QUESTION: DESCRIBE YOUR WORK EXPERIENCE
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
This question is, of course, intended to elicit what you have done over the course of your career, and what impact you have had. It is also designed to give you an opportunity to show what you have learned about yourself and your abilities.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
Most applicants simply list what they have done in the past without showing what has driven their career choices and changes. The result is a list in which the elements appear nearly unrelated to one another.
A BETTER APPROACH
Look at our discussion of the “job description” essay. Then think in terms of telling stories rather than simply listing events dryly. A good story has conflict; that is, it has obstacles placed in the way of the hero. The hero may be unable to overcome each obstacle, but he tries hard and is unwilling to give up.
One possible approach is to find a theme that unites the elements of your job history. For instance, you show how you responded to challenges that were initially daunting. You tried hard and learned how to do what was required. As you learned better how to do the job, you started to take more initiative. In fact, once you mastered your initial responsibilities, you understood them in a broader context. Having done so, you moved up to the next level of responsibility—or you are now at the point of needing further scope for your talents but cannot move up without an MBA or years of experience on the job.
The telling of your career story should focus on where you have come from and where you are now headed. If you have changed your direction, explain what happened to change your direction. If you have had your decisions reaffirmed by experience, describe them and how they convinced you that you were on the right track.
This essay is closely related to the “your career and the reasons for getting an MBA” essay.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
Telling stories that focus on obstacles and the attempt to overcome them makes this essay interesting to read. Focusing on your personal development in response to challenges is well aimed for an audience of educators, who are preconditioned to appreciate your developmental capabilities.
This approach also sets up your need for an MBA. You have been overcoming obstacles by learning how to perform new jobs, and you have acquired new skills and knowledge; now you need to take another step up.
QUESTION: DESCRIBE YOUR CURRENT JOB
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
This question may not help schools assess the candidacies of, for example, research associates from McKinsey because the admissions committee already knows what the typical McKinsey RA does. For people in less familiar positions, however, this question enables a much clearer understanding of an applicant’s background.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
Most applicants simply list a few of the elements of their formal job descriptions or just list their job titles. If you were to say simply that you were a marketing associate for a computer firm, an admissions committee would know almost nothing about your responsibilities. Do you provide field support? Do you do online research only? Do you do competitor analysis? Do you work with the research and development staffs in the development of more user-friendly products? Do you analyze the productivity of different advertising media or promotional campaigns? What do you do?
A BETTER APPROACH
There are usually numerous elements to a given job. You must figure out and list the many things you do. Next, you must determine which are the most significant parts of your job and which are most consistent with the position you are attempting to communicate, and then characterize them as favorably as possible. The following should help you with this process.
1. Is your job important? Most people would say so only if they are egotists or are making a lot of money and enjoying a very impressive title (Senior Executive Vice President for Marketing and Strategy, perhaps).
Assuming you are not in this situation, does this mean your job is unimportant and you will have to be apologizing for it? No, of course not. A job is of real importance under a number of different circumstances. In particular, work gains significance whenever two things are true about it: (1) the degree of uncertainty is high, and (2) the potential impact on the firm’s success is great. In other words, is there a fair likelihood that an average- quality performer in your job would make a hash of things? If so, would that really affect your firm’s performance, or that of one of its components? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then your job is of real importance.
2. What is the nature of your work? There are many different types of work. A market researcher is generally doing analytical work. A brand manager is likely to be doing a combination of analytical work and influence work insofar as she must analyze the factors for the brand’s relative success or failure in different market and competitive conditions in her country, and then try to influence the manufacturing, packaging, or whatever department to take the action she wants in order to address these factors. She will typically have no power over these departments and will have to rely on her influence skills (personality, reasoning, expertise, etc.) instead. A restaurant manager will probably be most concerned with managing people, whereas a technical manager may be most concerned with the management of physical processes.
Many other aspects of your work can also be characterized in readily understandable ways. Is your job like being in the police: crushing boredom interspersed with brief moments of sheer terror? Are you expected to perform at a steady pace to a predictable schedule or do you work like a tax accountant, 60 percent of whose work may take place in three months of the year? Are you the steadying hand for a bunch of youngsters? Are you a creative type who will respond flexibly to each new situation rather than simply refer to the corporate manual?
3. What must you do to perform successfully? In other words, what challenges do you face? For example, if you are in sales support, one of your biggest headaches might be to get the junior people in marketing—who report directly to the regional marketing manager, and report on only a dotted-line basis to the regional sales manager—to provide the current competitor analysis material to the sales department. This can be characterized as a liaison role. Or, if the relationship is particularly poor, you might describe your role as conflict resolution—particularly in light of
the fact that sales and marketing often have an antagonistic relationship.
