New Zealand Global Project

 On the last day, I managed to squeeze in a sail boat tour since Auckland is the City of Sails!

 Jumped off of this bridge in Queenstown.. it is where bungee jumping started.

We worked in the IBM office building in the Central Business District along the Viaduct Harbor! 

As part of the Global Consulting Project through Fisher College of Business, eight of us students flew across the world to New Zealand. Four of us, including myself, worked for the American Chamber of Commerce, while the other four worked for Auckland Transport. We balanced working with exploring Auckland and the rest of New Zealand including a flight to Queenstown.

My mindset on many aspects of life transformed in New Zealand. Immersing myself into the culture there allowed me to gain many insights and perspectives I would not have without this experience. As a business student, I am very familiar with the American sales pitch and fierce competition in the business world here. But working in New Zealand, I was able to experience their relaxed business atmosphere where they work to live, not live to work like we do here in America. In addition, Kiwis are generally more collaborative and leverage teamwork. Because professionals are relationship based, they value trust and respect with their partners. I am also much more globally minded after traveling to New Zealand. Through many interactions, I realized how narrow minded Americans are.

As part of my project, I had the chance to walk around the city of Auckland to the many different companies. In many interviews, the interviewee would actually take me to get coffee or would show me around the office. Many interviews would in fact be more personal, not business oriented, talking about work life balance, what I was doing with my life, and welcoming me to New Zealand. I was very surprised for these interviews to be so laid back, despite the CEO’s and country managers having hectic schedules and actual business to conduct.

I thought it was very intrigued when I was waiting to interview Microsoft and the news was on, but instead of it being the New Zealand new, it was a world news station, not just New Zealand news. I had not once been waiting for an appointment or interview and had the world news on.

As I interviewed companies, I also noted the difference in sales pitches from how they are conducted here in the US versus in New Zealand. In the US, we are much more eager to give off the best presentation and version of ourself to get the job or sell the product. In New Zealand, this sales pitch does not exist at that severity. Rather, Kiwis would rather get to know a person first and develop trustthrough a relationship before jumping into a deal or hiring somebody. This just emphasizes the cut throat environment and intense competiton in the US.

While in New Zealand, I had many interactions with complete strangers like taxi drivers and convenience store cashiers about Donald Trump. As soon as people realized I was from America, I would get responses such as, “Oh, so you are form Trump country.”I learned that most of the world knows about what is going on in our country, but I do not ( and many Americans) do not know what happens in many other countries besides our own.

This global project came at a critical time in my life as I enter the final two years of college. Interacting with CEO’s among many other high ranking professionals gave me the chance to grow and develop my interpersonal skills with people other than college students. It was also a valuable experience working with three complete strangers and figuring how to mesh our personalities and strengths. Collaboration and learning to be a team players were two skills I developed and will carry them with me to my jobs in the future. For now, I am now interning at Cardinal Health, a global health and pharmaceutical company. Working on international matters and speaking with professionals from around the world so having a broadened global minded is proving to be invaluable.

 

One thought on “New Zealand Global Project

  1. Emma I enjoyed reading about your experiences working with the American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand. It was interesting to learn about the differences you noticed between how business is conducted and how the people you encountered in NZ work to live rather than live to work.I hope you continue to learn more about current events in other nations now that you have seen first hand how people from other parts of the world seem to pay such attention to world news.

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