Scholarship / Question about AAS Support Statement for Master of Business Administration [4]

Scholarship experience in a future career

Hi my name is Oscar. I am currently preparing my support statement for Australia Awards Scholarship. Please kindly give me some insight into my essay and thanks in advance. For background, I plan to take Master of Business Administration and move to career in ridesharing / e-commerce startup as product manager. In the position I intend to involve and help more players in micro sectors.

Please:- a) give up to three practical examples of how you intend to use the knowledge, skills and connections you will gain from your scholarship. Possible tasks can be personal and/or professional; and

b) list any possible constraints you think may prevent you from achieving these tasks.*:

First, and most simply, I will continuously use the business, leadership, and managerial expertise from the MBA program to improve and better control the performance and efficiency of existing team at my wife's family restaurant. Moreover, I plan to replace traditional processes with Point of Sales and Warehousing apps and manage the adoption processes. I am expecting social issues in the execution as all staffs are coming from low education background. Here I will be specifically benefited from The Social Entrepreneurship project experience during this program

Secondly, I will work on sharpening the acquired skills in multiple work placements / internships (managerial position) during summer break. I intend to request this from network of business leaders and entrepreneurs provided by the program. Again I will help monitoring operations for these leaders, resolving problems, and advise on innovative improvements. One constraint could be position unavailability due to company budget. My plan is to propose no lower salary bound as the scholarship will already provide for living allowance anyway.

Finally, I will start supporting the micro sectors with technology transformation by applying for product manager position in either Gojek, Tokopedia, or Traveloka (locally owned). The position often has least requirement on previous experiences, while at the same time provide sufficient authority to launch own products or services. At this time, all skills from the program and experiences (including point one and two) will provide me with sufficient basics to launch services that involve more micro players like gardeners, plumbers, handymen, maids, and peddlers. I will be confident to oversee team of developers and analysts and working with other product managers for this. Recruitment process to these unicorns might be very tough, but MBA graduates from respectable universities have been highly valued, and I wish to leverage the leaders network again if applicable.

Scholarship / Digital and technology transformation - AAS application for MBA [3]

Hi this is Oscar again, and the following is my other essay for AAS. As background information I plan to take MBA to either create my own technology startup or pursue career as product manager in existing ones. I intend to introduce digital technology to more and more micro sectors to build them up. Can anyone please kindly give insight for it, thanks very much guys.

Why did you choose your proposed course and institution*?

I had growing interest in digital and technology transformation since 2018 when I started my own online business. However it was not until 2020 that I really admired how technology startups like Gojek and Tokopedia have contributed to the survival and welfare of our taxi bikes and home industries. I am eager to join in the transformation, and rather than studying programming from zero, I consider managing a team of experts in the area to be a more efficient and timely approach. Now my vision is to extend this technology transformation to wider, yet untouched micro sectors such as gardening and plumbing services, handymen, maids, and peddlers. I choose Master of Business Administration (MBA) as I believe the course will deliver maximum impact on my leadership and managerial skills for the purpose.

University of Melbourne has the best MBA program in Australia with many relevant subjects in leadership, business strategy, data analysis, innovation, and of course management. Supported by network of real and successful entrepreneurs and business leaders (one of them coming from Uber Eats which is very similar to Gojek), the program also focuses on practical business experience through innovation bootcamp, internship, and Capstone and Social Entrepreneurship projects. These leaders in relevant sector might help me not only with future employment, but also work placements during long summer breaks to further practice my skills.

Monash University has third best MBA program in the country, and this will be my second preference. The program has stronger emphasize on leadership which is good to cover my lack of experience in leading role and still backed up by real industry experts and practitioners. It again prioritizes on practical competencies with applied projects at the end of each term (including one international project), and having completed my prior bachelor and master degrees from the University I will need no time to adapt.

Scholarship / Essay about solving a challenge - AAS application for course in MBA [3]

Hi this is Oscar, and I am writing essay for AAS application. For background information, I will apply for MBA course to shift career into managerial position in technology startup. I plan to develop micro sectors using digital technology. Can anyone please kindly help me on my essay, and thank you very much in advance.

How have you contributed to solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform?

(Be specific and include: what aspect/s of your leadership knowledge, skills and practice you consider to be well established and effective; which people or organizations you worked with to solve the problem; and what creative methods were used.)*:

In 2014, when I was still working for PT Astra Otoparts, my manager and I realized that the research center was in disorganization, partly owing to its documentation system. There were total of six independent departments in the building, each with their own way of reporting studies, and this had been resulting in barrier for communication and collaboration between them. Apparently, a small team of seniors had been appointed once before to resolve the issue with integrated reporting system, but the reformation was unsuccessful.

My new team had representatives from each department, and the first and most difficult task was aligning the needs of them. I built a closed, one-to-one communication with the team members and trying to group their requirements based on level of importance. Empathy was key, and negotiation as well to rule out less important prerequisites. I was quite new to leading, so this process alone took weeks, but paid off with more commitments towards the goal as the needs were aligned and satisfied. We finally decided on 14 master documents in the system to cover all reporting needs of every department, down from about 46 before the integration (many were overlapping).

In the implementation, I introduced partial locking to master documents to prevent unnecessary modifications by users, and kept it consistent. I appointed the teams not only to oversee the adoption process in their own department, but also accommodate identified concerns and suggestions for improvement. For regular monitoring, weekly team meetings were held in the first month of the implementation, and later reduced to monthly basis as users had become more familiar with the system and there were less issues. This documentation system was still in use until major organization restructuring in 2019, five years later, not long after I left the company for good.

Scholarship / Essay on Contribution of Proposed Study to Career Plan - AAS application for MBA Program [2]

Hi, this will be my last essay for AAS application. Again, I am planning for MBA program to shift into managerial position in technology startup, for the purpose of bringing the digital transformation into wider micro sectors. Thanks in advance for helping me on it.

How will the proposed study contribute to your career*?

Graduated with both engineering and business degrees, I have been stuck in technical roles for more than eight years, though not without commendations on my strategic skills (I made best software sales proposition for Advisian in 2020-Q1). I had growing online beverage business before pandemic, by which I realized the tremendous values and potentials of digital innovation like e-commerce. This was not only for profit, but also the welfare of society, especially micro sectors.

Eager to contribute in the innovation, I developed a new career plan in 2020 that involved bold shift into the technology industries, ultimately as founder / CEO of digital products. I consider the leadership and managerial knowledge and experiences from Master of Business Administration (MBA) program to be most relevant for the shift.

My short term plan following course completion is to aim for product manager position in existing technology startups on micro sectors like Gojek (taxi bikes) or Tokopedia (e-commerce). The role, often called mini-CEO, manages the life and development of a single digital product own by the company, from identifying next vision and market needs, creating roadmaps and backlogs, and analyzing performance data, while overseeing a team of developers, analysts and marketers. Most of the opportunities do not require programming background, and MBA degree from reputable universities has always been desirable. Besides, network of leaders / entrepreneurs from the program might also help in unlocking the opportunity.

Longer term plan (5-6 years) is to start my own company for even more authority in achieving my personal vision to bring the innovation to gardening and plumbing services, handymen, maids, and peddlers. By the moment I will be already familiar with managing teams and executing whole product development workflow, beside understanding funding schemes and gaining access to the investors and other resources.