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Know the Company, and Know Yourself

Receiving a job offer from a prestigious multinational company long before graduation may be a dream for many college students suffering from the current employment drought and global financial crisis. However, one top company has now set the stage for elite Chinese students to show their business potentials and further their chances of gaining those elusive top jobs.

Reporter: "The 2009 P&G Elites Competition is held here at the Beijing International Conference Centre. The competition here hails students from Beijing and Tianjin, coming from prestigious universities such as Peking University and Nankai University."

Starting with forming teams with strangers from other universities, or even other cities, students from diverse backgrounds are required to work together to develop new lines of products for Procter & Gamble (P&G), a world-famous multinational company in just 10 days.

James U. Kaw, director of P&G Beijing Technical Centre "We will be offering these people managerial positions so what they exhibit will be very important for them to then succeed in P&G. The things we are looking for is exactly what they would have to show when they enter P&G and we fully expect that by going through this process,. They would come into P&G better prepared and that they will be more successful as we do this effort."

Reporter: "The competition is about to begin right in this room. The organizers have come out with an unexpected challenge by combining two groups into one. As such, the participants are busy preparing for their presentation right now and the atmosphere is certainly getting more intense."

Winning, however, was not the most important thing for most of the students. The reason for participation was really to learn more and expose themselves to other possible career options.

Zhang Teng, participant from Tianjin: "Everyone had a deeper understanding of the different components of a business company as the competition provided a chance to experience the whole course of creating and marketing a new product. Hence, participation in this competition has allowed me to find out which field I am most suited to."

Li Zhen, participant from Beijing: "It is a very fresh experience for me. I am very inspired by the contest as I have had no business experience before. The training P&G provided gave me an invaluable lesson on leadership."

Gu Yu, participant from Beijing: "I have participated in a number of competitions previously, but this is the first time I'm taking part in a business-related competition. What I have gotten out of this competition is the spirit of fighting. We can be beaten by our competitors, but we cannot lose to ourselves. Even if we don’t do as well as our competitors, we have already surpassed ourselves."

Reporter: "Students have just gone through a very exciting round of presentation. They had to entertain some very tough questions from the judges, as well as present their proposal in a very limited amount of time. The winner will get a chance to go to Singapore for a training session as well as a job offer from P&G. Well, we hope them all the best!