嘉文博译留学文书/MBA Essay Writing CASE EIGHT

小　目　录
Essay 1
Essay 2
Essay 3
Essay 4

Essay 1

What has been your most significant professional achievement? What has been your toughest professional challenge and how did you address it? (500 words)

My most significant professional achievement:

In November 2000, my company sent me to Holland for more than four months to help one of our Dutch business partners build up its work team. This was a great overseas working experience that led to my most significant professional achievement.

Our business partner had decided to expand its business by selling more tourist packages to China. Previously they had focused mainly on selling tours to Europe, South Asia and Africa - the sold only a few tour packages to China. My mission was to help our business partner train its staff to become familiar with China to stimulate the sale of travel packages there.

To familiarize my colleagues with China, I made a PowerPoint presentation to introduce each of China's thirty-two provinces and autonomous regions, which all have their own unique cultural, historic and geographic features. I conducted a series of lectures so that everyone could become familiar with the vast resources available for tourism. I talked a lot about Chinese customs, culture and how to organize and conduct tours to China. I still remember clearly that a Because everyone was so interested in learning about China, one of my "one hour" meetings actually lasted three hours! I also was heavily involved in designing Travel Trend's annual catalog by giving them many ideas on how to best present and promote tourism to China.

Before I went to Holland, our business partner had around fifty persons per year traveling to China. In the first year after working with the company, four hundred people took Travel Trend tours to China. So far in 2002, the company has had nine hundred people traveling to China with revenues of US$1.3 million. My four months of hard work finally paid off.

My toughest professional challenge:

In December 2001, my boss left my company and transferred to our competitor, presenting my department with the toughest challenge I have ever faced. My former boss had a strong connection with my target market and with many of my regular clients, and he took advantage of those connections after he left. He took away many of our business files and our clients and told many people that my company was a large bureaucracy that was very inefficient with many unnecessary overhead costs; therefore our company's quotations were always high. Moreover, my boss tried to persuade some of my colleagues to follow him to the new company. At that time, there were a lot of rumors going around among my clients and colleagues. My company was facing the possibility of losing clients, business and even staff.

In order to overcome this challenge and to first survive and then to thrive, I first met with my Vice President and flew to England, Holland and Greece, where most of clients are located. We had meetings with each of our clients, explained to them what exactly had happened and showed them our willingness to work more efficiently. We also explained the advantages of working with CITS, such as our strong national network, the high quality of our products, our quick emergency response and our strong governmental connections. At each meeting, we carefully listened to our client's opinions, comments, suggestions and criticisms. We took note and brought those valuable ideas back to the office, which led to a quick improvement in our performance.

Besides stabilizing our client base, we also took great time in talking with our staff. We explained that some of the things that they had heard were only rumors designed to damage CITS. Together with our staff, we drew up a list of both the advantages and disadvantages of working in CITS. Our staff members themselves came to the conclusion that working in CITS was in their own best interests. I established a career development plan for our staff, so that everyone now has a clear career goal in mind and realizes that there is a future here for them with CITS.

Through the above efforts, both our clients and our staff have developed a closer bond. We successfully overcame this toughest challenge. The pressure of the challenge has been good for the progress of both our business and our personal development.