MBA Resume: Your Guide to Creating a Perfect Submission

MBA Resume Samples

Sample #1

Jane Doe

Senior Marketing Director

Phone: 555-555-5555

Email: [email protected]

Portfolio: [LinkedInProfile]

Profile Summary

Driven marketing executive with 4+ years of experience in overseeing digital product launches. Developed and launched 7 online campaigns for Deluxe products that resulted in 40% increase in revenue. Increased customer retention by 56%. Seeking to leverage Harvard’s knowledge framework to innovate new marketing solutions for the evolving digital landscape.

Experience

Marketing Manager

Zyna Deluxe, Houston, TX 

Apr 2019-Present 

• Managed a team of ten to develop and execute successful social media campaigns resulting in client revenue gains of 40% 
• Implemented a successful multi-platform SEO campaign that improved organic hits by 50% and brought 10,000 new subscribers in 1 year 
• Increased conversion rates by 30% by innovating targeted campaigns based on qualitative data analysis models 

Marketing Analyst

Zyna Deluxe, Houston, TX

May 2017-Apr 2019

• Created TV and print campaigns for the perfume division that resulted in revenue increase by 30%
• Published a white paper in the Content Marketeers Associate Quarterly on “Qualitative Data Analysis and Targeted Advertising in the Digital Age”

Education

BA in English Literature, Minor in Business – UCLA, CA

Sept 2013-May 2017

• GPA 3.8, high honors
• Winner of Dean’s Award for collaborative research paper “Evolution of Privacy in Advertisements and the Impact on Social Media Business Practices”
• Selected for the Adam Wright Business Leadership Program

Additional Achievements

• Presented at the AMA Annual Conference 2019 on the topic of Growing Cross-Platform Social Media Engagement via Quantitative Data Analysis
• Led the UCLA Sparks Collegiate Gymnastics team to victory at the 2016 NCAA tournaments

Skills

• Affiliate marketing
• Ideation leadership

Here's a formatted version of this MBA resume.

Sample #2

John Doe

Regional Sales Director

Phone: 555-555-5555

Email: [email protected]

Objective

Driven sales managers with 4+ years of experience. Developed and launched 3 annual sales campaigns which resulted in a 35% increase in revenue. Recruited, trained and managed sales team which became company’s top sales team in 2019. Seeking to expand managerial skills and knowledge of changing digital business landscape.

Education

Bachelor in Communications – University of Notre Dame

Sept 2012-May 2016

Work Experience

Regional Sales Director

Ambrosia Luxury Foods, Chicago, IL

June 2018-April 2020

• Recruited and managed a sales team of 15 sales associates
• Sales team was recognized as #1 in company sales in 2019
• Developed annual sales campaigns in accordance with company budgets
• Assisted in launching an online company store which increased profits by 10%

Sales Associate

Ambrosia Luxury Foods, Chicago, IL

August 2016-June 2018

• Increased company’s territory sales by 112% on average, annually
• Developed and designed product packages which reduced sales time and saved customers time and money
• Rapidly promoted to sales director after 12 months as top sales producer

Key Skills

• Team leadership
• Ideation leadership

MBA Resume Sample #3

MBA Resume Sample #4

What is an MBA Resume? 

The MBA resume is one of the key components of any business school application. According to many MBA admissions consulting services, a lot of applicants focus on the other components of the MBA application process such as their transcripts, GMAT/GRE scores, letters of recommendation, application form questions, or interview prep, while ignoring the unique nature of the MBA resume. A common misconception is that you can simply include your existing professional resume as part of your MBA application, without any customizations. However, an MBA resume is a unique document that has to be carefully crafted to maximize your chances of impressing the admissions committee. It doesn’t matter how impressive your application is, whether you’ve recently graduated from one of the best undergraduate business schools or achieved amazing professional success, a stellar resume is essential to getting an acceptance letter from the best MBA programs.

An MBA resume is different from a regular job resume as it does not demonstrate functional skills or specific qualifications, but rather showcases your business impact, leadership potential, and collaboration skills. It is a concrete list of your achievements and experiences that tell a story about your suitability for business school and why you have chosen to apply to an MBA program.  

In a resume for a job application, recruiters usually want to see technical skills and employment qualifications that prove you can perform specific types of work. In that situation, you’re competing with other applicants with similar professional backgrounds. When it comes to MBA applications, you are competing against applicants from diverse professional and educational backgrounds, so there are no particular keywords you need to highlight. This makes it more difficult to know exactly what to include and exclude.  

