Importance Of An Mba Resume In A Business School Application
Your resume is the central component of your MBA application. It serves as an introductory document that brings together all the key information about your life, experiences, achievements, and skills. It serves two important purposes in the application process. First, it works as an initial screening tool. Before reading your short answers, essays, or any other application components, admissions committees will first review your resume. They want to see if your general background, profile, and achievements make your application worth considering.
Second, if your application proceeds to the interview stage, the resume you submitted serves as a guide for the interviewers. This is because a resume functions like the blueprint of any MBA grad school application, and grad school interview questions are typically based on the resume. Essentially, the resume content dictates the interview content, especially since a lot of MBA admissions interviews use the closed interview format. In this format, the interviewer only has access to your resume and does not see any other part of your application.
Now that you know what an MBA resume and how important it is in the MBA application process, lets dive into how exactly to format and complete it.
Are you getting ready for a grad school interview? Check out our expert responses to most commonly asked questions:
Additional Information And Achievements
This section is where you highlight your most significant extracurricular achievements. It should include a robust variety of activities that highlight the unique experiences you wish to convey to the admissions committee. Dont just add any and all extracurriculars focus on adding high-stake accomplishments that show your focus, ability to apply yourself, strong work ethic, leadership potential, and collaboration skills. Every point added here should be impressive and unique. These entries should also be verifiable and back up the contents of your personal statement, essays, and other components of your application.
These are some of the key significant achievements and experiences you can highlight in this section: business relevant certifications, high performing projects, associations/clubs with leadership roles, media pieces where you were positively featured, publications, awards, conferences where you presented, industry blogs/vlogs with a significant readership, languages and sports/hobby achievements or recognitions.
Here are a few examples for this section:
Invest In Your Extracurriculars Section
Your MBA resume should highlight personal achievements, extracurriculars, and volunteer work more than your standard resume. Why? Business schools are looking for active contributors to the community and this is a key place to set yourself apart. As my Fortuna colleague Heidi Hillis puts it in her article, Positioning Extracurriculars On Your MBA Application, What you do in your free time is as interesting and important to the admissions committee as what you do at work, because it sends a signal about the kind of student and alum youll be.
But it doesnt mean describing how you relax. Instead, consider how you can distinguish yourself and show that you work hard and achieve goals outside of the office or classroom.
BEFORE
- Vice President of Women in Business
AFTER
- Travel to 23 countries on three continents ran the New York Marathon
- Volunteer twice a month making meals at the local soup kitchen
- As Vice President of Women in Business, secured over $25K corporate sponsorship for funding events, scholarships, and investments for the largest student organization at the university
- 1st place winner at 3 hackathons from 2016-2017, totaling $15,000 in prizes
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Show Dont Tell Your Skills And Abilities
A reader will be deciding if what you are citing is true or just your opinion. Replace words like significant, excellent, improved, and successful with evidence to make your achievements fact-based and objective.
BEFORE
- Built strong relationships with clients due to excellent communication skills
- Demonstrated strong technical skills using VBA, SQL, Python
- Used Excel to improve internal processes
AFTER
- Presented to C-level client executives weekly on project status sole consultant invited to attend internal strategy development meeting with key client lead after presenting recommendations
- Managed an intern to develop a risk management data model valued at $50M using SQL and tracked key risk indicators
- Built model in Excel to track staff hours per project presented results to the department head, resulting in reallocation of personnel and cost savings of $30k/month.
Emphasize Your Leadership Skills
MBA programs look for students who have the potential to impact the business world through leadership and sound business practices. Use your resume to showcase qualities that demonstrate you can convince others to be a part of a project thatâs important to you. Be sure to show how your leadership benefited businesses that you worked for.
Related: 6 Key Leadership Skills: Definitions and Examples
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Mba Application Resume Objective
A career objective for MBA college admission provides a glimpse of your strengths, educational background, or work history. In addition, you can also write a clear career goal in your MBA application resume objective.
Resume Objective for MBA Admission Example:
Diligent undergraduate experienced and knowledgeable in marketing strategies, business models, and financial management. Seeking to enter MIT Sloans MBA program to gain more skills and knowledge to succeed as a marketing manager.
Importance Of Your Mba Resume
According to a survey conducted by the GMAC, your resume is given 15% weightage as an admission criterion in the decision-making process for full-time MBA programs. The weightage and importance of the resume increase to 24% for executive MBA programs. Thus, it suffices to say that your resume is an essential part of your MBA application.
The importance of your MBA resume is not only limited to the application process but is also beneficial during research & outreach. E.g. to reach out to admission officials and alumni of your target MBA programs. Having a strong, crisp and easy to read resume is very beneficial for this purpose as well.
