Career plan and drafting an MBA career goals essay

• For more MBA goals essays: https://www.aringo.com/Career_Goals_Essay.htm
• Check out our recent blog post regarding drafting your career goals for MBA application: https://aringo.com/hacking-the-mba-appl ... plication/

Summary of key comments/ discussion happened in the following replies

• Question from farhanc85: From most of the articles that I have read online and also websites of my target schools, adcom usually likes to know where you see yourself going post your mba, can it be 2 places? or may be just may be I can figure out the real option during my 1 or 2 year at school.
  
• Reply by CrackVerbalGMAT: It is definitely okay for you to figure out where you want to go during your 1 or 2 year course - in fact, most aspirants look at the MBA as a means to expand the opportunities available to them. However, it is not a good idea to show this ambivalence in your application. This is because admission committees evaluate potential candidates on their employability - and showcasing excellent clarity of goals is one way to demonstrate your employability. (If you don't know where you are going, etc. etc. ) And don't worry about sticking to the goal you mention in your application - B-schools know very well that your goals may change during the program, when you get exposure to many new functions, industries and experiences. So, nobody is going to question you about a discrepancy in what you said you want to do and what you actually end up doing!
  
• CrackVerbalGMAT, Some simple do's and dont's for talking about career goals:
  
  • Your goal must strike the right balance between 'ambitious' and 'realistic'. Don't cite a goal that is too low-hanging or something impossibly difficult to achieve in the time frame mentioned.
  • Your goal must be something that is in line with your past experience. i.e. you should be able to cite some experience or knowledge or transferable skills that will help you achieve this goal after a 1 or 2 year MBA.
  • Your short and long term goals must be logically connected. You should be able to defend how this short term goal will give you skills or exposure that will let you achieve your long term goal. Or why this short term goal is necessarily the first step to achieve your long term one.
  • Be as specific as possible - in terms of role, function, industry and even company. When you mention company names, make sure these companies recruit alumni of your target school.
  • Always always have a good idea about what the role entails - so if you say product management, make sure you know what a product manager does on a daily basis, what would he be responsible for, what his career progression is like, and so on.
• Erjan_S: I found this post to be quite helpful, my gratitude to the author. However, I was quite surprised that the essay cited in the post actually won acceptance to HBS, seriously? It seems to be quite a banal one, I would not call it too bright.....