Guide to Resumes
In revising your resume to be submitted with your business school application, your overall goal is to create a document that showcases your major accomplishments and career progress for the admissions committee in an effective and compelling way. Your resume is not a "throwaway" but rather an opportunity to tell your professional and even your personal story in a concise form. We strongly caution you not to underestimate the value of this document—the admissions committees in fact review applicants' resumes carefully, because they serve as a road map of each candidate's career. So, you should ensure that your resume is constructed for maximum impact, while still meeting the specific expectations of your target school's admissions committee. Your goal should be to create a resume that is simple and consistent in style as well as brief and powerful in substance.
One of the most common errors that candidates make is leaving their resume in an industry-specific format, filled with jargon and acronyms recognizable only to an expert in their field. Remember, the admissions committee is not hiring you for a task, but is trying to understand your progress, accomplishments and even your character. Each bullet point in your resume needs to highlight achievement more than positional expertise.
As you prepare your resume to be included in your application, think about your audience and recognize that your resume can be a strategic tool in reinforcing certain characteristics that are important to you—characteristics that may complement information provided in other parts of your application. For example, if you aspire to a career that is international in nature, you may place more emphasis on your international experience in your resume. Or, if you come from a field that is not known for its management orientation—you were a teacher who administered a school's $50,000 student activities budget, for example—you may use your resume to emphasize disciplines that are important to an MBA admissions audience.
In your resume, make sure that you are showcasing your accomplishments, not merely stating responsibilities. When only your responsibilities are presented—with no accompanying results—the reader has no understanding of whether you were effective in your position. For example, consider the following entry, in which only responsibilities are offered:
2005–Present Household Products Group, Flocter & Gramble Cincinnati, Ohio Brand Manager
- Responsible for managing a $10M media campaign, supervising a staff of five junior brand managers, monitoring daily sales volumes and ensuring the consistent supply of product from five production facilities in three countries.
The reader is left wondering, "Was the media campaign successful? Did the staff of five progress? Did sales volumes increase? Did the supply of products reach its destination?" When this one large bullet point is instead broken down into individual bulleted entries that elaborate on each task and show clear results, the reader learns not just about the candidate's responsibilities, but also about his/her effectiveness and successes:
2008–Present Flocter & Gramble Cincinnati, Ohio Brand Manager
- Initiated $10M television/Internet "Island Vacation" promotion introducing new Shine brand detergent, surpassing first-year sales targets within three months.
- Mentored and supervised five Junior Brand Managers, each of whom was promoted to Brand Manager (company traditionally promotes 25%).
- Analyzed daily sales volumes and identified opportunity to increase price point in Midwest, resulting in 26% margin improvement and $35M in new profits.
- Secured "safety supply" of vital chemicals from alternative suppliers, ensuring 99% order fulfillment.
By comparing the first Flocter & Gramble entry with the second, you can see how much more effective an accomplishment-driven resume is than one that simply states responsibilities.
Ideally, your resume should be only one page long; admissions committees generally expect and appreciate the conciseness of this format. If you choose to submit a two-page or longer resume, your reader may have difficulty scanning it and identifying (and remembering) important facts. With these space constraints in mind, we offer two fairly straightforward "space saver" ideas:
- Do not include a mission statement at the beginning of your resume. Your mission in this case is to get into the MBA program to which you are applying—and, of course, the admissions committee already knows this!
- Only your name should appear at the top of your resume. You do not need to include your address, email address, gender, marital status, etc., because this data will already be provided in your application form.
