These 3 Bullets Should Be On Your MBA Resume
As you apply to business school, using strong MBA resume bullet examples can significantly improve how admissions committees perceive your experience. However, not all resume bullets are created equal!
Merely describing your accomplishments often fails to highlight your leadership potential. Admissions committees evaluate leadership as a primary metric. As such, below is a list of three bullets that you should include on your resume to ensure that you’re giving the admissions committees some data points that they can use to assess not only your career progression but also your leadership potential. You can pick from experiences in college, work or the community; but before you hit submit, we recommend that you have all three of the embed with these three stories into your resume in some way, shape or form.
- A Time When You Created: Creators often go ‘above and beyond.’ They innovate to create ‘lasting value,’ a term Kellogg frequently uses. You must take steps to solve problems and strategize. Often, this involves motivating a team to produce a creation that actually works. All of that spells leadership to an admissions committee! So, whether it’s a time that you developed a new logistics plan for your team in response to a problem that you saw (like one of my clients right now) or you established a fundraiser for a cause that you care about in your hometown, make sure you are able to provide evidence that you regularly create and innovate.
- A Time When You Fixed: Fixing broken processes signals a strong work ethic and a proactive mindset. It proves you care about team success. Many people ignore problems or look the other way. However, true leaders stop to fix these issues. They know that improvement helps everyone in the long run. For example, you might adjust CRM data to improve decision-making. Alternatively, you could rewrite an outdated onboarding program. Whatever the case, providing evidence that you “fix what’s broken” can go a long way in demonstrating your character and leadership potential.
- A Time When You Enhanced: Some of the best business leaders are those who subscribe to the notion of continuous improvement. Leaders don’t assume that everything is perfect “as is”; instead they have an ability to keep asking questions and making improvements if needed. Perhaps you questioned whether the algorithm your company was using was the best option; or maybe you pushed back when senior leadership wanted to delay the launch of a new service. Telling a story about process improvement signals a commitment to excellence. It shows you push boundaries. For example, you do more than just take orders; you ensure the best possible outcome.
If you have multiple stories for each of these categories, great! But at a minimum, try to weave at least one of each of these categories into your resume in order to ensure that your leadership potential shines through!
Other articles from Vantage Point MBA that you may like:
A Quick Comparison of the Top MBA Programs
When To Retake the GMAT (And When Not To)
Katie is a passionate mentor and coach, helping her clients craft a unique, compelling story by leveraging her experience as a corporate executive, alumni interviewer, and campus recruiter. Before completing her MBA at Kellogg, Katie spent five years in banking where she learned practical finance skills as well as how to operate in a demanding, high pressure environment. She pursued an MBA in order to transition to an industry role where she could utilize her finance knowledge to drive change within an organization. Post-MBA, she worked in finance and strategy for a leading CPG firm, progressing to an executive role leading the finance function for a $2B business segment. Her experience managing diverse teams led to a passion for developing others. In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, she led her firm’s MBA recruiting efforts and served as an alumni admissions interviewer for Kellogg.
