BusinessWeek

James Tsai is the sort of MBA corporate recruiters covet. He went to a good prep school, earned a degree with honors from Middlebury College, and made vice-president in Bank of America's international wealth management group at the age of 26. Today, Tsai is about to graduate, straight A's in hand, from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, a top-rated program in America. And he's hustling to land his first post-MBA job—in China.

Executive Class strivers like Tsai used to have just one post-grad career destination, the U.S. Not anymore. "I am doing everything I think I can to get over there," he says.

Every era has its version of the MBA dream. In the 1980s, it was about conquering Wall Street and choppering off to the Hamptons. The late 1990s saw a stampede to Silicon Valley. In the mid-aughts, the gilded, clubby preserve of private equity beckoned. Now, the emerging narrative is about steroidal Asia and its promise of growth. At premiere institutions such as the University of Chicago's Booth School, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Northwestern's Kellogg, the percentage of MBAs taking jobs in Asia—including U.S. students like Tsai as well as international students—has more than doubled in the past five years, from roughly 5% of the graduating class to more than 10%. "There is a sense that the center of gravity is shifting," says Julie Morton, Booth's associate dean for career services.

The number of students taking international jobs usually swells in a recession, says Kellogg Assistant Dean Roxanne Hori. But Hori and others believe that the refrain of "Go East, Young Man" is not a short-term response to the U.S. economic downturn but a structural shift toward an internationalized, mobile talent market. And right now, Asia is where the career velocity and opportunity are. "This has never really happened before, except in little spurts, where you have a fairly large group of talented, recent MBAs asking for assignments in China, Vietnam, India," says Jeff Joerres, CEO of global staffing firm Manpower. Adds Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management: "I don't think many of us thought Asia would become the destination for top Western talent—but it is."

ONE WORD OF ADVICE

For many MBAs, the prospect of making a bigger impact faster is simply too good to pass up, especially now that the pay packages offered by both domestic and multinational companies are competitive with those in the U.S. Shortly before James Crawford, 30, headed to Columbia B-School two years ago, his dad sat him down in the kitchen of the family's suburban Chicago home. Think of that scene in The Graduate, only instead of saying "plastics," Crawford's father's advice was "Asia." Today, Crawford is pursuing multiple opportunities there. "I can't imagine a career over the next 30 years that would not require or give benefit to international experience," he says. Asia fever has also hit Wharton student Andrew Maywah, 32, who had a cushy life working at Oracle in Silicon Valley before graduate school. Now he is juggling offers from three Chinese companies. "It's like the Wild, Wild West. There is just so much happening there," he says. "I want to be at the center of it."

So do many Chinese who emigrated to the U.S. when they were young. They find themselves breaking the news to their families that they're chasing the same dream that lured their parents to the U.S., only in reverse. (What better time to leverage the family capital back in the old country?) The Chinese call these returnees hai gui, or sea turtles, referring to how these animals always return to their birthplace to lay their own eggs. Then there are the international students, who until recently would likely have stayed in the U.S. to learn the soft skills of Western management, and now are heading straight back home. Piyush Singhvi, 27, was born in India, grew up in the Middle East, and, before Wharton, worked at the Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Capital, the largest non-state-owned firm in the region. When Singhvi enrolled in Wharton in 2008 he was certain, he says, that he would stay in the U.S. after graduation like most of his peers. But then came the financial crisis. "It was amazing to see how many people came in with the idea that they would stay in the West, and how that's drastically changed to just the opposite," he says. "There are a lot more opportunities in the East."

On Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, MBAs swap stories about the adrenaline rush of working in an emerging market and the joys of geographic arbitrage. After graduating from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Quan Trinh, 27, who grew up in Virginia, took a job with Johnson & Johnson in Shanghai. There she partakes of an upper-crust-Manhattan-type lifestyle—food delivered to her door every night, a maid who picks up after her, a balcony apartment in a compound with a pool—at Albany (N.Y.) prices. Add to the mix that she travels around Asia with top J&J execs, working in the strategic planning division for the company's diabetes business, and, she says, "sometimes I have to pinch myself."