Perhaps your greatest challenges are satisfying two different bosses with two completely different agendas. If you are in a matrix structure, reporting to the regional manager and an engineering director, you can expect to be unable to please either one. The regional manager is probably concerned with making money today, and wants everyone to work as a team without regard to functional specialties. The engineering boss, on the other hand, wants her people to maintain their specialized skills and the prestige of the engineering department. Working on cross-functional teams without taking time out for updating technical skills may strike the former as standard practice and the latter as anathema. Performing your job well may require balancing these conflicting desires.
A number of other circumstances can lend importance to a job. The more senior the person you report to is, the more important a job will look.
Similarly, the fate of prior occupants of your job may be relevant. If the last two occupants of your job were fired, say so. This will make your performance look all the more impressive. If the last occupants were promoted high in the organization, the job will appear to be one given to high- fliers, thereby increasing its significance.
Have your recommenders discuss these points, too.
4. Do you supervise anyone? How many people, of what type, are under your supervision? What does this supervision consist of? For example, are you in charge of direct marketing activities, necessitating that you monitor the phone calls of your direct reports and also analyze their performance versus budget and various economic and industry factors?
5. Do you have control of a budget? If so, what is the amount you control, and what amount do you influence?
6. What results have you achieved? Results can be looked at from many different perspectives. From a strategic perspective, what have you achieved regarding the market, customers, and competitors? From a financial perspective, what have you done regarding costs, revenues, and profits (not to mention assets employed, etc.)? From an operational perspective, what have you done regarding productivity of your unit, of your direct reports, or of yourself; what have you done regarding the percentage of items rejected, bids that fail, and so on? Similarly, from an organizational perspective, have you taken such steps as altering the formal organization or introducing new integration or coordination mechanisms? Provide numbers whenever possible to buttress your claims.
7. How has your career evolved? Did you have a career plan in place before graduating from college or university or soon thereafter? If so, did you pursue it wholeheartedly? Did it include a focus on developing your skills and responsibilities? What, if anything, has altered your original plan?
What was your reaction to events that altered or affirmed this plan? When dealing with the development of your job with a given employer, be sure to note the employer’s reasons for promoting, transferring, rewarding, or praising you as well as the fact of these things.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
It is important to take this question very seriously. The answers will provide you with much of the ammunition you will use in responding to other questions. Your current job is of inherent interest to business schools. They will always want to know what you are doing, and with what success, because that suggests a great deal about your talents and interests, the way your employer views your talents and attitude, and why you might want an MBA.
Taking a broad view of the job description enables you to put the best light on your responsibilities and performance. It also allows you to build the basis for later essays, where you will be able to save space by referring to this write-up rather than listing the same things when space is at a premium.
QUESTION: IN WHAT OTHER WAY WILL YOU PURSUE YOUR DEVELOPMENT IF OUR SCHOOL REJECTS YOU?
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
This question helps schools determine two things about you: first, how carefully you have planned for your future, and second, how determined you are to succeed.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
The typical applicant notes that he will reapply next year if school X turns him down this year.
A BETTER APPROACH
The starting point is to state what your goals are and what you lack in order to meet them. (For a full discussion of this, refer to the “why have you applied to the other schools you have” analysis.) This will help to demonstrate that you have given serious thought to your future career.
Your needs can probably be met, at least to a reasonable degree, by another MBA program. You should thus almost certainly note that you are applying to other schools.
You should also consider whether some part-time educational programs would meet at least some of your needs. A local school’s offering of introductory marketing courses may not suffice to make you into a crack consumer marketer, but will almost certainly be better than nothing.
Another possibility may be training programs that your company offers. Or you could shift jobs (either within your company or by switching companies) in order to learn about a different function or even a different industry. As you will recall from our discussion of why to get an MBA, further job experience is not likely to provide you with the conceptual understanding that is part and parcel of an MBA. Companies seldom feature lectures on quantitative methods for managers or applications of the capital asset pricing model. MBA programs are set up to increase dramatically your intellectual capital, whereas companies are set up to make money, preferably sooner rather than later. A new position or company is not likely to provide you with all that you hope to get from an MBA program, but something is better than nothing.
The last option is self-study. You can always read the interesting popular books in a given field or, better yet, the textbooks used at business schools. This is a difficult way to learn, however, and it is unlikely that you will be able to learn advanced quantitative methods in this fashion.