MBA resumes aren’t scanned by machines, but are reviewed by members of a business school admission committee, who will judge the resume as a whole to get an impression of the applicant. That’s why an MBA resume has to present a holistic picture of your life, covering your achievements across different aspects of your personal life and professional career. 

An MBA resume needs to be short and effective, ideally no more than a single page. Creating a memorable one-page resume that successfully highlights your unique suitability for business school is a difficult feat. In that single page, you have to be able to pack in enough information to create a clear, cohesive picture of the value that you are bringing to the business school you’re applying to.  

Importance of an MBA resume in a business school application 

Contrary to what you may think, your resume is the central component of your MBA application. It serves as an introductory document that brings together all the key information about your life, experiences, achievements, and skills. It serves two important purposes in the application process. First, it works as an initial screening tool. Before reading your short answers, MBA admission essays, or any other application components, admissions’ committees will first review your resume. They want to see if your general background, profile, and achievements make your application worth considering.  

Second, if your application proceeds to the interview stage, the resume you submitted serves as a guide for the interviewers. This is because a resume functions like the blueprint of any MBA grad school application, and MBA interview questions are typically based on the resume. Essentially, the resume content dictates the interview content, especially since a lot of MBA admissions interviews use the closed interview format. In this format, the interviewer only has access to your resume and does not see any other part of your application. 

Now that you know what an MBA resume and how important it is in the MBA application process, let’s dive into how exactly to format and complete it. 

How to Write and Format an MBA Resume 

When it comes to your MBA resume, it’s extremely important to give it the right format and look. Remember that admissions committees review hundreds of resumes for each admissions cycle. Admissions committees for prestigious MBA programs in UC schools and Ivy League schools like Harvard Business School may scan thousands. They won’t spend more than 5 minutes scanning your resume, and within the first 30 seconds, they will form an impression that’s difficult to change! In fact, they will also be judging your choices in terms of formatting and templates as an indicator of your professionalism and communication skills. What’s the point of having an amazing list of achievements if your MBA resume is rejected based on an off-putting aesthetic or formatting errors?  

Let’s go over three key factors that can ensure the perfect look of your MBA resume. 

1. MBA Resume Formatting

Let’s start with the basics of how to correctly format your MBA resume. The key here is to create a clean, professional, compact, well-organized document. The following list captures important considerations to keep in mind: 

2. MBA Resume Layout and Sections

For the admissions committees, your MBA resume is the first indicator of your business acumen and communication skills. That’s why it’s important to have a logical layout with a clear flow of information and well-organized sections. The reviewer should be impressed by your ability to communicate effectively via your one-page resume. And, since admissions officers will most likely be scanning your document, it should be easy for them to find information at a glance.

The most appropriate way to organize the key information in your MBA resume is to arrange it in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent experience in each section.  

The type of sections you include in your MBA resume will depend on your level of experience. Typically, there are two types of MBA applicants – experienced applicants with substantial professional achievements and experiences (i.e. more than 6 years of professional experience), and applicants with less than two years of professional experience, who recently graduated from another degree.

Click each tab to view the key MBA resume sections depending on your level of experience: 

3. MBA Resume Writing Style 

As mentioned earlier, the admissions committees at MBA programs look at an applicant’s MBA resume as an indicator of their communication skills. To impress them, it’s important to make your MBA resume substantive, economical, and precise. Avoid cluttering up the page with filler words. Stick to adding bulleted lists to convey the key achievements for each experience/project and don’t add more than 2-3 lines per bullet. 

A good tip here is to make sure your bullets focus on actions, intentions, and results. Begin each bullet with impactful action verbs that highlight leadership, collaboration, innovation, strategy, negotiation, and achievement. This means that rather than leading with action verbs such as “responsible for” “was part of” and so on, try to use action verbs such as “achieved”, “created” “performed” “organized” “increased”, etc. 

There should be an overarching narrative in your resume and each bullet should contribute to building the story. Leave out the functional responsibilities and, instead, focus on the key business goals and measurable results expressed in solid facts and figures. For example, rather than just saying “Responsible for monitoring the customer service department” try saying “Implemented a cross-department customer service protocol that reduced direct labor costs by 32%.” 

