As well as providing visitors with the chance to meet prospective employers and pick up tips on producing the sharpest CV possible, the forum also featured career-boosting presentations from some of Hong Kong’s foremost companies, highlighting the job opportunities they have on offer and the sort of culture they provide.
Four of these companies – Thales, Fung Group, United Overseas Bank and UA Cinema Circuit – will also be involved in the next Shadow a CEO Programme, during which they will play host to successful candidates who will spend three days working side by side a senior executive.
From Thales, Flavia Tai, customer service director, spoke about the need to break out of the straightjacket of gender stereotyping in terms of career options in her talk on “Diversity in Tech: Gender Equality in Thales”.
Thales, a multinational corporation headquartered in France, established its Hong Kong base in 1997 and now has over 320 employees. It works in the fields of defence and security, aerospace, and ground transportation – all typically male-dominated areas. But to illustrate her theme, Tai drew on her own experience.
“In 2000, I started my career in Thales as a senior software engineer. At that time, only a few employees were female. I worked very hard, and as a small team, we did everything from design, coding, on-site testing and defects fixing to after-sales support.”
Her hard work paid off. With training and development she has gone on to lead a team of 70 with responsibilities ranging from operations support to the provision of data analytics services.
Tai said she still believes that women are less likely to be associated with leadership positions when it comes to the technology industry in general. However, Thales has always embraced diversity in the workplace, both on the basis of gender and of ethnicity.
“Currently, 20 per cent of our staff are female, which is a pretty impressive figure in the technology industry – but it’s not enough. We want to maximise that figure,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from. It doesn’t matter what you major in. What we look for are talents with passion, an eagerness to learn, and self-motivation.”
Susanna Chiu, director and group chief representative for Eastern China at Fung Group, explained to her forum audience how her company is preparing for another transformative era of digital supply chain management in the face of rapidly evolving technology.
“In the future, factory production will be controlled by AI [artificial intelligence] and full automation,” she said. “There will be only a few [manual] workers.”
Fung Group is well positioned to manage this change. Over its 111-year history, the company has transformed itself from a trader in Guangdong province to a powerhouse in international supply chain management.
Chiu explained that developments in e-commerce will further shorten production turnaround time, while the supply chain will become increasingly agile and embrace more advanced technologies. But although the technology used to deliver products to consumers will change, the fundamentals of supply chain management will remain the same.
“Global supply chains start with the needs of consumers and serving what specific segments want,” Chiu said. “It goes from design and product development to production at factories and then distribution.”
Chiu highlighted to her audience how Fung Group has developed a light-asset business model with adherence to strict quality compliance. The company specialises in identifying factories best suited to specific products, taking into account the quality required and production time frame.
“Our executives supervise production at different locations all year round to ensure full product compliance to specific markets,” she said. “Excellent supply chain management is about consistent quality in all products.”
To further enhance its future readiness, the company runs incubation programmes that nurture start-ups developing technologies to be incorporated into its supply chain. For example, in cooperation with IBM, the company operates the “Explorium” mall in Shanghai that features real-time back-end analytics of data collected from apps used by shoppers visiting the mall.
Chiu stressed that Hong Kong continues to hold the edge over other territories in supply chain management and that young jobseekers targeting the sector are well-placed to benefit from the emerging “Industry 4.0”. Young people suitable for the sector are those who have an inquisitive mind and a willingness to put in hard work and develop solutions, she added.
Representing the financial sector, Flora Chan, head of human resources at United Overseas Bank (UOB) Hong Kong, gave a presentation on how young people could “make their mark” at the bank.
First she explained how UOB, which was founded in 1935, is one of the leading banks in Asia. It operates through its head office in Singapore and banking subsidiaries in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, as well as branches and representative offices across the region. UOB opened its first overseas branches in Hong Kong in 1965 with a business focus on wholesale banking.
“Nowadays in Hong Kong we focus on wholesale banking business,” Chan explained. “We provide a wide range of financial services and products to customers such as medium to large corporates, multinational corporates, financial institutions, and public sectors. We look for people who are honourable, enterprising, united and committed, in line with our four core values.”
UOB’s eight-week summer internship programme aims to give university students the opportunity to see how the bank works while receiving on-the-job training. “Internships can be an important way to experience the culture and working environment of a bank, and gain an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of its key functions,” Chan said. “Each of our interns has to drive, develop and execute a corporate project and a CSR project.”
Apart from internships, UOB also runs a 16-month Management Associate Programme which aims to attract bright graduates committed to professional development in the banking industry and to train them to become future UOB leaders.
“We provide a comprehensive programme to nurture and develop graduates,” Chan explained. “We involve associates in a variety of projects and assignments with regional exposure, with them spending 25 to 30 per cent of the programme outside Hong Kong to support their development.”
Moving to the glamorous world of film, forum attendees were treated to an insight into the cinema trade by Ivan Wong, managing director of UA Cinema Circuit. Rather fittingly, he used a short film to tell his audience about the history of his company, and the ways in which new technology and changing consumer tastes have helped shaped the way it presents movies.
UA Cinema Circuit, Wong explained, is part of the Lark International Group, which owns businesses in the entertainment sector as well as a range of others. The entertainment division includes UA Cinemas in Hong Kong, Macau and on the mainland; UA Films, which distributes films in Hong Kong; UA CineHub, which presents “exclusive cinematic and cultural experiences”; and Silver Screen Media, specialists in cinema and screen advertising.
Wong explained that UA’s Business Associate Programme is very similar to the management trainee programmes run by many large companies.
“This is an 18-month programme,” he said. “In the first six months we will usually send our associates first to operations, which includes the call centre, cinemas, and so on, and then they will go through two or three different rotations.” These rotations will take into account the associates’ preferences, whether they be in marketing, film booking, concessions, merchandise, or other areas, he added.
Applicants for a place on the programme must first submit their CV. Shortlisted candidates are invited to take a written talent-measurement test with others in the screening room of one of UA’s cinemas – which last time took place at the IMAX theatre in UA iSquare, Tsim Sha Tsui. The final component of the process is an individual interview.
While the selection process might sound tough – eight associates were selected for the programme in 2015, and only three in 2016 – Wong explained that they were looking for various types of candidates.
“Those selected in previous years came from all sorts of academic backgrounds, not just film studies.”