STANDING ROOM ONLY

Asian companies used to rarely, if ever, come to American B-school campuses for recruiting season. Now at Wharton, Chinese firms like heavyweight investment bank China Investment Corp. and IT firm Tencent are showing up, says Wharton global careers director Sam Jones. This year, CICC played to standing-room-only crowds. At Kellogg, India-based Infosys and Tata Group are now on hand for recruiting. The University of Chicago's Booth School is seeing so much interest from Chinese companies that it recently opened a career services office in Hong Kong.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics has been on a hiring tear. Last year the company signed 50 non-Korean MBAs from the top 10 business schools in the U.S., double the number of 2008, says Samsung Vice-President Kim Keun Bae. Those 50 were in addition to the dozens of ethnic Koreans that Samsung scooped up from MBA programs in America. At Kellogg, the company hired 16 business school graduates alone—more than U.S.-based hiring stalwarts General Mills and Procter & Gamble combined. The new hires work in Samsung's Global Strategy Group, which does all of its business in English, advising top Samsung executives on internal consulting projects. This year the company is on track to again double its hiring of U.S.-born MBAs. "The young and smart from top U.S. business schools have helped provide fresh perspectives to our company," says Kim. "Both foreign recruits and Korean employees learn from each other, and that helps globalize the company."

In many cases, companies like Samsung are acing out their American rivals in hiring the very best candidates. Kellogg graduate Jonathan Scearcy, 28, had 30 job offers last year, most from top U.S. companies. But he turned them all down to take a job at Samsung so he could "get international exposure early," he says. "If you ever want to be at a C-suite, you have to have a global skill set and you have to have significant international exposure," says Scearcy.

"GROOMING GLOBAL CITIZENS"

Multinationals like Citibank, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Nike China are also broadening their international programs and amping up hiring for their Asia divisions. Last fall a phalanx of high-level IBMers hit premiere B-schools to talk up IBM's new five-year boot camp for its general manager program. The program gives the new hires massive international exposure, especially in places like Asia. "We are looking to attract global citizens," says Peggy Tayloe, IBM's recruiting director. Big Blue recently flew the recruits to its Armonk (N.Y.) headquarters, where they sipped cocktails and nibbled canapés in the inner sanctum of the company's plush C-suite. One of the new hires hobnobbing at the party was Harvard MBA Yashih Wu, who was born in California and graduated from Princeton University. Before B-school, she worked on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. But for her those places aren't the career destinations they used to be. Today, she says, "It's impossible not to think globally about one's career."

How much longer can the Asian allure hold? With protectionist talk rising in America, and China trying to put the brakes on its rapidly growing economy, there's always a chance that Asia could stumble. There's also rising concern about what the migration East might mean for the U.S.'s competitive edge. "I can't get out of my head that two-thirds of Silicon Valley companies were started by non-U.S. citizens," says Manpower CEO Joerres. What if, after Stanford University, Google co-founder Sergey Brin had returned to his birth country of Russia? What if James Tsai is about to do the Next Big Thing—but in his dad's old country in Beijing? "The best and the brightest are leaving," says the Rotman School's Florida. "As a country, the U.S. has never confronted this before."

With Moon Ihlwan in Seoul

Forbes

People want their jobs to be meaningful. And as they grow more aware of social and environmental issues, they become more interested in having their work align with those causes. For instance, people have grown more aware of climate change, and that has resulted in a greater interest in careers in renewable energy, which has stimulated product and process innovation.

What have business schools done to prepare students who choose meaningful work? Christopher Michaelson, an assistant professor of ethics and business law at the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis, has conducted a classroom exercise on meaningful work over the past few years. That research is the basis for an article in the 2009 issue of the Journal of Business Ethics Education. Over the course of each academic term, he asks undergraduate and graduate business students three questions:

1. A year out of this program what do you expect your job will be?

2. What kind of job contributes the most to general well-being?

3. Practicality aside, if you could be doing anything 10 years from now, what would it be?

The first question is one of pragmatics, figuring out market fit and also the reality of needing to pay off loans and support a family. The second has more to do with the idea of social responsibility, of what we should do and not what we're motivated to do in terms of self-realization or economic necessity. And the third helps define what students consider their dream job.

