My name is Kay Tran. I was born and raised in Vietnam and moved to Japan when I was 17 for university. Back then, I was considering multiple options such as Japan, the US, Singapore, and Australia. I chose Japan because the university offered me the highest amount of scholarships. To me, a higher education degree such as university is similar to an investment - something that I want to make the most out of knowledge-wise and finance-wise. Considering the financial burden that I would have to face, attending a Japanese university was the most reasonable option.

During my university years, I joined numerous extracurricular activities. I was a Leader Teaching Assistant (LTA) and was in various circles for international communities including the Vietnamese communities. Among all of these activities, the most memorable experience was the cultural week. It was a worthwhile one-week program that allowed other students to experience Vietnamese culture. The six months of preparation for the event left a lasting impact and impression on me.

How did you reach your Japanese proficiency? 

My tip is similar to any other tip you can find on the internet. There is no secret source behind learning a language. Just practice. The more you practice, the more proficient you become in a language, whether it be English, Japanese, Vietnamese, or other languages. Practice makes perfect.

In addition, I was able to accelerate my Japanese proficiency in the first few years due to the school curriculum. Ritsumeikan APU offers a bilingual curriculum, both in English and Japanese. Especially for the first year, there is a strong encouragement for one to take Japanese courses.  I spent 60 to 70 percent of my time studying Japanese at that time. So, dive deep into your Japanese language studies.

Whenever people come to me and ask for tips, oftentimes I would give them only one piece of advice: that they should know themselves and be as honest as possible in the interview. When you do job hunting, it is also a journey of self-awareness. You do a lot of self-reflection upon your past years in university or in high school to see what kind of activities you were involved in, what kind of experiences you had, and what kind of person you were back then. After reflecting on your past, you think to yourself: how does that connect to your future self?

To be honest, not everybody has a fixed goal in mind. As many fresh graduates do not know what kind of career to pursue, I also didn’t know what career path I wanted to go into. I didn’t have a strong commitment or conviction of what would work for me. However, you should at least know what you have experienced as it allows you to understand who you are. As long as you can express your life story with a good rhythm, you should be able to answer any questions from the interviewer.

How did you get a job in AlphaSights?

I did the normal (traditional) shukatsu process and I got a couple of offers. There are several reasons why I chose AlphaSights in the end. First, I liked the bilingual, international environment with huge autonomy in my work. I enjoy a workplace where I can learn and develop myself quickly.

The second reason is the sales role. I wanted to get into sales to practice my communication skills that are linked to the career and roles involving commercial activities dealing with external clients, and client management. To me, a sales job is nearly the backbone of every business. You can’t have a business if you don’t have salespeople because you need to sell the product to your customers for the revenue flow. I’m also interested in human resource sales. At that time, my understanding of AlphaSights was somewhat in between consulting, recruitment, and research, which fits my career interest.

In addition, one outstanding aspect of AlphaSights before applying is that there are a lot of good reviews already on the internet. Generally, it’s hard to know the rating of a company before you join. There are big and small firms, and hands-on workplace information is hard to find. However, in the case of AlphaSights, you can get an array of reviews and information about a company's culture through websites such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Openwork. It gives you an overall sense of what you are getting into. If your company is not like AlphaSights, you need to reach out to senpais who work there, or you need to proactively reach out to current employees on LinkedIn to get a sense of the real working environment.

Regardless of what company or country you are from, the best company requires similar skill sets: commitment to the company and high responsibility. Having good communication skills is an extra benefit. However,  the skill that I believe would be most helpful in building a career in the Japanese market is relationship building. In order to be able to build strong relationships with Japanese people, it is important to know the culture, especially the corporate culture of Japan. Foreigners who did not grow up in Japan are not as accustomed to Japanese culture. For example, most of Ritsumeikan APU’s students first came to Japan at the age of 17; they only experienced Japanese culture for four years during university. In other words, they are only getting used to the university culture, not the corporate culture. In a business setting, you should be fluent in the Japanese business language (敬語, keigo) and you should know how to communicate with Japanese people in business.

Nevertheless, I believe that the Japanese working environment is changing rapidly. It is transforming to adopt global context and values, unlike in the past.

The main role of the client service team of AlphaSights is to communicate with client companies, find the most suitable expert who can best solve their problem, and connect the client companies to these experts.

The Client Service Team (CST) manager is responsible for the account and the team. It’s a combination of account management and people management. Simply put, you cannot grow the account without scaling up your people. Managers take care of their people so that they can take care of their clients. CST managers don’t necessarily lead the project but they do need to train their people and motivate them to deliver excellence to their clients.

The working nature in AlphaSights is a fast-paced, project-based job with a heavy workload that requires high professionalism and responsibility. It comes with both pros and cons that depend on each individual. On a typical day, an associate would handle eight to twelve projects per day. One only has about nine hours per day, so 45 minutes to an hour will be allocated to each project. Sometimes there are urgent requests suddenly coming in. For example, while you are working on Project A, Project C receives an urgent request. Then you need to switch gears to Project C, and reshuffle and reorganize your schedule. While managing projects, you need to deal with team meetings, client meetings, and so on. Therefore, you need to have good time management and task management skills to work at AlphaSights.

It’s a fast-paced, high-stress environment but at the same time, you will be developing quickly, much faster than one might in traditional Japanese companies. When you first enter the firm, you will experience an extensive one-month training, and then receive desk work training for the second and third months. Essentially, you will start working on real projects from the second month. The goal of the first four to six months is to transform you from a fresh graduate to an independent, competent project leader.

What are the difficulties of people management and sales management?

There are a lot of difficult things. Before talking about the challenges of this work, let me give you a bit of context into my role at the moment. I was an associate in my first and second years and a manager in my third and fourth. Right now, I’m in my fifth year as a Senior Manager. In my third year–which was my first year as a manager–my main focus was team management or scaling up the team. After making a transition from an associate to a manager, I was playing the roles of a trainer and a manager simultaneously. It was challenging to deal with people management, talent management, how to scale my team, and how to motivate the team, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In my second year as a manager, I transitioned from a people manager to a business manager, meaning my decisions will impact not only my team but also the office. In other words, my decisions will have a greater impact on a larger group of people. I’m in my third year as a manager now, and I’m in charge of making strategic decisions that have longer impacts ranging from six months to one year, to two years. In a different stage of your management career, you will face different challenges.

Does everyone get promoted that fast at AlphaSights?

When you hit your two-year mark, you are eligible to apply for the manager position. However, not everyone can get the manager position. Usually, people become a manager in two and a half years to three years. But you don’t necessarily have to apply for the manager position. We have a lot of different positions as well. For example, you can apply to transfer to marketing, compliance, and legal departments, or you can apply to go to other countries. We have a couple of people who moved to the US, Europe, and London. So, there are a lot of options other than being a manager. You can flexibly choose your career path.