Don’t get intimidated by the word ‘achievement.’ The school is not just targeting Type A candidates. They are more interested in candidates who have a perspective about their achievement in the grand scheme of things.
Here are five themes that you should capture in your professional achievement essay:
1) Income Earned
This can be in the form of profit, revenue (gross or net), profit per employee, or other long-term impacts of your contribution. The only thing that you have to keep in mind is the veracity of the data. Use a conservative estimate if you have information about the project’s revenue but limited information about the dollar value of your contribution.
2) Time Saved
Any contribution where your speed of execution was commended by the client or your supervisor is worth highlighting in your professional achievement essay. This can be from efficient scheduling, innovative solutions, or leadership that motivates the team to push beyond what is expected of them.
3) Money Saved
Money saved is a theme used by candidates when they quote an innovative solution as their biggest achievement. One of our clients used part of the proceeds of the patent he sold to join a premier MBA program. But more importantly, he was able to articulate the investment required by the purchasing company had they developed the solution from scratch – a cost that was 14x times higher than the cost of the patent.
4) Brand Value
For candidates from Marketing, enhancing brand value is a commonly cited achievement. Marketers will have a better sense of how the campaign translated to sales, but more importantly, they should be able to articulate how fast and wide the messages reached Social Media and attracted visits to the client’s website/app. Here accurate numbers do matter.
5) Scale of the responsibility
Applicants should be able to demonstrate the scale of the responsibility by quoting the budget, size of the client company (revenue, profit, number of employees), size of the project (team size, size of the account,), or the reach of their products/service/campaign. If you have experience managing a team of more than 10, then strategically use the team management narrative in one of the essays. If the client has shared an appreciation letter and your supervisor has forwarded it through email, quote a few lines from the letter and request your supervisor to validate this claim in the recommendation letter.
In your resume, you must support the scale of your achievement by mentioning awards won, interviews published in leading newspapers/magazines, patents under your name, scientific publications, talks in popular media, or other publicly verifiable information. But be careful not to mention publications that are known to accept sponsored posts. I remember a conversation with a client who cited a “Published article in a leading media company” as a professional achievement to support his thought leadership branding. When I questioned whether it was a sponsored post, he was quite taken aback. You must assume that the admissions team is well aware of the modern digital media landscape.
There is nothing more frustrating than someone listing achievements without backing them up with recommendation letters or credible public data,
I hope you got value from my advice. For help with narratives, essay editing, and essay review, reach out to me, Atul Jose, or you can Download F1GMAT’s Winning MBA Essay Guide from where I have captured in detail on how to create narratives with 100+ sample essays as inspiration to guide you with the writing process.
