MBA Applicants in Finance, Consulting and Technology start essay writing with a resume full of high-impact entries with no stories to support them.
A better starting point for the first draft is a single key professional moment that defined your career.
In this MBA essay writing tip, I share an example from a PE Associate.
What is a Key Professional Moment
A key professional moment must capture your professional competency and also show why you are different from your peers.
It is not about the project, its complexity, or the frequency of your promotions.
The moment should clearly define why you are frequently chosen for a promotion.
Why the Moment Defines the Essay
For the crowded profiles, the McKinsey associate, or the New York banker, close to four hundred applicants share the same employer, similar responsibilities, and even the target post-MBA goals.
They are also building up the moments that claim their undeniable role in those high-impact achievements.
The moment that will define your essay will be around ‘the specific’ choices you made in those high-stakes decisions.
The two tests that define the Key Professional Moment
A Decision You Owned
You cannot quote decisions where you piggybacked into a decision made by your senior or finalized a decision made by a junior.
The decision must be unequivocally owned by you.
If the right answer was obvious and you simply executed it, the decision will not define you.
One litmus test of whether the decision was owned by you is the consequence of a bad decision.
Would you have been fired if the decision went sideways?
If the answer is yes, that is the defining professional moment from your life.
Such decisions are rarely arrived at with mild disagreement.
There are moments of disagreement with seniors or conflicts with clients.
The choice has to have put something at stake - a bonus, a client, a relationship, or your standing with a partner.
A trait the resume cannot show
Showing traits that the resume shows is expected, but such narratives alone won’t give you a win if you are from a competitive MBA applicant pool.
For a banker, the expected narrative is around analytical rigor.
Choose the moment that reveals a complementing trait, a motivation, or a way of thinking or reaching consensus; the resume cannot carry with the 1.5-line entry.
Build the IMPACT Table First
These are lists of 15-20 professional, social, and volunteering achievements that define an applicant.
One goal behind the exercise is to offer MBA applicants a comparative scale to measure achievements against each other.
The IMPACT table creation itself will force the applicants to think deeply about their personal brand.
Also, the applicant will not obsess over the perfect moment.
They will have 15-20 moments to choose from.
And these moments are derived from the IMPACT table.
I have seen applicants whose achievements that gave them the promotion rank behind a routine but career-defining achievement.
Once you have shortlisted 2-3 moments, write freely.
Start with a 2000-word draft around each moment.
Which one stands out for its unique take?
While you draft the 2000 words of free-flowing narrative around those 3 moments, do not worry about lessons learned.
You are collecting raw material and drafting raw emotions – to find a mix that defined you as a professional
The meaning from the moment comes later.
To illustrate, I am sharing one example – a draft essay of a PE Associate.
Note: The sample essay is shared to illustrate how to create a narrative around professional accomplishments.
Do not copy it.
They are shared only for educational purposes.
Case Study #1: Private Equity Associate
Due diligence skills or managing a portfolio company is the most repeated essay narrative in PE.
To stand out, you must find hidden leverage, contracts negotiated on handshakes, and other nuances only a professional in PE knows.
The lines should feel authentic.
Sample Essay – Due Diligence Details (PE Associate)
Three weeks into a due diligence work on a Texas HVAC roll-up, the contracts confirmed the effort that went behind the deal – five-year terms, a clean quality-of-earnings report, and an independent review that confirmed the seller’s numbers.
What bothered me was one billing detail
The revenue the model treated as contracted was mostly out-of-scope projects that were renewed by the relationship the seller had with one contractor.
On paper, the contracts were airtight, but the contributions of that one contractor covered half of the projected cash flow.
I raised the issue, and I was corrected that customers rarely switch brands after a brand acquisition.
I shared that every testimonial had Dave’s name and not the seller’s brand name. These were real testimonials the seller collected in a recording.
He was a minority shareholder.
The moment the company was acquired and Dave exits, the customers will search for new suppliers to service their HVAC. The seller was just a glorified contractor.
I asked my manager to make a reference call myself with current customers. This was not a practice associates made in my role.
It was a risk, because if the call came back with no red flags or I assumed the worst, the goodwill of our sellers and the customers would be affected.
I delicately covered three projects with the customer, and all of them hinted at exploratory calls to find new HVAC service providers once Dave, the 62-year-old founder of the sub-contracting company, exited.
The 25 calls that spread across three days were my sample size, but it unequivocally showed that my assumptions were right.
We had overvalued the target company based on a stable cash flow, which was at risk.
I built the counter-offer to cut the price.
Their banker called it an insult to a man who had built the business.
We nearly lost the deal twice over the next month.
In one call, Dave walked away.
The high-strung emotions flustered me initially, but I had done my research.
To sweeten the deal and recognize Dave’s role in the company’s valuation, we added a clause that gave him a higher earnout than the clean sale would have had.
I still see Dave in our quarterly investor meetings. He had exited from the day-to-day operations as we had anticipated.
Two years on, the acquisition is one of my strongest contributions..