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What If You Dont Have Results
Of course, many of the positions held by MBA candidates are support roles, where you are subordinate to a more senior member of the firm. Rather than try to take sole credit for accomplishments that were really the result of joint effort, try to demonstrate your success and value within the team, and how that value was rewarded by your employer. For example:
- List an assignment that required lots of contact with a clients senior executives
- Or a time you received a highly selective award
- Early promotions
How To Make Your Work Experience Stand Out
To get into a competitive MBA program, you need to show that you mean business.
The easiest way to show this: your work experience.
Sure, your core skills are important too, but professional experience always comes out on top. Start with your most recent/current job, and then follow it with your previous job, and so on. Heres the general structure of your work experience section:
Revamped UX for the website, which boosted revenue by 17%
So, whats the difference between the two?
The second statement goes into more depth about how your responsibilities were something that helped the company. Doing this allows your resume to stand out and reveals the value you bring.
Remember, you need to keep reminding the reader that you are the best choice, compared with other applicants with the same work duties.
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Best Resume Format For Mba Applications
Like a typical resume for job applications, your MBA application resume should be set to a pages length to ensure that you have down only the most relevant information for the admission board.
Create an MBA resume that is easy to read by setting the font size between 10-12 pt with a legible font style, such as Helvetica or Arial.
Finally, save the resume for your MBA application as a PDF or Word file.
Use Your Professional Profile To Highlight Your Value
Admissions officers are looking for more than evidence of your ability to complete certain tasks. MBA programs are looking for people who can lead, think critically and innovate and those with potential to change the world through business. Programs also want students who bring value to the school, as MBA programs are great opportunities for networking and building connections. Use your professional profile to highlight the attributes you can bring to the school, through your business, volunteer and educational experience.
Example #1
Good
Entrepreneur of five years, with experience identifying customer problems and bringing innovative solutions to market. Used online marketing techniques to grow sales by 10% each year. Eager to advance leadership and management skills while sharing insight into eCommerce and building businesses.
Five years of experience selling products online through my own business. Hoping to learn about leading teams.
Example #2
Good
Recent graduate of Anytown University with a 3.8 GPA. Two years of freelance experience as a financial advisor, working with global clients. Founded a non-profit that provides mentorship and financial advice to high school students in low-income neighborhoods who want to start their own business and worked with a team to expand the program to multiple cities.
Recent graduate with experience as a freelancer. Have done volunteer work with underprivileged youth.
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Get Specific About Your Contribution With Project Examples
This is about being as precise as you can. Consider using a selected projects include: sub-header. Include any team leadership on a project basis. Remember, its better to have two awesome bullets than six boring ones, so its fine to omit parts of your day-to-day job. Dont forget tip #2 .
BEFORE
- Developed and maintained effective pricing analysis data models
- Developed several high-value data visualizations and Excel models for C-suite clients to help them make evidence-based decisions
AFTER
- Led development team of five to design a geospatial data-driven visual dashboard for First National Bank, increasing visibility to all 600+ branch offices across the globe by at least 80%.
Include Appropriate Skills And Academic Honors
In addition to work experience, be sure to highlight any relevant awards or acquired skills that will signal to admissions directors that you will excel in a particular MBA program. For example, be sure to emphasize your initiative, motivation, competitive drive, and work ethic , all of which will demonstrate that you can handle the rigorous curriculum of the MBA program and that your performance will reflect well on the university.
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Leadership And Other Involvement
Finally, this last section is the place you can detail any other leadership bona fides, extracurricular involvement, volunteer experience, and other personal accomplishments that might distinguish you from all the other MBA candidates.
When choosing these bullets, prioritize the ones with the greatest impact: where you led teams at your local charity, implemented a change at your alma mater, spearheaded the fundraising committee for your high school’s 5th-year reunion, and raised several hundred thousand dollars, etc. As with the rest of the resume, your goal is to depict leadership potential, the ability to drive results, and a knack for collaboration.
Finally, select those bullets that no other candidates could possibly list on their resume: the book you wrote with your State Senator, the community garden you helped plant whose proceeds went to benefit HIV research, the Six Sigma Black Belt certification you earned in your spare time. Languages, sports, and hobbies make great bullets here.
Here’s how your section might look:
See our MBA resume samples below for instances of well-done leadership bullets. You’ll have to give some thought to which bullets you should or shouldn’t include.
Use An Mba Resume Template
Word is great for a number of purposes, but as a resume builder is not one of them.
Imagine this: you create the perfect resume, make one change, and then the whole thing falls apart.
In fact, youll likely find yourself playing around with the formatting for longer than you take to write the contents.
To make your life easier, use an MBA resume template.
