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《110-2 Event Sharing》Project Manager Workshop, Office of Career Development

Written by Aastha William

On 25th April 2022, our students from the College of Management got an interesting opportunity to learn more about the career of a Project Manager (PM) at the workshop organized by the Office of Career Development. The office invited two of its outstanding Alumni from IBMBA, Johnny Chen and Patrick Liu, who are currently working as Project Managers at HP and ASUS respectively. The purpose of the workshop was to introduce the students to what the job of a PM entails and what qualifications and skills are necessary. Professor Kim from the College of Management shared opening remarks and facilitated the speakers with a token of appreciation and Melody Hsu, senior student from IBMBA was the host of the event.

Mr. Patrick opened the session and shared his experience of working as a PM with ASUS in Taiwan. He shared that the job generally revolves around the Product Development Process wherein they define or control product specifications, determine the schedule, cost, orders, marketing, and so on. It involves a lot of decision-making, collecting feedback, and communicating with various departments and external vendors. At the same time, in some companies especially small-scale businesses, the PM might be responsible for taking care of other tasks that are not being taken care of by anyone. For Junior PM, the main role would be to handle the Development stage of the Product development process, which includes having meetings for Bug reviews, marketing kick-off, and monitoring the schedule.

The skills that one needs to focus on to be successful as a PM, are Logical thinking, Time Management, and Communication or Social Skills. It is a job that requires a lot of persistent effort and time but at the same time PM gets to enjoy ownership of the product they create and be the best and first fan of the product. To conclude his sharing, Mr. Patrick shared the advertisement of the product he has worked on and encouraged students to be the best at their jobs and be proud of what they have created.

To give further insight into the job, Mr. Johnny Chen, who is currently working as a PM at HP, shared his valuable experience. He has diverse working experience with companies like ASE Group, Whetron Electronics, and ASUS. To start his sharing, Mr. Johnny shared some important tools that every PM must be familiar with. He categorized it into the Basic tools we must know, Advance tools that would be nice to have, and Premium tools that can make us shine like a pro as a PM. The basic tools that one must know, include Google docs and Office for managing Daily routine tasks and other apps like Zoom, Evernote, and OneDrive to make our life easy as a PM. The Advance tools can take us to another level and this includes tools for creating presentations like Prezi and apps for ERP Systems. And finally, the Premium Tools include Program Language tools, Data Analysis tools, and so on.

Mr Johnny interacted with the students and answered their queries and offered some tips and tricks for those hoping to become Project Managers. He emphasized having an open-minded attitude and investing time to build relationships through respect. PMs should also be passionate about what they are doing and have a curious mind to come up with creative solutions. As he has had considerable experience in applying for jobs, he also shared some tips for interview preparations that students greatly appreciated.

To conclude the event, Mr. Patrick Liu and Mr. Johnny Chen gladly answered students’ questions and took a group picture with all present.

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