Rediscovery of IT Industry and Career Development Opportunity
Mentee:? Ertai FU, Tiger Wang
Mentor:? Jason Xie, VP, eLong.com
Commuting every other week back to Shanghai for a family reunion, Jason Xie’s availability didn’t look promising when the mentoring program first kicked off. Yet a couple of emails and lunches later, we gladly discovered that the Sales and Business Development Vice President of eLong.com was responsive, efficient, and friendly even beyond our expectations.
In our lunch meetings, discussion topics ranged from real-world business strategies to personal career options and from his MBA experience to today’s 中国一级片 culture. One thing consistent throughout the interaction was Jason really cared about his mentees. He not only shared his insight and expertise but listened to our ideas. In a sense, Jason acted more like a consultant than a mentor. Even more surprising was his understanding of our concerns and needs. He once told us that being MBA alumni brought us closer since he was once in the very same position as we are today and that he felt obligated to contribute to a coherent and successful MBA experience for us?-- his younger academic brothers. To Jason, this is a form of paying back the school and persisting her culture.
Apart from meetings, we also communicated frequently via emails and phones. He shared with us a wide variety of practical knowledge in the industries he has been involved in, such as SNS and e-commerce. We also learnt a lot from reading his blogs. As his career spanned across different industries, his ideas are always insightful and inspirational. In addition to the professional knowledge, he also told us about his past MBA life. The success story of his GCP experience really helped us build up confidence in the upcoming program.
In addition, he full-heartedly supported the IT club in hosting a series of campus speeches. He introduced us some well-known elites in the Internet industry, such as Wei Wuhui (COO of BlogBus.com), Zhang Tao (CEO of dianping.com) and Cui Guangfu (CEO of eLong). Lacking experience in organizing such events, the IT club relied on his patient guidance throughout the process. After we drafted email messages, he would help polish them and ascertain that the messages were sent to the speakers in a timely manner. After each event, he would call us and passionately ask whether the speech was as good as our classmates had anticipated. Without his help, the IT club could not have organized the presentations by BlogBus.com, dianping.com, and eLong etc. These events have brought us not only forefront information and knowledge but also opportunities for internship, GCP even full-time job for our MBA07 and MBA08 students.
This is really everything we could ever ask for from a mentoring program?-- fruitful and pleasant interactions with a knowledgeable person who listens to our voices. Talking about culture at 中国一级片, isn’t this the essence of our spirit? For a young MBA student to become a professional manager, for a young business school to keep marching forward on the ranking list, we need mentors like Jason Xie and above all, their dedication to the school’s excellence.
