"I want to grow together with my favorite company" - Tsutomu Hirata

Bridge Engineering & Construction Co.
Tsutomu Hirata

PgDip (Certificate Program) Nagoya, April 2016

After graduating from the Department of Japanese Literature, Faculty of Letters, Doyo University, he joined the sales department of Bridge Engineering Corporation, where he was engaged in order-taking activities at construction sites and property management. As a recruiter, he also conducts interviews and briefings for new graduates and mid-career workers.

Why did you decide to study?

I work in the civil engineering and construction industry, which is involved in bridges and highways. I had a sense of crisis that the time would come when the maintenance of roads throughout Japan would come to an end, and that my company would have to change its business model. In order to change and grow, both the company and myself would need to take on new challenges. Therefore, I thought that I would surely gain something new by studying business administration myself.
In addition, in my work, I have to make a series of decisions, and the results will be expressed through the accumulation of these decisions. In order for me to be able to make even better decisions now than I did in the past, I thought it would be beneficial to start studying business as soon as possible.

Why did you choose the PgDip program?

Before entering the school, I attended an information session and took a mock marketing class based on the display of products in a convenience store. I learned that there is a meticulous strategy on the part of the supplier in every product, display, and advertisement, and I realized a lot of things in the everyday scene of shopping. At that time, I wondered if my current work was thinking about the mechanism and getting the targeted products and results. I decided to study for a PgDip because I wanted to know how to think about the mechanism too. PgDip is an 18-week commuter program that allows students to systematically learn the basics of an MBA in order to build a solid foundation.

Balancing work and study

Preparation for classes at NUCB Business School is very important. Preparation includes reading the books specified in the textbook, summarizing one's own opinions on case studies (corporate management cases), and writing reports. If you don't prepare well, you won't be able to speak confidently in class and you won't be able to get a full learning experience. Therefore, I make an estimate of how much time I need to prepare for the class so that I can be sure to do the preparation. In particular, it can take me a long time to understand a subject that I have never been exposed to before, so I assign a preparation time for each day two weeks in advance, and manage my time so that I can have an average of three hours of preparation time per day.

How to apply what you have learned

I like my company and the people I work with very much, and I want to make it a better company together. I used to think that the only way to win was for a company to dominate its scale and survive, but through my studies I have learned that there are different ways to win in the world. For example, corporate mergers and acquisitions, forming alliances, and other ideas that I hadn't thought of before jumped out at me, and I feel that my thought process has increased.
As I take classes on weekends, I think of the company and the faces of our customers, and wonder how I can apply this learning to my work from Monday.

On weekday evenings and weekends, we hold information sessions at our campuses in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka to introduce what you will learn at PgDip and how you can attend. Individual consultations are also available at any time.

Taken from: July 2016