Atul Jose (MBA Admissions Consultant, F1GMAT): The answer is – it depends.
If you are in a Finance role where your investment decisions in a Merger or bailing out a loss-making entity or helping an early-stage company, all could have a secondary IMPACT on the customers of these companies. The problem is that you rarely see the return on investment from Venture Capital or even a Merger in a 2-3 year period. By that time, you might have exited the company. The only exception is with Private Equity, where the portfolio company might be in trouble. And your fund infusion and intervention might have an immediate IMPACT.
The same challenge exists for Management Consultants where the recommendations might not be fully incorporated, or the implementation phase typically take 1-2 years, and the IMPACT on the beneficiary and the market would take another 1-2 years. The only exception here is if you have worked in Digitization or the Pharma industry during COVID, where vaccine development or integrating digital tools and processes immediately impacted retaining customers.
For Technologists or anyone in Product Development or Management, the solutions might be for an existing customer. In that case, improving workflow, impacting customer experience, or solving a particular problem that was popularized in the media might have much better recall.
This is even more challenging for those deployed in military bases. Or those working in the government. The projects or posturing might be strategic and take decades to see any results. In that case, secondary IMPACT cannot be captured.
Many times, I have seen applicants obsess about the IMPACT on the team and the company, that they miss the larger picture of customers, markets, and global reach.
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