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This Mba Resume Guide Will Teach You
- What are the most important sections to have in an MBA resume
- MBA resume examples and structure to grab the admission officers attention
- How to feature your educational background in an appealing manner
- Why experience and skills could be the missing piece in most MBA resumes today
- What additional sections could bring more value to your application
Mba Resume Experience Examples
WRONG
A great way to convey your achievements in bullet points is to follow the S.T.A.R method, which commission officers are familiar with.
For each sentence you write, follow this formula:
+ + +
Here’s how it goes:
The first bullet point under each work experience must be the most important.
Why?
Simply because adcoms usually skim through information looking for something worth knowing. They won’t read every single word in a resume unless there’s something that grabs their interest.
That’s why you must highlight your leadership and interpersonal skills in the first bullet point for each job you had in the past.
Next:
You need to quantify your achievements to make your claims more powerful.
Most of the time, it’s hard to tell how qualified an applicant is based on words. Anyone can claim to be great at management, marketing, finance, or business development.
But
Only the ones that can prove it will reap the benefits.
Therefore, you must strengthen your claims by including solid numbers and precise data.
Let’s make those changes now!
Proof-read everything you wrote and look for words or sentences that need refining.
Also:
Make sure to capitalize the first word in each sentence as well as company or product names. And do not put a period at the end.
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What Isn’t An Mba Resume
Now, before we dive into our tips and tricks, it’s important to note that the business school resume is categorically different than other resumes you might have previously created, whether for internships, job applications, or other graduate school programs.
Many prospective MBAs focus on other parts of the business school application, like the GMAT/GRE, or their essays, and think they can copy and paste the resume they have on file, or the one they recently sent to a recruiter. This, however, won’t work.
An MBA application resume is a different animal. Its job is not to highlight industry knowledge, demonstrate skill proficiency, or even showcase professional experience. Instead, the MBA resume must be singly focused on illuminating your business credentials, teamwork skills, and potential as a future leader. Every bullet on your resume must tell the admissions committee: “This is a stellar MBA applicant who will shine in the future, and ultimately make your program look fantastic as a distinguished alum.”
One last word here. When you’re applying for jobs, generally speaking, you’re competing with people whose experience and professional background match your own, so you’re trying to stand out in a crowd of like applicants. This is why a professional resume can be easier to craft.
With that all covered, let’s dive into the resume itself.
What If You Dont Have Work Experience
Maybe youre a recent university graduate with no work experience?
Or maybe, you have a wealth of experience, but none relating to your MBA?
Whichever the reason, dont worry!
The thing that really matters here is your portfolio.
If you already have some portfolio pieces, feel free to upload them and link to your resume .
However, dont worry if you dont, you can act now.
Here are several ways you can get a portfolio :
- Work on some freelance gigs.
- Offer your business knowledge to your friends & acquaintances.
- If the above doesnt work, you can create your own mock-ups! Basically, anything that shows your skills and knowledge.
If youre a recent graduate, you might want to check out our guide on how to make a student resume!
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Thing : Use Concrete Examples
While youre at it, be specific. Include numbers and figures whenever possible. Its much more persuasive to say that you saved your company $100 million in a given quarter, not just that you performed effective cost analysis. Drop in sales figures and operating budgets when you can, and include the size of your team or your companys client base.
If you were in charge of hiring people in your department, how many people did you interview? How many office branches did you visit? How many countries did you travel to? Using specific dates and figures is more effective that simply saying you traveled abroad for business.
Mba Resume Hobbies & Interests Section
The admission committee love to get a glimpse of what you like to do outside of your professional life, as it reflects your personality in your MBA application resume.
With CakeResume, you can easily create an MBA application resume online, free download your resume in PDF format, and utilize ATS-compliant templates to create a resume. Land your dream job, create your resume for business school now!
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What Should An Mba Resume Look Like
First and foremost, let’s talk about how an MBA resume should look. It sounds small, but you don’t want to put a massive amount of effort into your application, only to have your resume be formatted oddly, with odd font size and improperly laid out sections.
Here are 4 tips for nailing the perfect MBA resume format:
1. Length
Get your MBA resume onto a single page pure and simple. If you submit a three-page resume, or worse, a short novel, your application will go to the bottom of the admissions pile.
2. Font and Spacing
Don’t get fancy go with the classics: Calibri, Arial, or Garamond. Personally, we recommend Times New Roman. 11 to 12 point font is the go-to, with 14 for the headings. Keep the margins at one inch.
These are small things but remember: admissions committees will read thousands of applications, and you don’t want them tripping up on your resume because of small formatting issues.
3. Color
Black and white. Colors will distract from the entire point of the resume: communicating who you are as a professional and MBA candidate.
4. File Type
Most schools’ application portals will specify the file format for your resume, but generally speaking, you’ll be submitting a PDF. It’s clean, clear, and looks professional.
Fantastic now you have an idea of what your resume should look like! If you’ve done everything right, it should look similar to this: