Promotion to a Different Team before R2 deadlines

Question

Hello,

I will be shortly promoted from an individual contributor to a Leadership Role (Manager). Although this would entail a shift to a team that does more of the mundane work and less challenging assignments than my current team.

Since this promotion / switch comes very close to R2 deadline, I have a few questions :

1. In my apps, I want to highlight as little as possible of this new team and what it does, and focus strongly on my previous role. My apps will be centered around my consulting focussed work which I did in my previous team, while the new role is more reporting in nature. However, I wish to highlight this switch as its a leadership position and will show my growth in the organization. How do I have the best of both worlds ?

2. Do we really need to mention the specific team in the organization (Even in Resume)? Do the ad-coms validate ? The new team has a very Reporting-based Team Name, while my previous team had a very Consulting focussed name. I truly want to avoid the new team title as it might hamper with my essay storyline.

3. Given the nature and timing of this promotion, will this switch really add value ? I can decline this promotion if it will be detrimental to my apps.

Appreciate any help on this.

MBADecoder · Answer

The situation is a little vague, but here goes my advice based on what I can gather: Most b-schools give you about 400-900 words to write your essays. These are generally split across a behavioural essay and a career goals essay. For the behavioural essay, you would choose a situation which has happened in the recent past, say about in the past 3 years. You would most likely not have the chance to quote an example from a role into which you moved only recently (it may be a possibility by December end, for R2 deadlines, but you could easily avoid that example). In the career goals essay, if this new role aligns with your future career goals, then you should mention it, else you could leave it out.

This leaves you with the resume and the recommendation. If you are leading a team of X people in the new role, it will be worthwhile to mention it in the resume. More so, if you have never led formal teams before and your resume lacks any pointers on leading teams in the past work records.

Your recommender can mention the new role as a step-up in your responsibilities. All the more impressive if this was rewarded to you for some good work you did recently.

This one is a little difficult to answer without fully understand the context- what kind of work will you do in the new role? how large will the leadership responsibility be? what will be the pros and cons of adding/hiding this info?

I don't see any trouble with the timing of the promotion. In fact a promotion is great. It tells the adcom that you are valued within your company. From an application perspective, I'd ask you to think more long-term: you may or may not get an admit this year, so don't focus just upon the immediate R2 deadlines. What value will this new role add to you in the next 1-2 years? How will your profile be better?How will it help you move towards your post MBA goals?

In my opinion, eventually you should be happy with the move. if its sounding cumbersome to you now, you may never be happy in that role. The other side to this is, that maybe you can add a lot more value to this role than you are being expected to, and make it worthwhile for yourself.

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Yes I think it's great to have a promotion on your record but then as time passes when you get to the interview stage what are you going to have to talk about. I really don't think it's a wise choice to take a job that you won't enjoy and will not have the long-term career Equity that you're looking for to create a certain illusion on your app. It's called gaming the system and I think that it's also going to shoot you in the foot. you seem very unenthusiastic about revealing the duties and nature of this job. Energetically at some point in the process or at all points of the process that will come across and I think it will hurt you, lacking transparency or even just lacking enthusiasm is definitely going to come across. I think it's a bad idea and I think should decline. On top of that it's difficult to start a new job while you're writing your applications you don't really want any additional challenges. Lean on other things in your application emphasize the quality of the experience that you have and potentially you could even discuss the offer that you received to be promoted.

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agbsharma · Answer

Thanks for the response. Much appreciated.

My current role is a consulting analytics role, but the new leadership role will be a process based role that will be responsible for simply executing marketing campaigns. The work is mundane and I dont see myself committed long enough in this role post applying. It will be hard to explain to the Ad-Coms why I made this switch. The job title will also clearly suggest this to the Ad-Coms, and even otherwise might streamline my job aspects after I switch to another organization.

However, I will have a considerable number of people (10) reporting directly to me. This seems the only silver lining, apart from impressing the Ad-Coms with a leadership role, to this switch.

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

I believe strongly in investing the proper energy into something that you want a good outcome from. Ie I actually didn't even post a testimonial from someone I helped get into Stanford last year because of the energy of that relationship, it wasn't something I wanted to seed into my future. by doing this you would be energetically setting Something In Motion saying that your qualifications aren't good enough as they are - you had to take a job you disliked to create an illusion of people leadership. Because without this you wouldn't get into the right school. Kind of like you had to be someone else to get into that school. And it's going to create this feeling that you're a fraud. I really think that's the wrong energy to be creating your next step. I would much prefer that you stick with authenticity and make decisions that are true for you. Energetically...in interviews and in essays it will come across I promise you that. And authenticity is an extremely important value here. My opinion stays the same I I feel that it would be a very bad idea. Difficult to explain to future employers, messing up trajectory of your whole career, on top of the disadvantages RE your B School narrative.

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agbsharma · Answer

Thanks again for such a detailed answer.

I have 2 questions here :

1. Assuming I take the promotion, will it be counter-productive in my interviews to explain why I am going for an MBA given I had recently moved into a new role ? Taking a new role and then immediately applying for MBA may not fit well. Although if I apply with my current position, it will much easier for me to explain the why MBA part.

2. How important is actually a leadership role in the applications ? I am currently assistant manager, play the role of a mentor but dont have people directly reporting to me. I also have a couple of positions of responsibilities in college - Club President etc. Will highlighting this and showing that I am due for a promotion be a better alternative to a leadership role in which I have hardly spent a month before the deadline ?

Promotion to a Different Team before R2 deadlines

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