Khye Theng Wan W'13

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khyethengwan

What did you study at Penn and when did you graduate?

I studied Finance and graduated from Wharton in 2013. 

What were you involved with as an undergraduate?

I was involved in a couple of different things. I did Wharton Asia Exchange (WAX) and Wharton Women on the professional side. On the personal side of things, I did ballroom dancing. I was an RA as well, and that took up quite a lot of my time in my third year, where I also served as part of the Penn Advisory Board. 

What was your favorite part of Penn, especially as an international student from Malaysia?

What I really liked about Penn was the diversity. Although you will get this at any other US college, I think the diversity is not what Malaysians are very exposed to. The Malaysian education system is similarly mirrored to the UK's, so when I came to the US, I was quite surprised because I could do a myriad of different things. Even though I was concentrating in Finance, I was able to take classes outside of my major, including acting and psychology classes. The flexibility to pick all of your other classes together with your concentration was really great! Penn is also very preprofessional, especially at Wharton. The school prepares you well for the practical side of things like looking for a job. For example, the modelling you do in your Finance classes is very similar to what you'll do at work. Academically, Penn was a comprehensive place to be, especially if you want to break into the top tier companies after graduation.

On the softer side of things, I really enjoyed Philly. I think, in the beginning, I was culturally shocked how a campus can be smacked in the middle of a city. To me, Penn is a very good combination of city and campus. If you want to have more city life, you can go downtown where there's a lot of food, arts, and culture. 

What do you do now and where are you based?

I currently work at Google in Singapore. I hold a regional role, and my title is APAC Strategy and Commercialization Lead. In my role, I handle a specific product within the Google Ads business in which my role sits exactly in between the tech team in Mountain View and the APAC markets. So, imagine that Google has this ads product that they want to sell to business clients. What I do is that I would use the new features that are being built within this product to do training to the markets and give sellers all the information that they need to sell to the clients. Then, after the sellers pitch to the clients and they receive certain feedback, whether it's on the performance of the product or certain things that the clients think the product can improve on, I would bring the input back to the tech team in Mountain View and let them know what our priorities should be. Much of my work goes around strategy and prioritization (we have so many countries within APAC!). The team is called GoToMarket. To put it simply, we help commercialize a particular product in the regions that we are based in. 

What has your career journey looked like?

After Penn, I was like almost any other Whartonite, deciding between investment banking and consulting. I have to admit that I didn't particularly love the hardcore Finance classes. I didn't see myself modeling 100% of the time. I wanted something that is kind of like a balance between analytical and soft skill sets, which is where consulting fits right at the dot. So, I did consulting right after Penn. 

I was pretty fortunate to be recruited for an internship with Bain in my junior year. Bain Southeast Asia was making on-campus rounds, and Wharton/Penn is their top recruiting school. They came on campus, and I met the recruiter. Their internships are relatively strict; in my year they only brought in a class of 6 globally. They'll recruit from the US, the UK, and Southeast Asia. At the end of the internship, they gave me a full-time offer. The opportunity to work for Bain and come back to Southeast Asia was so tempting, despite my initial thought of staying in the US right after graduation. I took that offer, and I have been in Asia ever since. I was at Bain for 2 years.

Not surprisingly, I realized that consulting was not what I wanted to do for a very long time and wanted to explore my options out there. Consultants act as advisors to companies, but we don't actually run the processes and execute the recommendations that we give to them. I wanted to see the execution part of things. That's why I moved to an execution/operations role at Grab. I moved to Grab in 2015 when it was not as established as it is today in the market. I was with Grab for 4 years in which I worked across 2 different roles. The first role that I worked on was the Head of Operations role at GrabCar. After Grab merged with Uber in 2018, I felt that one chapter of my time at Grab had closed, and that’s when I knew that I wanted to try something new. At that time, Grab had a new financial services business. I hopped into a country lead role within that team, building the team from scratch. Initially, there were just 2 of us, but the team grew to almost 30 when I left Grab. As someone who is growing in their career, I was pretty grateful for the opportunity to be stretched in breadth for my skill sets and knowledge.

