Kang Min-ji (Business 17)_Interview on Student Success Award Dean's Award
- bizskk
- Hit527
- 2022-06-14
1. Hello, please introduce yourself first.
Last August, after conversion to summer internship(left) and current position(right)
Hello, I am a business administration major of Sungkyunkwan University, and I joined Kakao after graduating in February and am currently working as a service planner in the item planning part. I'm making a Kakaotalk emoticon service, and among them, I'm focusing on planning a service related to the emoticon subscription service. I'm still living days where I can't realize my graduation and work, I don't know how March has passed!
2. I heard that you won the Dean's Award for Student Success Award at the degree conference in 2022. Please give us a brief acceptance speech.
The definition of the word 'success' in my life will continue to change, but this time, I think that the award was given for 'the one who knows me best'. When I look back on my time at business school, I can never think of myself as I am now. I tried to do everything I could, whether I'm good or not, and if there's something fun that I like out of five times, I fell in love with it and kept thinking about why I liked it and what I wanted to do with it. All of the publicity jobs I had at the business school student council, the marketing logic I learned at the conference, and the various industry-academic cooperation classes that I could learn about in practice, so I was able to stack up one by one what I like and finally get to know myself best.
Of course, it's not limited to work or academic activities. As an example, I have tried running, climbing, and fitness, but the one that suits me best is fitness. Then, I fell in love with exercising through the PT that I received by chance, and it became one of the important things that made me a person by connecting to various activities such as SNS exercise account and exercise one day class. It had a lot of influence on my mindset and attitude, and it was used as one of the elements of my cover letter. If you've come to show a little bit of 'interest' in anything, grab a grip and get in. There will be endless possibilities in it.
3. You launched a direct agricultural product store and showed your spirit of challenge as a business student. Where there any difficulties in challenging new fields? How did you overcome it?
It was the hardest thing to realize and feel that theory and practice are different. Of course, the reason why I decided to launch the store is that it's a shame that the plans that I've written so many times at the conference are just one document, so I'll have to plan it myself! That's what I thought. No matter how many simulations and cases are prepared by combining all the theories that have been learned so far, unexpected situations always occur in practice. Every day, I realized that our products may not be known to people, that the world is different from the perspective of producers, not consumers, and I had to quickly find what I could do and put it into practice immediately. First of all, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the store had to run flawlessly.
Every moment, I think there was only one thing that was driving me. Thinking in small pieces. I think about my worries and goals in separate pieces. When a problem occurs, it's hard to figure it out if you try to fix it all at once. If you break the elements of the situation into small pieces and focus on each one and process it, everything is resolved at some point. The same goes for the goal. It is absolutely necessary to draw a big forest first, but it is neither realistic nor motivating if you stop in that forest. So, I work to split the forest back into trees one by one. For a store, for example, you set a monthly target sales, set weekly/daily target sales accordingly, and make a marketing plan for it. If you turn the word 'mountain by collecting dust', it's like mountain is made of dust after all of all. If I split anything, I think I can do it right away.
Self-harvested strawberries(left), Store branding, which was done with packaging and product photography(right)
4. If you have any activities that you did when you were in school, please introduce them. If there's a program that you remember the most or you want to recommend to your juniors, please let me know.
In school, I'd like to recommend academic societies and industry-academic cooperation classes. If you find interest, you need a step to develop it. At this time, you can learn how to establish logic through a more practical and systematic curriculum at the conference. Each academic society has a slightly different personality, buy if you have a field you are interested in, I think it is the same that it is the fastest way to learn the intensified content of that field. However, it is a process that requires a lot of time and effort, so it is most important to be sure of your interests.
Industry-academic cooperation classes can see how our ideas are actually acceptable in practice, and how we need to reflect reality in order to be implemented in practice. The great advantage is that you can experience all these processes in class. In addition, since most of these classes are recommended for senior students, there are many students with a lot of knowledge, experience, and passion in various fields, so I gained a rare experience to learn and grow together during the team project.
I recommend various part-time jobs outside of school. Before the internship experience, I think it is an experience that allows me to find out my interests in a little more diverse areas and to lay the foundation for my social life. It can be a process of discovering and supplementing what I feel unexpectedly lacking, such as so-called work heads and interpersonal speech, or finding a job connection where I started as a part-time job. In addition, I can afford to invest in another area of interest by makings small pocket money. So, I hope you have a small part-time job that's not too much for your studies I want to recommend it.
5. What is your future career and goal?
I want to make my own service someday. In my favorite area of interest, service that I think is essential to the world. I am a new planner who is still laying the groundwork for development, but I want to become a planner who can boldly choose my dream and service when I have a chance. So, I always try not to forget the passion and excitement I have now. The courage to take on a challenge begins with this fluttering heart. So I hope that my ability and dream will make the world a little easier to live in. I believe that the greatest value that IT services create is to connect and make the world convenient, so I also want to be a person who realizes that value.
6. Lastly, please give us some advice for your classmates at the business school.
If you don't know what I like yet, try to capture the moment, not the moment of "I want to do it" but the moment of "Oh, should I?". In fact, it takes a lot of time and effort to think, "I want to do it, I'm interested". In that case, I recommend that you actively use your subconscious mind. I don't even realize it myself yet, but pay attention to the things that the unconsciousness cares about. If you happen find a noticeable poster on the Daesung-ro bulletin board, or if you notice a new class promoted by the department strangely, don't hesitate to challenge it. If it's an experience that's more mediocre than I thought, it's meaningful in its own way, and I have no doubts that it will be a great start if I'm lucky and it really suits me. In practice, grandiose plans and thoughts are not required.
I will support the careful and bold choices of business school alumni who are already walking their own wonderful paths. I hope that the day will come when we meet again in society with our distinct colors and encourage each other, and even though it's a difficult time, I hope everyone takes care of their health and overcomes it. Thanks for reading this long post!