Imparting Knowledge and Resolving Doubts, Constructing A Bright Career Together – 2021 FISF Career Mentor Program Accelerates Students’ Professional Development

Release time：2021-12-21    

2021 FISF Career Mentor Program

FISF Professional Development Center (FISF PDC) actively integrates resources and invites experts from the financial industry with abundant working and administrative experience to be career mentors for students to inject new motivations to their careers. The Career Mentor Program (CMP) is a curated platform focusing on individual’s career development, encouraging students to actively participate in diverse activities such as company visits, in-depth communication with industry experts, interview workshops and customized career planning.

This autumn, PDC initiated the third session of CMP for Class of 2023 EMF and FMBA FT+ students. By fostering a trusting and inspiring relationship, this program helps students to learn front-line business operation from industry experts, expand professional network in finance industry, and realize desired career aspirations.

FISF professional development services aim to cultivate practical talents in the financial industry with a global vision and a strong sense of social responsibility. Through the program, all the mentors engage, enlighten and empower students, cooperating with the school in educating internationalized financial talents with both ethical integrity and professional competence, which is an indispensable part of the practical field.

The “CMP” designed by FISF PDC is committed to building a engaging platform for enterprises and students. Students can grow and develop with the guidance of and interaction with career mentors as well as their life sharing and wisdom. The third session of “CMP” is promoted under the support of many FISF career mentors. PDC has invited a total of 68 senior career mentors for students to choose, who are aged 49 and have over 20 years’ working and administrative experience on average.

The career mentors are financial experts, managers, government officials and senior HR directors from world-leading institutions and government units at home and abroad, including CICC Capital, UBS, HSBC, Ant Group, China Securities, Foresight Fund, YF Fund, Huatai-Pinebridge Fund Management, Bosera Funds, BOC Investment, HFT Investment, CMB International, Guotai Junan Securities, SWS Research, Orient Securities, Industrial Securities, Sinolink Securities, Zhong De Securities, Xiangcai Securities, Yinglian Health Industry Fund, Ping An Asset Management, Dragonrise Capital, Fosun, PwC, and Allianz China.

Making concerted efforts and choosing a career “guide”

To help students get to know the backgrounds of this year’s mentors and plan accordingly beforehand, PDC prepared mentor introduction booklets in both Chinese and English, covering mentor’s basic information, working experience, number of mentees acceptable, and preferred student backgrounds. After reading all the introduction materials and attending the 2021 CMP Introduction Session held by PDC, each of the 162 students (including 119 EMF students and 43 FMBA FT+ students) chose one from 68 career mentors based on their career goals, professional backgrounds, and characteristics, and started their long-term interactions that may last a year or longer.

With the help of PDC, students managed to match and connect with their mentors and proactively started their interaction with them. Most students chose to meet their mentors in offices or coffee shops; while some students, due to the limitation of COVID-19 pandemic, arranged online meetings to conduct initial communication with mentors in Hong Kong or overseas. With the high-level and strategic guidance of senior career mentors and the friendly but also mind-leading communication, students not only deepened their professional understanding of the subdivisions of the financial industry, but also acquired new reflections on their own path of career development. Let’s listen to their experiences!

Kaiqi Zhou  2023 EMF

Because I have a keen interest in the secondary market, I’m very grateful to CMP of the school for the precious opportunity, enabling me to have a mentor from Bosera Funds. My mentor has nearly thirty-year working experience in the fund industry, and thus is very familiar with the development of the entire industry. After communicating with him, I was deeply charmed by his professionalism and devotion. He is quite enthusiastic to us students, and gave us warm welcome and gift books once we joined the company. He showed us the work contents and job requirements of various positions in the secondary market, listened patiently to our career interests and confusion, and also invited his colleagues to join the discussion. The experience was highly informative and helpful. How lucky we are to have such a resourceful and responsible financial leader who is willing to offer career advice. I wish I can integrate theories with practices and achieve long-term goals under the guidance of the mentors.

Ruiwen Zhao  2023 EMF

At a career seminar organized by PDC, I first met my mentor who was working for UBS. I was deeply impressed by his comprehensive and detailed introduction of the business framework of investment banks, development prospect of foreign investment banks and securities companies, trends of foreign capital management and characteristics of the talents needed by foreign institutions. I was very interested in the topics and working experience the mentor shared and I am looking forward to another talk with him.

Luckily, the career mentor program offered me this wonderful opportunity to communicate face to face with the mentor and have a helpful mentorship. During our second appointment, I listened to his in-depth analysis on the industry from the macro perspective. After he learned about my future career plans and thoughts, he further helped me broaden my horizon and discover more possibilities with his own experience and knowledge. As the saying goes, a man without foresight will have immediate worries. But “foresight” has to be based on rich life experience and profound industrial insight. It was through exchange of ideas with the mentor that I was able to further understand the potential risks in the career I wish to pursue in the future. That morning passed quickly, and I hardly realized the end had come. I’m looking forward to seeing my mentor again.

Shile Chen 2023 FMBA FT+

I first met my mentor at a PDC career workshop focusing on private equity investment. At that time, he had left Morgan Stanley and was talking about his rich experience of working in a foreign investment bank and his feelings and thoughts of joining a PE firm, which instantly brought me new inspirations about PE investment. This enlightenment made me determined to be his mentee so that I could learn more from him.

At my first appointment with the mentor, I assumed an experienced mentor like him would be intimidating to talk with, but that was surprisingly approachable. In fact, he cared about my development, which quickly brought us together. When he knew about my feelings and confusion of switching to PE, he helped to analyze whether I should do PE right after graduation or practice in an investment bank before entering the PE field. This was truly unexpected. Time flew by and I was still immersed. Needless to say, having such a great career mentor has brought profound influence on strengthening the understanding of myself and career.