In 2020, I wanted to move to Singapore, both for personal and professional reasons. I moved to Singapore to work for Google, and the role in Google is very different from the previous 2 roles I held. At this point, I didn’t know with certainty what I wanted to do, and I think that's very normal, but I have learned things that I like and dislike and my strengths and weaknesses. Those can ultimately end up being my development points. I have had quite varying experiences, and I'm quite fortunate to try different things early in my career to figure out what I like and don't like, although the future remains flexible for me. I am still exploring what I want to do in the next 5 to 10 years.

What has been the biggest challenge of your career?

I would say the biggest challenge of my career is to work with a challenging manager or supervisor, as you need to proactively adapt. I remember working with a particular manager where our communication styles were highly different, and there were a lot of mismatched expectations. That happened early in my career. I wasn't practically savvy enough to manage that situation on hand, and I had to seek help from some mentors and seniors to navigate the situation. As I moved on to my other roles, I sometimes met stakeholders who aren’t on the same page, but I've been able to implement some practical skills from my previous experience to navigate these situations. I think in your career the most useful thing anyone can learn is to work with difficult people. Sometimes “difficult” could be quite subjective as well. Some people may love working with this person because their styles just match, but others don't. So the most important question is how you navigate such situations respectfully and learn to compromise. What I’ve seen in my experience is that many people who find a boss that they really like to work with end up nurturing that relationship, and moving into different roles with them. 

What advice do you have for our members as they begin exploring careers and internships? 

I think the most important thing when applying for jobs is your resume. Please keep your resume within one page and make sure the format is clean. Hiring managers do not have the patience to read through anything more than one page given the volume of resumes they have to screen. Penn Career Services offers resume consultation and help for students, and you should make use of this. Use powerful verbs, which you could also look up on the Penn Career Services' website. The resume is an absolute basic foundation. 

Secondly, I can't emphasize enough how important networking is. However, networking smartly is key. A lot of companies would come and do on-campus recruiting, and everyone would compete to speak with the recruiter at the end of the sessions. The critical question here is how do you make yourself memorable through these sessions. You'll need to prioritize which sessions you can attend because you might not have the capacity to attend every single session. What I found out in my career as I move forward is how important personal and professional networks are. For example, my jobs at Grab and Google were a referral by someone. I would say that that is the most effective way to secure an internship or a job. 

Next, prepare yourself well enough. Your interview preparation is very important. I remember writing down the points for common questions for my fit interviews. Ensure that you know enough about the company to ask good questions, so that they remember you after the interview.

Finally, my tip is to send your resume to as many companies as possible and attend as many interviews to help you train and practice. If you land an interview with a company that you really want to join, you need to be well prepared. These interviews also help to put your name out there. I was interviewed for 11 rounds at Google before getting my current role. Typically, Google does 4 rounds of interviews for a role. I actually interviewed for this particular role and made it to the last round. It was just between another candidate and me, but the manager picked the other person because he wanted someone more senior to come into the team. However, he told me that he thought I would fit well in Google, but he just couldn't offer me a role within his team at that time. So, he went to speak with other managers to see if anyone was hiring, but there was also no vacancy. However, I didn't want to give up when a hiring manager had a good impression of me. So, I started looking for roles within Google on my own, and these teams got back to me. I interviewed for a total of 4 roles before I landed on the current role. Imagine if I didn't do that- I probably wouldn't end up being at Google today. While interview preparation is important, I think proactiveness is something that you also need to have. Don't feel rejection as something personal. Ideally, ask your interviewer for feedback, learn from it, and then move on. 

What's your favorite place that you've ever been to?

New York! I was in New York when I came back to the US in 2018. I did both East Coast and West Coast tours, and I realized that I really like New York more than San Francisco. Having the kind of diversity that New York offers reminds you of who you are so that you are not boxed into a certain stereotype and continue to act that way. It really is a melting pot of culture. There are also a lot of great things to eat in New York. Once the travel restrictions are lifted, I'd love to go back to New York!