The conclusion is always that you would prefer to get an MBA, but you will do whatever you can to gain as much knowledge as possible.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
This approach shows that you have considered your future with care. It also shows that you are hungry for improvement in your knowledge and skills, and that you are determined to succeed and action-oriented. If going to school X will not work, you will go to school Y. If you cannot go to a top school, you will continue learning on this or another job. The picture you convey is therefore one of a person striving to reach his or her potential.
Remember that you are applying to an educational institution, so showing that you are hungry for knowledge and determined to improve yourself by acquiring it is a “can’t miss” proposition.
QUESTION: WHAT ONE CHANGE WOULD YOU MAKE IN YOUR CURRENT JOB (AND HOW WOULD YOU IMPLEMENT THIS CHANGE)?
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
This question is designed to reveal how savvy you are about organizational matters and how analytical you are about your company’s operating and strategic needs.
You may be too junior to have run a department or a company, but that should not stop you from thinking about its operations and environment.
How much perspective do you have on these things? Can you write a persuasive analytical piece showing that you have been able to step back from your own tasks to take a more senior manager’s view? If not—if you can see only your own job’s details—you are missing a chance to show that you are, in fact, senior management material.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
Most applicants fail to define what this question is really asking. The question itself is open to several interpretations. For example, does it ask you to improve things for you or for your company? How realistic must you be in your suggestion? Must this be an aspect you can indeed change, rather than something that only a very senior manager could affect? All too many applicants end up interpreting the question to mean, “How can you make your own job easier to do?” Consequently, they make themselves look self-centered and concerned only about the minutiae of their jobs, since any meaningful change would require someone else’s intervention.
Virtually all applicants run into the implied follow-up question: If this proposed change is such a good idea, why haven’t you done all you could to implement it? Failing to answer this can make an applicant look hypocritical or ineffectual. If he claims that a change in the pattern of his sales calls will dramatically improve his results, why has he never tried to convince his boss of this? Is it that he does not really care about the company’s success or that he cannot imagine persuading his boss to make any change? In either case, the force of the applicant’s suggestion is diminished by failing to address the issue.
A BETTER APPROACH
Focus on the benefits for the company rather than personal benefits. In other words, show that the reason the change makes sense is that the company’s balance sheet will improve, or some other equally important advantage will accrue—not that your job will become easier.
You may have spotted only one change the company should make. If so, you should certainly discuss it. On the other hand, if you have several possibilities, choose the one that will best do the following:
• Support your positioning effort, including your current need for an MBA (which can be shown by suggesting that you are outgrowing your current responsibilities).
• Show that you are thinking about how your job relates to others.
If you do not have any obvious changes in mind, how can you develop some? For one thing, you can look at the examples of this essay included in Part IV. Beyond this, consider the following possibilities:
• Should the nature of your reporting relationship be changed? For example, perhaps you report to a regional manager but would be better off reporting to a functional one. Or perhaps you are matrixed—reporting to two different bosses in different departments—and the matrix structure is preventing decisions being reached in a timely fashion. If so, simplifying the reporting relationship might be appropriate.
• Should the nature of your responsibility be changed? For example, are you currently responsible for revenues but not costs or assets employed? Should you have complete profit and loss (or return on assets employed) responsibility?
• Should the various control systems be harmonized? For example, perhaps the accounting systems are designed to control one thing whereas your bonus is tied to something contradictory.
• Should any of the company’s major processes or strategies be changed? For example, perhaps the current market research and advertising budgets are wastefully targeting the wrong market segments.
If you are describing proposed changes in, say, the design of your job or the way in which you are evaluated or controlled, you will want to show that the current standards cause suboptimal performance in a way that your proposed change will not. You may also need to show that the proposed change will not lead to new problems or that any such problems will not be as large as the ones currently faced.
Deal with the implementation issue head-on. In other words, answer the implicit follow-up question as to why, if this change is such a good idea, you have not yet made it happen. Maybe you have just learned of the need for this change, in which case you have not had the time to do anything about it. For example, maybe you just started this job, or you have just received new responsibilities; or perhaps a recent problem first exposed the need for change. Another possibility is that you have been aware of the problem for some time but have been engaged in gathering the necessary data to analyze the situation fully.
The question’s phrasing is hypothetical: “What change would you make?” This seems to eliminate the possibility of discussing a change that you have recently made. In fact, business schools would love to have you discuss a change you have actually enacted; the only reason that they phrase the question as they do is because so few applicants have a real example to talk about. If you have actually implemented a substantial,