search
Other Stories

Nancy Yao

This MBA’s Startup Helps Chinese Professionals Find New Jobs

Nancy Yao ran a coaching startup while pursuing her MBA at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. Now, she’s looking to expand.

The story of Nancy Yao’s career is a classic case of finding a niche and exploiting it. Nancy came upon a fresh demand for a special type of training service that has transformed the course of her career. After an MBA from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), she’s ready to take her startup to the next level.

Educated in the US and China, Nancy first found work at the consultancy Deloitte in Los Angeles. But after two years, she quit her job, pivoted her career, and took to the skies as a flight attendant with Emirates Airlines. 

Over the next 18 months working for Emirates, she visited more than 200 cities in 40 countries, and worked with colleagues from over 130 countries.

In 2015, Nancy settled in Beijing to pursue an MBA at CKGSB, determined to enhance her skills in entrepreneurship. She then began receiving hundreds of messages on her social media accounts – from young professionals determined to break into the aviation industry. As she responded to each of them, she discovered that she could make a career out of training prospective cabin crew members.

That was three years ago. Now, Nancy is looking to widen the scope of her coaching business beyond the aviation sector and provide interview training for Chinese applicants applying to work at multinational companies across the board.

Already, her candidates’ success rate has been markedly high – normally fewer than 5% of cabin crew prospects receive offers, but 30% of Nancy’s trainees have landed new jobs.

Understand China from the inside

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter today!

  • follow us