From Engineer to MBA: How to Transform your Resume
The pool of MBA applicants is filled with all sorts of diverse backgrounds: doctors, lawyers, bankers, entrepreneurs, teachers, writers…and of course we cannot forget the engineers. Many bloggers, including Rock of Gibralter and Juggler, are members of the tech world, and they represent the high volume in the applicant pool. Muskblog reported that 25% of his class had an engineering background. A quick look at some other schools:
Stern: 9% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology
Haas: 13% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology, 29% majored in engineering
Tuck: 16% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology, 18% majored in Engineering
Fuqua: 28% of the class of ’08 majored in Engneering
Translating engineering experience and lingo into a language that is both understood by and relevant to the admissions committee can be a challenge. This is an important hurdle to overcome, as it will touch most aspects of your application. Here is a look at how to rethink a basic business document – your resume.
On a typical engineering resume, you might find a line such as this one: “Synthesized an 8-bit ALU chip which could perform logic operations such as AND, OR and XOR.” Although I do not doubt that this is an interesting and impressive accomplishment in the engineering world, I have no idea what this means and am guessing that many admissions committee members do not either. When I see something like this, I will ask an applicant to translate it into MBA speak – what does this mean? What did you really do when “synthesizing”?
Often, on a second draft, I see a line that I can more easily understand. “Led the design and development of X.” Now this is something that I can understand. Led, design, development…the technical jargion has been translated. However, this resume still has a long way to go. It’s interesting how difficult it can be to really break down and describe the work that you do every single day. Yet this is what you need to do.
I ask, “when you are developing X, what are the steps you take, what are the skills you use?”
Think about the smaller steps:
Who did you manage, either directly or cross functionally?
What processes did you manage?
What kind of analysis did you run?
How did you structure communications?
Did you develop or improve upon any processes?
Developing X is a big accomplishment, and it took a lot of little steps to get there. To understand what you really did, you need to think about the smaller steps, and how they can be repurposed in a business role – how did you communicate, collaborate, manage, lead and more? Also important, think about your results. If you developed X, why is X so great? What was the impact of what you did? Did it save time, cut costs, increase revenue? Quantify results to the extent possible so a reviewer can understand the impact.
To appeal to an MBA audience, an applicant must think beyond technical tasks. He or she must identify what lies behind those tasks that might reveal an effective business leader. Going through this exercise can be painful, but it is a necessary step and something that will serve an applicant well throughout the entire application process.
If you are struggling with this important document, our consultants can help you think through how to translate your accomplishments into business lingo. Contact us to learn more.
February 21st, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Well I’m glad some of the stuff I’ve written is found useful by people, I’m not so sure my classmates let alone the admissions office and the career center are so happy with some of the tales I related in my blog. I wish people would refer to me by name instead of as “Muskblog”. When I was finally talked into adding a blog to my webpage, I didn’t know what to call it when I was making my WordPress template and I just threw in “Muskblog”, I never gave it a lot of thought as far as branding…
People seem to like it, it could be a lot worse.
There was a lot of grumbling in my class over the career center forcing people to rewrite their resume until it got the BCC’s stamp of approval. I never had too much trouble, but I think I learned more about cover letters and writing in technical writing class and from my co-op department as an undergrad then I did from the BCC. People came to me for advice on their resume’s and cover letters especially Chinese people. Not everyone appreciated my help…
As fate would have it, I totally redid the HTML version of my resume to support the hResume Microformat yesterday. I wrote a blog posting about that. hResume is supposedly the next big thing in online resumes and it is the format supported by LinkedIn.com so there are millions of resumes encoded as hResumes available online now. I’m not sure if it is particularly relevant, but here is the link:
http://blog.muschamp.ca/2007/02/20/my-resume-is-now-an-hresume/
Of more interest to your readers especially the tech crowd might be the fact that the 25% engineers in my class didn’t include me, as someone with a B Sc. I was lumped into the additional 10% with an IT background. We had engineers from mining and naval backgrounds, not just electrical, mechanical, and computers.
Seeing as I’ve repeatedly failed to secure a full time job my advice may not be the best, but I seem to get interviewed for good positions at prestigious firms so I must have a clue. One thing stressed by the Sauder School of Business career center is getting across “How what you did mattered”. When thinking back on a position or a project try to keep that question in mind.
Did it save time? or money? which is the same as time. Did it increase quality, turn around time, customer satisfaction, revenue, sales, etc. The BCC wanted quantifiable numbers, which was hard for me as a former software developer to come up with. They want to see dollar values, percentages, multiples, the bigger the better.
Of course all this is based on what the BCC actually said once I was in the program, prior to doing my MBA, I continued to maintain my resume as I had done for years, in a manner acceptable to the UVIC Co-op department. You get a lot of conflicting advice on resumes and job searches, I’ve talked to a lot of recruiters and generally they don’t have a problem with how I format my resume. I also try to use interesting words and to not repeat myself either be it vocabulary or sentence structure, especially in cover letters. Then there is the rise of keyword scanning, I’ll have to poke around your site some more.
Your resume can always be improved, I know I’ve tried to become an Excel guru and added an entire line related to that software program as I think I cost myself a job once by not having enough confidence, I think I’ve cost myself a lot of jobs by not having enough confidence…
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Thanks!
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 am
I am an engineer with a Masters degree and look forward to get my MBA soon…! I don’t have a lot of work experience though…! You have done a great job explaining the transformation needed from engineering to business lingo..! I am sure it will really help me in future..!
Thanks
Manish