The Complete Resume for a Business-School Application 

‘The Resume is the first document that the admissions committee considers when you apply to a college/university’. Hence, in order to apply to the MBA course in foreign universities, you need to prepare a professional resume. The resume should be comprehensive and should specify the recent details in the most professional manner.

An MBA Resume is Different from a Job Resume

While job resumes mostly focus on professional experiences, an MBA resume focuses both on professional experiences, academic details, and extracurricular activities. The format is also different because it is more specific compared to a job resume. To begin with, let us get some clarity on what gets into an MBA resume.

Content Selection

The entries have to be wisely selected. You cannot afford to write everything. Therefore, you should showcase the best work in your job and quantify your contribution. You can depict the profit earned by your company because of your strategic decisions. In the same way, you can specify the number of people led by you or the percentage of increased sales figures or issues handled.

There are a few things that you can avoid mentioning in the MBA resume. You can do away with technical certification courses, paper presentations, training, technical skills, or paper publications. The additional activities like leadership roles, community work, or organizing experiences should be emphasized in a way that they showcase your ability to lead a team or take a decision.

Sections and Templates

There are three important sections of your resume and these are work experiences, educational qualifications, achievements, and additional activities. The achievement section should talk about awards or promotions.

Language

Professionalism should be reflected throughout your resume and it should give the impression that you are eligible for the MBA course. Hence, you must use strong action verbs such as managed, collaborated, conducted, and executed in the professional responsibilities section, according to the context. 

Formatting

Formatting is immensely important as it actually improves the presentation. The lucid presentation of the resume is necessary because admission committees go through a lot more documents than you can think of and therefore, to stand out from the crowd, you should follow consistent formatting.

• That first impression is immensely important which makes the selection board spend a few minutes on it. You should not, therefore, forget the formatting aspects. Most of the students actually end up giving more importance to the content and therefore miss out on creating the required magic.
• Reverse chronological order should strictly be maintained. You must showcase your latest feats and then mention the earlier ones. For example, your professional experience should talk about the latest designation and then go on referring to the earlier designations. Details of respective months and dates are essential.

Tips to Remember

• In order to give it a coherent look, you should stick to that one date format, be it MM/YY or MM DD YY. You should not use a ‘too big’ or ‘too small’ font (a font size of 11 is considered ideal). The headings should be in 12-point font size to bring about the focus from the rest of the content. You can use bold or italics styles judiciously to highlight essential entries.
• Too many colors will only distract, therefore, it is recommended that you keep it simple. It is suggested to follow the Times Roman font and black color (Automatic). You should ensure that the indenting of bullets/content is consistent throughout and that it does not make the reader rummage through the document.
• Section separation is also an important aspect that helps the reader to understand your profile at first glance.
• Long paragraphs should strictly be avoided. Make it smart and professional. When describing an objective of a project, keep it at an agreeable length (1 or 1.5 lines) and ensure it is grammatically correct. The other bulleted parts should be short and elegant.

Length of the Resume

An MBA resume should strictly be 1-page long. MBA students should not make it extensive like UG or MS students. In case you have 10 years of experience, you can wisely choose your content or decrease the font size to 10. 

In brief, you should decide upon the correct content and refrain from filling the space with something which does not match the managerial virtue. The resume should be prepared in such a manner that it is in sync with the other MBA documents such as essays and recommendation letters. Please remember that a professionally well-prepared and presented resume optimizes your chances of getting admission. Best of luck!

We would love to see you spread some love by sharing this article, as it may help many who are looking to study abroad. If you have decided to move abroad you need to work on your entrance exam and conquer it, a good test prep institute like Manya-The Princeton Review can definitely help.