1. Could you share with us about the work and challenges you have been facing ever since you were appointed the Director of FSE? Do you have any plan for future development?
To be honest, there is no doubt that every job position has its own challenges. For FSE, the most pressure point is that having to handle demanding customers. It can be tough. When working on site, you will always unavoidably encounter those unexpected events / unpredictable situations. However, those are the moments where you would be able to learn your valuable lessons and improve yourself to be better. The FSE now, to be honest, are more professional, more skilled compared to three or four years ago, which, of course, received many positive feedbacks from customers both about capacity and skills. All those improvements came from the quality and the well-qualified of each member. As the result, customers request to increase the numbers of FSE on site as well as renew the onsite support package every year.
With the rapid development of GES in the manufacturing sector today, as the number of projects and customers have been increasing lately, this is a sign that FSE must be at their finest self and get ready at all time. To maintain teams of high-qualified and experienced engineers in other to support many projects at the same time is honestly a big challenge. But with great help from the TEAM (PMO, MFG, QA, SCM, AME, Finance, etc.), we believe that GES can provide the best products and services to customers.
2. Do you mind sharing with us any interesting stories while you were working on site?
Those who work on site for the first time, always have the most interesting stories to tell. The great gap of language and culture has always been the main cause of those awkward yet hilarious moments in life. Like:
When travelling:
In China / Japan, most taxi drivers do not speak English, so communicating is mainly through body language and YES / OK apparently are the only words that can be used to communicate. In this case, it’s not going to be much help if you speak either English or Vietnamese!!! Therefore, it’s normal to have your heart in your throat when you do not know whether the drivers are taking you to the right place. Many cases are that when doing road transfers (especially in China), it could get even more confusing. And only when you get to the hotel or where you want to be at the end that you can finally relax. (Hint: Choose the right taxi service which parked in parking lots, or prepare hotel information in local language)
On food issues:
When food is as “photos for illustration purposes only”, there is an obvious huge difference between marketing and reality when the stalls/restaurants bring out their dishes. Thus, we sometimes cannot tell apart which dish we order since everything on the menu is written in local language and absolutely no image for visualizing. It’s like playing "Lucky draw" every day by trying a few new dishes in the menu in order from top to bottom. And if what you order does not taste right to you, you have no choice but to finish the whole anyway. Well, at the end, we then “confidently” get our dishes to our liking easily after about a week or so (after being “lab rats” to test everything on the menu).
So, knowing another language beside your native is undeniably helpful both in work and daily life, especially when it’s come to business trips (save time, money and energy). For that reason, FSE is required to be fluent in English and encouraged to learn another language. In Asia, beside English, these most spoken languages, Japanese and Chinese are also in job requirements for FSE.
3. Do you have anything to say to the youth today and the FSE GES team?
Warren Buffett said, "Ultimately, there's one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself". Indeed, young people nowadays have two greatest assets, youth and enthusiasm. Most people are not fully aware of this and unknowingly wasting it. We usually do not appreciate what we have, until we lose it. Therefore, young people should use their time wisely in investing in themselves as much as possible.
To be successful, luck is not the only thing that you need. Knowledge, skills and experience are key factors that play crucial roles in your life. Many would always desire to have a high-paid job with attractive benefits packages (good salary, bonus etc.), but forget to invest in their values. Everything has its own price. What you want to become is up to you, a drop in the ocean or a rare gem that every company wants to get hold of.
Dreams will forever be dreams if no action is taken. You need clear goals and action plans and, most importantly, your discipline and persistence to be able to pursue your goals to the end, this is the key to success. Everyone knows that the above is the right thing to do, but who really disciplines themselves to reach the end? For example, everyone knows that learning a foreign language is necessary, but few have enough discipline to maintain until they reach a certain level of communication. Often you are only enthusiastic in the first 2-3 months, then again distracted and stop. Simply put, watching a movie with a lover or spending the weekend watching a new movie is way more interesting than learning foreign languages or learning new skills. After several months we would eventually return to the starting point.
In short, young people who are full of enthusiasm and energy should use this precious time to develop themselves to create big opportunities, instead of sitting there waiting and praying for some random luck. Finally, I wish you always achieve more success in work and life and all the best.
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