Most of the business schools applicants usually spend months for preparing for GMAT but somehow they underestimate the importance of their resume which will also be attached to application form. There are two main reasons for that. First, they think that taking GMAT, writing an essay and passing interview is much more important and indicative for the admission commission. Second, almost everybody who applies for MBA already has a resume that was used in previous professional life and it always seems that it’s only necessary to update it a little bit with the latest professional achievements. Unfortunately, this underestimation of the CV importance often makes a crucial effect on application results. Thus, we would like to give you several pieces of advices on how to prepare the appropriate resume for a business school entrance.
8 secrets of effective resume
- Compose a completely new resume, just from scratch. In most cases resumes of applicants are composed just once when thy look for a job for the first time. And after that, they only add actual information about the latest places of the job, training, etc. But nothing stays the same, first of all, people change. In most cases if someone is asked to compose a resume from scratch after even a year or two since the first resume was written, the new one would be represented in completely different way. Obtaining business experience our skills of self-representation develop constantly. Applying for business school you should make use of all your background achieved till the moment of application.
- Concentrate on people management but not on affairs management. When you compose a resume to apply for a job you usually try to show what you made for the company, and you include data on sales, turnover, a number of contracts and deals concluded, but when you apply for MBA it is more important to show that you manage people successfully. You should better include information on how many people you led in certain projects, how you build interrelations in a department, how you organize business processes, etc.
- Give structured information on your actions and their results. You should not either mix this information or simply enumerate a number of actions and then a number of results. For example, if you write that you introduced new marketing program then tell at once that it resulted in 10% sales increase. Use phrases as “resulting in”, “leading to”, etc.
- Use concrete figures. Giving too much information without figures seems to be suspicious or even improbable to the commission. So try to give as much quantifiable data as possible. If it is not obvious how it can be calculated you may include calculation methods too.
- Follow your language. Don’t write too long or too complicated sentences and don’t use too much of conjunctions and prepositions. Prefer laconic, readable and understandable style of narration. Check attentively whether each sentence of your resume gives information to the point.
- Know the measure. Applying for business school it is important to show important facts both about your professional and personal achievements but it doesn’t mean that you should write an autobiography instead of the resume. Give information of lower importance in structured and very laconic form.
- Give context. If your company is not that widely famous as Apple or Coca-Cola then don’t forget to give contextual information on the place of your employment, such as industry, area, revenue, a number of employees, etc.
- Make sure your resume supports the rest of information you provide. Applying for business school, you submit a resume and application essay, you take GMAT and overcome an interview. Some of the schools may require something more. So be sure that your resume goes in full correspondence with all the information you provide and all the points of view you state.
In fine, we hope that this information will be useful for you as now you know all the important points of attention. We are always ready to provide you with free consultations on general preparation questions. In case if you need more profound help in applying for business school, find the appropriate service on mba-application-essay.com.