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Sep 0811:00 AM PDT
-12:00 PM PDT
Strong applicants do not always write strong MBA essays. In this session, we break down 5 common MBA essay mistakes that can quietly weaken an otherwise competitive application.- Sep 09
07:00 AM PDT
-10:00 AM PDT
Meet AdComs and explore top Master’s programs - MiM, MiF, MSc, MSBA and more. - Application Fee Waivers - Free 1-Week of GMAT Club Tests: - Master's Application Toolkit - Grand Prize Giveaway 
Sep 0909:00 AM PDT
-10:00 AM PDT
Join the chat on Wednesday - What’s in it for you? - Live Profile Evaluation Chat Session with Jenifer Turtschanow, CEO, ARINGO.- Sep 09
10:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Three MBA applications. Three rejections. No interview invites. A year later, Aman was admitted to Cambridge Judge, SMU, and IMD. In this episode of MBA Admit Stories, Aman shares how he rebuilt his MBA application... 
Sep 0912:00 PM PDT
-01:00 PM PDT
The old MBA recruiting playbook is dead. Here’s how top admits are getting ahead this summer.- Sep 10
11:00 AM PDT
-12:00 PM PDT
What does a truly strong MBA application resume actually look like? In this session, we break down 3 real MBA resumes from successful applicants who got into top business schools. Using redacted before-and-after versions... 
Sep 1012:00 PM IST
-01:00 PM IST
Before you hit “Submit,” get an expert perspective on your MBA application. Our Test Drive Service (Comprehensive Application Review) provides an in-depth evaluation of your application, helping you identify gaps, strengthen your story, and more.
Sep 1003:00 PM PDT
-04:00 PM PDT
Inquire for a free profile evaluation and guarantee statement for possible admits and scholarships!
Sep 1108:30 AM EDT
-09:15 AM EDT
Get the inside scoop on what makes Emory’s Goizueta Business School great, learn how you can present a strong MBA application, and connect with an Admissions Director to get your questions answered.- Sep 16
12:00 PM PDT
-01:00 PM PDT
Grab your favorite beverage and spend time chatting with Melissa Rapp, Associate Dean of Graduate Admissions, and Brian Mitchell, Associate Dean of the Full-Time MBA Program. The topic for this Coffee Chat is Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
MBAGuide
Joined: 24 Jul 2019
Last visit: 08 Sep 2026
Posts: 2,551
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 29
Location: India
Concentration: Operations, Marketing
Schools: Insead Sept'18 (A$$) ISB '19 (A)
08 Sep 2026, 03:41
Kudos
Bookmarks
Most IT applicants don't initially know what B-schools and post-MBA business roles are looking for. Their world, day to day, is execution-heavy with specific deliverables, repetitive problems and troubleshooting what's already been designed. Rarely do they question why a system was built a certain way, what business logic sits underneath it, or who decided that logic in the first place.
Take someone maintaining SAP's inventory module for years.
They can be extraordinarily good at keeping the system running, and never once ask why that reorder point was set, what stockout risk or carrying cost it was balancing, or whether it still fits a business that's grown since. That is the gap between running the system and understanding why it exists.
Engineering rewards abstraction, hiding complexity behind clean interfaces so nobody has to think about what's underneath. It is a virtue in code, but it is a liability in a post MBA conversation, because business judgment requires you to go in the other direction, back to consequence.
Who does this decision actually affect? What does it cost? What breaks if we are wrong?
Companies hiring post-MBA aren't hunting for people who can operate an existing system well, but those who could have built it from scratch, think someone hands-on enough to run a process on a spreadsheet before it ever became a system, and sharp enough to know when and how to scale it into something more advanced.
The IT "tools and frameworks" bullet points
When a resume is heavy on tools, frameworks, certifications and platforms, I usually look for what is missing: evidence that the person understands the business behind the technical work.
Listing tools shows that you know your field and have kept up with it. But it doesn't tell an adcom whether you can make a business decision when the technically “best” answer is not the right one for the business.
For example, an enterprise software engineer may know every module of an ERP system inside out. But can they explain why the company chose that architecture over a cheaper option? What business problem was it solving? What did it cost when the first approach didn't work?
If they can't answer those questions, they may be technically strong, but they haven't yet shown a business mind. Adcoms can spot that difference very quickly.
The quintessential IT Goals Strategy
"I want to move into product/strategy/consulting"
This is the single most overused post-MBA goal in the IT applicant pool. People default to it because it's what they have seen others say.
Saying you want one of them, without being able to say what kind of problems you actually want to solve inside it, makes it very hard for an adcom to picture where you would add value to a recruiter after the MBA.
Most applicants haven't even looked into how different strategy roles/consulting firms actually hire, or realized that "product" isn't just building.
Someone still has to set the rules the product runs on, and that requires understanding the business processes underneath it.
Product can be a way to solve a problem or hit a business goal, but the foundational knowledge underneath it, the why, is what actually differentiates you. You don't want to be just another person who shipped the fastest solution. There's no story in that. You want to be someone who can speak intelligently about the most business focused and efficient way to do something, and why.
Would Zepto have bet its entire technical architecture on 10-minute delivery if the team hadnt understood that grocery shopping isn't planned the way electronics or fashion purchases are, it's reactive, triggered by "I need this right now"? Building a dark-store network and routing engine optimized for minutes, is a strange technical bet in isolation.
