How to Become CEO Before Graduating: Tips From a Student Who Did It

John Huang's about to get his first taste of the CEO life before he's even graduated.

For many university graduates, scoring some on-the-job experience is a crucial first step on the path to a dream career. Sometimes that means accepting an entry-level admin job; other times it's getting into a clearly defined graduate program.

But University of Technology Sydney (UTS) student John Huang is skipping all that and going straight for the top job: CEO.

Before you scramble to find out his secrets, hear us out. He's about to undertake a full month of being the "CEO" for The Adecco Group's Australian chapter under a program, called CEO for One Month, designed to give young aspiring tertiary students the chance to put their newly-learned skills to work.

It all started on LinkedIn at the start of the year when John was scrolling through the job ads. He happened upon a callout for university students looking to become a CEO for a month. John remembers thinking it was "too good to be true", but after asking the Careers team at his uni, he decided to give it a shot.

"There aren't many opportunities in the real world, really, where I could become a CEO and get that much exposure," John tells Student Edge.

Having been successful, he's set to take the reins starting in July. However, it wasn't an easy process for the 22-year-old Bachelor of Business student. He had to beat tough competition from around 5,600 other applicants around Australia.

After submitting an online application, he had to pass a video interview, followed by a face-to-face interview. At this stage, more than 5,600 national applicants had been whittled down to just 20. Finally, he'd heard back that he was on to the next round, which required a full-day "bootcamp" in Melbourne.

"We had to wake up at 3.30am in the morning [to catch flights] so it was incredibly tiring," John admits.

"By the time it was 9 o'clock, it felt like half the day for us but technically, the day had just begun."

The bootcamp meant coming up with introductions, sales pitches and content creation among tough competition, but John was inspired by how driven everyone was.

"I didn't have too many expectations, I just wanted to give it my best shot," John remembers.

At the end of the day, John's best shot ended up being the winning one. He'll now shadow Adecco's Australian CEO Rafael Moyano for all of July.

"I know it will fly by really quickly so it's going to be very important for me to make the most of it," John admits.

"[I'm going to] make sure I get my key learnings and take [them] with me for the rest of my career."

Before he embarks on his month-long stint as company head, he has this advice for other students in similar situations.

"I was in my final year and I knew that I had to give it a shot," John explains.

"I think that a lot of people in the same position as me might have excuses like a lack of time, a lack of effort but we can always make time, we can shuffle things around.

"I think it's up to us to take as many opportunities as we can.

"Maybe, they'll even be the 2020 CEO."

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