There is always a risk of turning your MBA Application resume, essays, and interview answers into a technical narrative. When the interviewer is from your industry, take the risk. For anyone else, your depth and tendency to go technical should be curbed. But even with such warning, there are scenarios where specific narratives and examples work over generic boilerplate answers or entries.
When Specific Matters?
Essays
One challenge for consultants like me is switching the editing to include specifics and to include generic lines to move the narrative forward. The transitions need not all be generic cliches. The best essays put forward a vision to move the essay to the larger picture of why the candidate is taking all the pain (GMAT/GRE, Essay Writing, Recommendation Letter, and Interview Preparation) in addition to losing 2 years and pursuing an MBA.
If you are in your early 30s or late 20s, you need even more specific narratives.
It is the tradeoff – the MBA vs. No MBA career that needs a specific narrative.
What should you assume about the admissions committee?
For the narratives about working in large technology companies and in companies with rigid promotional paths, you don’t need a paragraph to explain why an MBA is essential now. Even a simple line mentioning the years to reach a VP role is sufficient to show that perhaps a consulting or a career in a more dynamic organizational structure with an MBA is a better path for you. And to create this narrative, it can’t be just a logical exercise.
How do M7 Schools evaluate your narrative?
M7 Schools evaluate your narrative on two factors: reasoning based on research and your skills & history of achieving similar goals that you plan to pursue with an MBA.
I remember an acquaintance narrating all her plans to dominate a niche market in the educational space with her entrepreneurial venture that she planned to start in the next 3-5 years. She had all the sparks – the unique thinking, the disruptive mindset, and the sales strategy but she also cared about what the world thought of her. And there died her entrepreneurial ambitions. Now, I see her working as an obscure Employee in a reputed firm. Her entrepreneurial dreams remain a distant dream.
The admissions team is built of seasoned professionals and new blood – a mix that knows the reality of the current market and has seen the dreamy goals of 20-some professionals for more than 2 decades. Some think, “Maybe she can” or “Maybe he can do it this time.”
This “Maybe” is the answer you should force the admissions person to reach.
Even to switch the reviewer’s ‘view’ from ‘No’ to ‘Maybe’ or ‘No’ to ‘Certainly,’ you need specific goals.
For Goals Essay – specifics win.
For Interviews – Specific wins.
For Resume – Too Many Specifics is a disaster.
When Generic Matters?
I have extensive debates with my clients on the extent to which the details of a deal, technology or marketing concept need to be part of the resume entry. There are no rules to answer this question as the debate often settles organically when we find an entry that is the right mix of ‘all the right sounding metrics’ and something ‘specific’ that heats up the admission person’s brain. If the entry overheats their brain, they ignore it.
Never force the admissions person to ignore you. Let them hate you. At least you are interesting.
The generic lines are to force the admissions team to feel familiar with your story, industry, and function.
That familiarity influences processing fluency.
Processing fluency influences likeability.
There is an elaborate science behind brevity and when Marketing began to embrace tag lines.
I spend most of my time explaining this concept to functional superstars. And often, they listen, and they convert. But there are those who are stubborn. And it is for a valid reason.
Remove Specifics and You Lose your Identity
Ask any Technologist what they do, and they go into an elaborate narrative on the ‘cool’ technology or ‘framework’ they work with. Once, at a dinner party, a technologist was eager to show the code that controls power plants in Germany. I politely ignored the request. His assumption was that I worked in Technology a decade and a half ago, and therefore, I must still be interested in learning about the ‘Code.’ I am certainly grateful to see the final product and for the talented technologists who are passionate about doing the work. But just as you don’t care about Quantum Mechanics to understand how your power is still on, the admissions team doesn’t care about all ‘the specifics’ behind your work. It is cool only for a person in your industry.
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