Chinese Students Visit iCIMS for Glimpse into American Business Culture
A group of Chinese exchange students visited iCIMS, the Matawan-based company specializing in software-as-a-service for recruiters, on August 19.
The students came from Wenzhou University, an affiliate of Kean University’s China campus, as part of Kean University’s English-language immersion program in the United States.
They heard a presentation on iCIMS, toured the building and spent part of the day with an in-house iCIMS user experience/development and design team (UX/IDD). The students had already been in the U.S. for six weeks.
Cheryl Peterson, manager of talent acquisition at iCIMS, gave the students an overview of the company. The UX/IDD team did a presentation focusing on how iCIMS develops its website and graphic-design projects with the user experience in mind and performs user-experience testing for all the assets it creates.
This is the third year that Kean University has been running the immersion program, according to James Beaty, who accompanied the students to iCIMS. A senior at Kean University, Beaty was the “Chinese immersion mentor.” His role was to be someone the students could look up to and go to when they had questions, and he helped them with their transition to America during their summer here.
The Chinese students had been studying English for six weeks, and had done some traveling around the country as well. Yoga Xu (19) said that she had come to iCIMS “to learn how a whole company worked. I am interested in the industry here.” She added, “I want to find an internship maybe related to my major.”
Asked if she wanted to come back to the U.S., she said that she’d like to come back when she is a senior and will have another opportunity to study at Kean University.
Jay Tan (19) said that he had learned a lot of vocabulary and improved his English writing ability while he was in the U.S., and he got to visit New York City. He said that he had come to iCIMS to understand the operations and structure of the business.
Asked what the differences were between American business culture and the culture in Chinese businesses, Tan answered, “In America the relationships with colleagues are very kind and friendly. They always say hello to each other. In China, the competition is very strong between colleagues.”
Tan added that he wanted to return to the U.S. get his master’s degree.
