My uncle shared a story about a watchman who was overseeing a property, and there was a huge plumbing issue. In an hour, the apartments started flooding. In another hour, the hallways began flooding. Finally, when the Watchman reached out to the maintenance engineer, he asked, “Why didn’t you report the flooding earlier?” And the response was, “My job is to watch who enters and leaves the property and not to report on the maintenance inside the property.”
This is how most applicants approach their MBA resume. They become so focused on their function that they miss why the function exists.
The Marketing, Finance, Consulting, Technology, and Strategy functions exist to serve the customer with your best product or service. Everything else is to support the objective.
Without the customer and the company offering value, there is no Business.
The disconnect is with two kinds of profiles.
1) B2B: if you were working in consulting for streamlining operations or in a Technology company building solutions to facilitate the operations, it is all about focusing on the infrastructure and processes of the company. Why the infrastructure exists should be answered in at least one of your resume entries. When you do that, the IMPACT can be captured in two contexts. One on the Business customer. And second on your end customer.
If you are primarily in a B2B role with limited opportunity to be in a client-facing role or gain a perspective about the customer, build your extra-curricular and volunteering experience so that you know the challenges of offering solutions directly to the customer. This perspective is critical if your long-term goal is to be an Entrepreneur.
2) Technical Role: Technical Role is not necessarily about Technology. In Finance, it is the accounting function that can be considered Technical. There are many niche roles in Operations, Consulting, and even Strategy where the role has a limited need to understand how the solution affects the end customer.
When I ask these questions during MBA Resume Editing Service, clients often think about their IMPACT for the first time.
Don’t refurbish technical IMPACT, deal size, or huge revenue numbers to impress the admissions team.
Show what you did and the IMPACT you had on the end customer. Then, you will know that you have captured a business impact from your contributions.
