August Academy's MBA Admissions Blog

Guru Talk/Application Tips: How do you write an impactful resume for business school?

-written by GMAT club user rhyme (http://gmatclub.com/forum/members/member-17887.html) in response to a question posted on http://gmatclub.com/forum/resume-for-mba-admissions-35450.html#p1548460.

Here is my advice.

Remember a few things.

1) Your objective here is not to get a job, its to get into graduate school.

2) With that in mind, write more about your leadership and less about your day to day tactical responsibilities.

3) Remember that the adcom may not be in your field, so telling him/her that you developed a “bifurcated distilling multi optional drill bit” probably won’t mean a thing.  Similarly, they are going to care less if you have experience with “C++/Java/COBOL/PASCAL” whatever, again, because it means little to them other than “It’s a programming language”.  Your job title would make it clear you are a developer anyway.  Specific skills in this regard aren’t going to win you jack.

Focus less on industry terminology and more on selling yourself.

For example, lets say you are in the car manufacturing industry, if an interviewer asked you about your role you might say “I developed Ford’s double intake valve for us in the RJ392 engine, increasing airflow and fluid viscosity by 22%.” Great for the interviewer who knows about that. Bad for the adcom. If someone you never met asked you what you did for Ford, you’d reply: “I developed a modifcation for the engine you probably have in your focus. It reduces the reaction time between you push the pedal and the car snaps forward. Makes it snappier.” Good. You are almost there. Now, take that and make it a real improvement as if you wanted to impress. “Developed new engine technology increasing vehicle responsiveness by roughly 22%. My design is now part of every Ford Focus made.”

Take the first statement:
“I developed Ford’s double intake valve for us in the RJ392 engine, increasing airflow and fluid viscosity by 22%.”

And the last:
“Developed new engine technology increasing vehicle responsiveness by roughly 22%. My design is now part of every Ford Focus made.”

Same thing right? But what packs more punch?

Lets do the same for computer science for, I don’t know, Geico.

“Utilized .NET 2.0 framework to develop new ASP.NET driven customer focused website on a SQL Server 2000 backend.”

Yawn.

What do you do for Geico again?

“I developed a new website for their customers to use.”

Great, now tell me again what you do for Geico, but impress me.

“Developed new website for global rollout of claims processing at Geico. The website now recieves over a half million visitors a year, is utilized by a staff of over 2,000 global claims officers, and process up to $100M in claims a year. This reduced claim turnaround time from an average of 14 days to 3.”

Get it yet?

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