Interview with Mengting Xie – Alumna from China

Where do you work and what does an average working day look like?

I currently work as an Engineer and am the Operational Process Development & System Solution Architect at National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) in Trollhättan. During a typical working day, I get into the office early to go through my to-do checklist in OneNote in order to prioritize things I should do for the day. During the early morning, our team always has a short stand up meeting to communicate about the following questions:

• What we did yesterday?
• What we will do today?
• What blocks us from maintaining our progress?

As an agile organization, we have adapted our way of working to share our progress, help each other, and react faster to changes.

I work on multiple assignments during a day, such as process development, process communication, business system development and maintenance, IT-related project and support, new platform training as well as communication with and support of Chinese colleagues.

Recently I started focusing more on developing a system solution to visualize the agile organization, new business management process, and project deliverables. Therefore, I continuously need to talk with our internal clients about their needs and feedback for the solution. I’m having meetings with clients to show the solution demo and receive input/feedback for 60% of the day. Thirty percent of the day is left to actually work on the system solution and to prepare for the next demonstration. And 10% of the day is to quickly go through my email in-box and support tickets from IT.

For IT-related projects, sometimes I could spend a whole day trying out third part tools, communicating with a third party tool supplier. And also, there will be some days to test new platforms or web-based solutions, create instructions and promote it to the whole organization.

My working day is full of exciting assignments. I really enjoy my job a lot!

Why did you choose the Master in International Business at University West?

I actually came to University West as an exchange student as part of my bachelor’s programme at the Shanghai Institute of Technology. After my exchange year in Trollhättan I wanted to continue my studies at University West, so I applied for the one-year Master in International Business and luckily I was granted a scholarship.

How did your studies at University West prepare you for business life?

The knowledge I acquired during my studies at University West helped me develop my critical and systematic thinking. I learned to see things from different angles and to position my working goals from a different perspective. The marketing and communication knowledge I got from the Master in International Business helps me to better promote and communicate my ideas and work for internal and external consumers.

During my studies I learned a lot from self-study and team-work experience. It makes me a more independent person in doing my working assignment and at the same time, I become a team-driven person when doing projects that require cooperation with cross-functional people. It also made me more flexible to understand and accept new things happening in the workplace.

The university also provides a lot of opportunities for students to communicate with local companies. I connected with several companies during some company exhibitions at University West.

Why do you think a future student should choose University West?

• The professors at University West are friendly and approachable, they always give inspiration and good advice.
• You will be amazed by the diversity of the programmes and courses the university can provide.
• The facilities here in university are advanced and accessible, especially for students who study engineering.
• The university organizes a lot of interesting activities that the students can participate in.
• The university provides you with the opportunity to build up contact with companies
• You will learn a lot by studying in groups or teams which provides you with a great environment to experience how to collaborate with people. This is very useful in the real workplace.

Do you have any advice for future students?

• Prepare for challenges - any assignment from a course could be quite a challenge, be prepared to take it and do a good job.
• Be a good team player - enjoy the group work and communicate with your group members. The main thing is to plan and help each other, thus to get a good outcome and course experience.
• Work hard - have perseverance and always keep your goal in mind, focus on what you want to achieve during the study. Because this makes you more likely to get the reward at the end.
• Utilize the available resources - communicate more with professors, you will reach a new vision in studying through their words of wisdom. Time is the cheapest but most priceless resource for you.
• Enjoy ‘Fika’ time - meet your friends, classmates and professors and enjoy the coffee break when you feel stressed during your studies.