to my boss and to the sales team. English is not my first language. I emigrated from Hong Kong with my family over a decade ago. It was hard, but with a lot of determination I learned to speak, read, and write in English. I also speak Chinese. Because of the number of immigrants from Asia, my language skills will further my business proficiency in the future. I decided to go to college as a full time student to learn English better. It was at Mountain Sac College where I developed my communication skills, not only through English and Business classes, but also through my work as an Inter-Club Council representative. I became an officer of the International Business Club. Not only did I represent my club in the Inter-Club Council meetings, but I was also the main contact person for all the activities that were co-organized between my club and other clubs. For instance this summer we invited a few guest speakers to our club meetings to present our club members with more information about the real business world. I was responsible for contacting these speakers and arranging the time for their visits. Through this club I developed good listening skill, as I needed to report accurately about the meetings and interface with different people. I also developed my public speaking and presentation skills.. The club work really helped developed my confidence in speaking up and communicating with other people. Ever since I moved to the United State ten years ago from Hong Kong, financial stability has been lacking in my family. After graduation from high school I had to work full time to help support my family. I have worked in numerous restaurants, juice shops, supermarkets, all of which were low-paying jobs. Every day I worked twelve hours just to make ends meet. At that time I did not even have time to think about my future. All this changed when I found my job at the furniture store. My boss gave me a lot of opportunities to learn, not only about business but also about how to be a better person. Most importantly, I realized what I want to be, leading in direction I want to go. After my father landed a stable job in the LA area, I moved with him and my mother. This gave me the opportunity to enroll in the Mountain Sac College. Going back to school after three year’s absence was not easy. I had to take a few elementary English and Math classes to get prepared for more difficult business and accounting classes. At first it was difficult for me to make the adjustment of going back to school, as result I did not have good grades in my first quarter. But as I started to adapt to school life, my grades improved. In my last fall quarter, I unfortunately received a B grade on my Macro-economic course because it was my first business course in my academic career. It was hard because I had to learn a lot of new terminology and theories. Since then, I have started reading a lot of business magazines to learn and understand the theories and vocabularies. As the result I was able to get an A grade for the micro-economic course in the summer. At the time of application I still have a few core courses that were in progress, so I was not able to report their grades in my application. But currently I am doing very well in these classes. I should be able to maintain my current GPA of 3.71 or better when I report my latest GPA next quarter. Despite all theses obstacles, I am grateful that I can go back to school. I enjoy every day and minute of the campus life. I am determined to do well in the classes. I hope I can be given an opportunity to be trained in the Business and Economics program of the University of California. If given this opportunity, I will not squander it. I will achieve every goal that I have laid out in this proposal. I will benefit from your school’s training, but also I will do my best to enrich the learning environment that you provide. This will enable me to pursue a successful business career. Read More