What's striking is that there is almost no overlap among the students' answers to these questions. For the first, students often respond by discussing jobs in finance, marketing and information technology. They talk about becoming banking managers, financial analysts or IT analysts. For the second, they discuss fields like education, medicine and public safety. They discuss becoming a social worker, research scientist, doctor, teacher or charity director. Meanwhile, for the third question, they talk of working in the arts, entertainment or sports and recreation. In their dream jobs, they see themselves as professional athletes, entrepreneurs, filmmakers and travel guides.

The question then becomes: Why are students studying so hard and paying so much to reach objectives that are neither what they dream of nor what they think of as especially responsible?

Michaelson's paper comes out of a teaching exercise, not a scientific study. While the results may be striking, they may not be that surprising. But they do have potentially important implications for businesses. Managers need to plan for a future in which people strive for more than one of these aspects of meaning. They need to think of ways to design jobs that keep people motivated for a long time, so their creative aspirations and desires to incorporate sustainability and social responsibility are core to the work. Moreover, we should all examine our own choices. Career choice is an ethical choice and a comparative luxury that is a shame for those who have it to waste.

This article is adapted from "The Importance of Meaningful Work," by Christopher Michaelson, which appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. All rights reserved.

New York Times

I was born in South Korea. When I was 2, my family, including my grandparents, emigrated to Brazil for a better life. My father saw more opportunity there.

My father was an elder at our Korean church, and he rallied members to start a Korean preschool, which I attended for three years. Some of my best childhood memories come from attending that preschool.

I have a younger sister. As the oldest child and grandchild, I had a deep sense of responsibility. I felt I had to ensure that my parents’ hard work paid off, and I wanted to pave the way for the family.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I bridged the two cultures for my parents because they didn’t speak Portuguese. From the age of 12, I was the designated representative for my entire family in Brazilian society.

I read Russian literature, went to a Korean church and attended a Brazilian school. That experience helped me be flexible and adaptable and allowed me to see the world from multiple perspectives, which is useful for what I do now. My parents made me believe that I had no ceiling, that I could do anything as long as I worked hard. I still believe that.

I finished high school and the first year of law school in Brazil. (Students in Brazil don’t study pre-law; they go directly to law school.) When I was 19, I emigrated to the United States. While earning a business administration degree at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, I worked in the library and the health center. It was important to me that I have jobs where I could study.

I also met my best friend and future husband there. Some of the best business advice I’ve gotten has come from my father-in-law, who was a corporate lawyer.

My first real job after college was at Dun & Bradstreet. I joined in 1995 and worked in sales at the company’s call center, fulfilling orders and selling additional products to customers. Soon after starting there, I remember seeing a big book called “Presidential Citation,” which recognized the top sales teams. I thought to myself, “There’s no reason why I can’t be in that book.”

I found sales an attractive career path. It gives you control over your own destiny. It’s metric-focused; you reap what you put into it. You also have direct relationships with customers. Having direct visibility and, if possible, direct contact with customers, should be a must for any business leader.

After a few years I moved to a staff position at headquarters and then led a sales organization. D.& B. acquired Hoover’s in 2003.

In late 2008, I knew I was ready for a broader role, and I knew that the organization recognized it, too. In 2009, when the opportunity to become president of Hoover’s was presented, I felt a mix of emotions. I was humbled, and I had a moment when I thought, “Can I really do this?” But I saw a tremendous opportunity for us to make a difference on the Internet, and I wanted to lead that effort. I relocated my family and never looked back.

I’m always asked for advice about career management. I say that instead of trying to manage a career, focus on your achievements and try to be the best you can be. Find out how you can be successful at a task, which will open doors. Good relationship skills help even more. You’ll get instant credibility and people will seek you out. Having a five-year road map works for some people, but I didn’t have time to build one.

Talking regularly with my 85-year-old grandmother helps keep me in touch with my culture. I don’t have much down time, but I reserve time every day to read to my 3-year-old son. I make silly voices for the characters, and he just laughs and laughs. It’s the best sound in the world.