“Joe Business” vs. “Jack of All Trades”: How to bring out your human side without looking like a dilettante
Yes, you’re applying to business school, but you don’t need to look like a business tool.
If you’ve doubled sales, you need to discuss that. If you’ve helped get a new technology to market, you need to write about that. If you’ve hired a hundred people, you’ve got a great story there.
However, I’ve seen too many candidates who attempt to make it look like they’ve done it all already. They believe by demonstrating their business acumen in every paragraph of their applications, the sear weight of the evidence of their commercial genius with overwhelm the admissions committee. Not the best approach.
One candidate I worked with received numerous rejections two years earlier in spite of solid work experience and stellar GMAT scores. He attributed his early failure to his “gunner” approach to his application. When we developed his human side more last year, his admissions fortunes rose considerably.
MBA programs emphasize that they choose their classes based on their potential for leadership going forward. Often, that will leadership will be in the arena of policy, public health, the arts, not-for-profits, etc. Admissions committees look for people who have followed their passions and left a unique mark in whatever areas they have pursued. The books that have most influenced the best MBA candidates are not necessarily just by Jim Collins, Warren Buffett and Geoffrey Moore. The current issues that impact them the most are not just tax code debates and the state of global outsourcing.
On the other end of the spectrum, some MBA candidates try to fashion themselves as Renaissance Men and Women who would put Leonardo da Vinci to shame. Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out how a person can get any Powerpoint slides done with all of the oil painting, tutoring, skiing, sky diving, Farsi speaking, flower arranging, foreign film watching, blogging, environment saving, meal delivering, judo-ing and overseas traveling he engages in every week.
The best ways to develop the “human side” of the application is to take just a couple of experiences, activities or themes and develop them in a much more detailed and nuanced way. Instead of an essay which deals with ten foreign travel experiences in a cursory way, develop one or two anecdotes in more depth. Talk about the way one trip or one discussion with someone from another country changed the way you viewed the world. Discuss one observation you have had about a certain topic across different cultures. Maybe you’ve witnessed differences in communication or distinct ways various cultures view entrepreneurship. Illustrating that you understand the significance of certain things you’ve experienced is much more important than regaling an admissions committee with all of the experiences.
One candidate I worked with put down “chess” as an interest on his app. He had read somewhere that many successful executives cited chess as their favorite game. He had played a few times and enjoyed it, so saw no problem listing it as one of his interests. I asked him, “What happens if your interviewer is a real chess devotee? Are you going to have anything to tell him about it he’ll find at all interesting?” There is no ideal list of interests that will make someone seem more appealing to b-school admissions committees. If your interest is reading pop fiction, maybe it has allowed you to bond with your friends in book club. This is in itself an insight about you that can lead to further discussions. If your interest is baseball trivia, maybe it gives you an interesting perspective on some of the race and drug issues that the sport has experienced. Don’t shy away from your true interests, illustrate how they have helped shape the incredibly dynamic and fascinating person that you are!