Would Flipkart have invested in building cash-on-delivery infrastructure, an operationally expensive, technically painful thing to support at scale, with real fraud and reconciliation risk, if the team hadnt understood something specific about their actual customer in tier-3 and tier-4 India. It was a person who had never trusted a stranger with money before goods arrived, full stop.
Would Zerodha have become India's largest broker if they had not understood the entire discount-broking model only works if your cost-per-trade is near-zero, and every third-party platform they evaluated made that unit economics impossible.
Would UPI have scaled to the volumes it has if it had been built the way most countries build digital payments, as a closed system tied to a handful of large banks? Its architects deliberately built for interoperability across hundreds of banks and apps, at real technical complexity cost, because they understood something about India's fragmented banking landscape.
The builder vs. the operator
A builder asks why before asking how. An operator focuses on the how and executes it well. Both can be excellent at what they do. But B-schools are looking for the person who would have asked, “Why are we building it this way in the first place?”
And IT and technical careers often don't train you for it, not because engineers can't do it, but because they are rarely asked to.
Adcoms don't care nearly as much about what you did as they do about what you have to say about it. Most IT applicants simply haven't spent enough time asking themselves why they did what they did, what they would have done differently, and what they learned from it. That is the muscle they need to build.
Best wishes
Aanchal Sahni (INSEAD MBA alumna, former INSEAD MBA admissions interviewer)
Founder, MBAGuideConsulting
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aanchal-sahni-83b00819/ |WEBSITE: https://mbaguideconsulting.com/| Message(WA): +91 9971200927| email- [email protected]
Take someone maintaining SAP's inventory module for years.
They can be extraordinarily good at keeping the system running, and never once ask why that reorder point was set, what stockout risk or carrying cost it was balancing, or whether it still fits a business that's grown since. That is the gap between running the system and understanding why it exists.
Engineering rewards abstraction, hiding complexity behind clean interfaces so nobody has to think about what's underneath. It is a virtue in code, but it is a liability in a post MBA conversation, because business judgment requires you to go in the other direction, back to consequence.
Who does this decision actually affect? What does it cost? What breaks if we are wrong?
Companies hiring post-MBA aren't hunting for people who can operate an existing system well, but those who could have built it from scratch, think someone hands-on enough to run a process on a spreadsheet before it ever became a system, and sharp enough to know when and how to scale it into something more advanced.
The IT "tools and frameworks" bullet points
When a resume is heavy on tools, frameworks, certifications and platforms, I usually look for what is missing: evidence that the person understands the business behind the technical work.
Listing tools shows that you know your field and have kept up with it. But it doesn't tell an adcom whether you can make a business decision when the technically “best” answer is not the right one for the business.
For example, an enterprise software engineer may know every module of an ERP system inside out. But can they explain why the company chose that architecture over a cheaper option? What business problem was it solving? What did it cost when the first approach didn't work?
If they can't answer those questions, they may be technically strong, but they haven't yet shown a business mind. Adcoms can spot that difference very quickly.
The quintessential IT Goals Strategy
"I want to move into product/strategy/consulting"
This is the single most overused post-MBA goal in the IT applicant pool. People default to it because it's what they have seen others say.
Saying you want one of them, without being able to say what kind of problems you actually want to solve inside it, makes it very hard for an adcom to picture where you would add value to a recruiter after the MBA.
Most applicants haven't even looked into how different strategy roles/consulting firms actually hire, or realized that "product" isn't just building.
Someone still has to set the rules the product runs on, and that requires understanding the business processes underneath it.
Product can be a way to solve a problem or hit a business goal, but the foundational knowledge underneath it, the why, is what actually differentiates you. You don't want to be just another person who shipped the fastest solution. There's no story in that. You want to be someone who can speak intelligently about the most business focused and efficient way to do something, and why.
Would Zepto have bet its entire technical architecture on 10-minute delivery if the team hadnt understood that grocery shopping isn't planned the way electronics or fashion purchases are, it's reactive, triggered by "I need this right now"? Building a dark-store network and routing engine optimized for minutes, is a strange technical bet in isolation.
Would Flipkart have invested in building cash-on-delivery infrastructure, an operationally expensive, technically painful thing to support at scale, with real fraud and reconciliation risk, if the team hadnt understood something specific about their actual customer in tier-3 and tier-4 India. It was a person who had never trusted a stranger with money before goods arrived, full stop.
Would Zerodha have become India's largest broker if they had not understood the entire discount-broking model only works if your cost-per-trade is near-zero, and every third-party platform they evaluated made that unit economics impossible.
Would UPI have scaled to the volumes it has if it had been built the way most countries build digital payments, as a closed system tied to a handful of large banks? Its architects deliberately built for interoperability across hundreds of banks and apps, at real technical complexity cost, because they understood something about India's fragmented banking landscape.
The builder vs. the operator
A builder asks why before asking how. An operator focuses on the how and executes it well. Both can be excellent at what they do. But B-schools are looking for the person who would have asked, “Why are we building it this way in the first place?”
And IT and technical careers often don't train you for it, not because engineers can't do it, but because they are rarely asked to.
Adcoms don't care nearly as much about what you did as they do about what you have to say about it. Most IT applicants simply haven't spent enough time asking themselves why they did what they did, what they would have done differently, and what they learned from it. That is the muscle they need to build.
Best wishes
Aanchal Sahni (INSEAD MBA alumna, former INSEAD MBA admissions interviewer)
Founder, MBAGuideConsulting
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aanchal-sahni-83b00819/ |WEBSITE: https://mbaguideconsulting.com/| Message(WA): +91 9971200927| email- [email protected]
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