What is an MBA Admissions Resume and how is it different from a regular resume?

Many business schools require a resume as part of the applicant package. Fair enough. It’s a professional school and they want to see your professional file. But in fact, MBA admissions resumes make subtly different demands and it’s crucial to know what those are (see below).

However, of course, a lot is also identical in a normal resume and an MBA admissions resume, so you should start by getting your resume as good as possible based on conventional requirements. There are thousands of guides for this, many free on the Web. I won’t dwell on the principles here, but be sure to take note of at least these basic points.

An abstract should:

* Be in reverse chronological order, education last

* Contain strict clauses rather than complete sentences, and do not use the first person singular

* Startup items with verbs: “Managed on the team of…”; “Priority assigned to…”; and so

* Contain evidence, in particular quantitative amounts of budget managed or people supervised, etc.

* Not contain obvious data of age, sex, race or other similar biographical data. (More latitude allowed in Europe)

* Be easy on the eye (text in a readable point size; layout not too dense)

* Be absolutely, completely bug free

Those are the basics. And this is also the first base for Adcom. They want to see that you can do this common business communication task effectively.

Once you have that, then it’s time to tailor it to the needs of MBA admissions in particular. Good resume builders will always show you as much relevant experience as possible for the job you are applying for. This is also true for an MBA admissions resume, only doubly so, because doing an MBA heavily implies that you will quickly transition or accelerate along a management path. Applies to a jump in the race.

The mistake most of my clients make in their first draft is to proudly present their past experiences and achievements, which are very often technical or specific to the field they are leaving. Success is always good, but MBA Adcoms don’t really care if you cracked a complex software puzzle, isolated a biological compound, or developed prefabricated housing units. What matters to them is whether you will be a good manager or leader, that is, the part of management that was there (or has implicit potential) in what you did.

So that’s where you need to focus: the management, leadership, organization (teamwork), or innovation implications of your past experience. Don’t say: “I developed the molecular compound BN6R in 3 months using analysis software ‘BitPro’.” Say, “You were part of the team that developed a unique molecular compound; led the Board presentation; liaised with company public relations on the media announcement.” And so.

The other key part of making your resume an MBA admissions resume is working carefully with the knowledge that, unlike a typical employer, Adcom has several overlapping sources of information about you, including all the data from your file. So you want to augment that instead of just repeating it, to get your file data, resume, and try to elegantly fit together instead of just overlapping.