Think of the adcom’s resume review like a pit stop. Your resume arrives in the readers’ hands, they tear it apart, hurriedly examine key components, and then—boom, faster than you thought possible, they’re done! If the resume did its job right, the adcom moves smoothly on to the rest of the application. But if any of those components didn’t stand up to closer scrutiny, suddenly there’s a big ugly question mark hanging over your application.
The good news is: A good MBA resume is probably one of the simplest parts of an MBA application. It doesn’t involve much creativity or writing skill—you just need to know what the adcom is looking for. The bad news is… many people don’t know what the adcom is looking for! Here are some of the most common mistakes we see.
1. RESPONSIBILITY LANGUAGE—“Responsible for $20M in oil drilling contracts.” “Responsible for the company’s largest client.” These statements tell the adcom almost nothing about your abilities, because we have no idea whether you did a good job or not when carrying out those responsibilities. Consider that the captain of the Titanic could accurately put on his resume that he was “responsible for the lives of all on board.” You still wouldn’t hire him to sail your boat! People who don’t accomplish much at work often use “responsible for XYZ” as a way of obfuscating the fact that they didn’t make an impact. Sully Sullenberger of “landing in the Hudson” fame could also write “responsible for the lives of all on board” on his resume, but he doesn’t need to, because he can instead just say what he DID.
2. PARTICIPATORY LANGUAGE—“Helped plan a new tech strategy which saved the client $30 million each year.” “Assisted the Director of Real Estate on a $40 million real estate deal.” Team work makes the dream work, and adcoms love to see people who can work well in teams. But it’s important that you identify what your INDIVIDUAL contribution to the team effort was. Saying that you “helped,” “assisted,” or “contributed to XYZ” tells the adcom nothing about how important your role was. Even the lowest-level employ could be said to “contribute to” the business of a company, but that doesn’t make their work MBA-relevant. For example, a secretary taking notes at a board meeting “helped the Board reach a decision on the acquisition of XYZ Corp,” and an intern delivering coffee “supported key planning meetings.” If you don’t specify your individual contribution, the adcom will assume you’re covering for the fact that your role was minor or administrative in nature.
3. LACK OF DETAIL—Imagine you’re a lawyer trying to catch a witness in a lie. How would you go about it? You would probably ask for more details. “What was he wearing?” “How long did it take you to drive from X to Y?” A resume works in a similar way, except that you have to provide all the details needed for the adcom member to “buy” your story up front. You have to guess what questions the adcom might ask, and give good answers in advance. The single biggest mistake we see on resumes is applicants leaving big, important questions unanswered. For example: “Managed a team of salespeople, successfully closing more deals than any other sales team in the Asia Office.” Here any adcom worth their salt would ask "how many people were on that team?" In absence of additional information, they have to assume the worst: that there were only two people. How many sales team are there in the Asia Office? In the absence of additional information, the adocm will again assume there were only two. After all, if this was a team of 20 people that achieved the best performance out of 10 sales teams, you’d say that… right?
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