If possible, try to talk about the long-term results of your achievements. For example, if a new management technique you suggested is still in use or if you created a new company organizational chart that demonstrably increased efficiency and productivity, make sure to include that in the resume. 

What to Include in Your MBA Resume 

OK, so now you’ve got a great MBA resume template. What do you include? This part might seem obvious – if you’re thinking of applying for an MBA, you likely have an impressive list of business and/or educational achievements. You’ll just add it all in, right? Not exactly! When it comes to writing your MBA resume, what you leave out is as important as what you include. You can’t just blindly stuff in a list of every single thing you’ve ever done. You’ve got to carefully curate what information to add and how to communicate it. 

Let’s go over each of the MBA resume sections. 

1. Contact Information 

This one is pretty obvious – include the following: 

The above list can be tweaked depending on your specific profile. For example, if you have a portfolio of significant work that you want to highlight, such as your design portfolio or creative projects, you may also choose to remove your portfolio link from this section and pull it out into its own separate section. 

2. Resume Summary or Profile

Essentially, your profile should be a succinct summary of your experiences, goals, and most notable professional achievements. It should grab the reader’s interest and make them read on. Most importantly, it should highlight what sets you apart as an applicant.  

Here, too, you can tweak the format as per your specific profile. For example, an applicant with a pharmaceutical business profile who holds an M.Pharm degree, might want to include his/her educational degree along with his/her professional title, as both are significant to his/her MBA journey. 

Follow this format: 

Adjective + Detailed professional or educational title + Number of years’ experience (if applicable) + MBA application goal + top achievement (work or education) + (optional) what you bring to the table from your education/experience 

When writing this section, focus on concrete, important results and skills instead of just including a whole lot of adjectives. At the same time, this isn’t the time to get into too many details. Think about what defines your business goals and your experiences so far, and only add the most significant details. Though this section comes near the top of your MBA resume, ideally, you should write it last, AFTER you’ve already created your resume. That way you can review your overall resume and write a resume summary that perfectly highlights the key aspects. 

By the way, if you are applying to Harvard, make sure to check out Harvard MBA personal statement examples to learn what is expected if you.

3. Work Experience 

For experienced applicants, this is a key section that should compromise about 2/3 of your MBA resume. As explained earlier, your professional experience should ideally be listed in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent experience.  

Remember that this section should highlight your upward career trajectory and industry growth. So, start by adding the company name, position and time spent at each company as a sub-heading and underneath that, mention promotions as separate levels. Remember you also need to be able to explain gaps in your MBA resume during your interview, if any, so be prepared to provide some context.

Under each sub-heading or level, cover only your most significant work achievements that distinguish you, expressed in precise bullet points, no more than 5 per level. As this is a resume to demonstrate your suitability as an MBA applicant, avoid talking only about responsibilities; instead, focus on concrete achievements that highlight your leadership and impact on business. The more specific details can be highlighted in your MBA application essays, MBA statement of purpose or MBA motivation letter, and MBA interview.  

4. Education 

This section will be more detailed for applicants with less experience, but even applicants with extensive work experience should include the key highlights of their education. These should include details of every degree you hold, including both undergraduate and postgraduate study.  

Add a new entry for every degree and include the name of the degree, university, graduation date, major, minor (if applicable), GPA, honors, and achievements. 

For applicants with more work experience, you can choose to keep each entry brief and highlight only the key achievements along with any research work, projects etc. that show your leadership skills or exemplary business qualifications. 

If you have less work experience, then the education section is the main component of your resume. Such applicants should expand on their key projects, research work, meaningful coursework, and impactful extracurricular achievements. 

It is highly recommended that you add your GPA for each degree, especially if it’s impressive. You can consider dropping it from your resume only if you have a less-than-average GPA that you’d rather not highlight or if you have obtained extensive work experience that proves your capabilities. However, most recent graduates will not have this option, as their GPA is a key indicator of their abilities. If you need to know how to explain a low GPA in an MBA application, you can mention the difficulty level of your coursework to provide context around your GPA. You can also include other key achievements to mitigate a poor GPA.  

Don’t add details of your education prior to your undergrad degree. This isn’t a high school resume; details of your school life are not likely to be relevant to your business achievements at a later stage in life. If there are any significant achievements from this period that you wish to highlight, you can do so in your MBA personal statement or essay, but only if they are relevant to your application.

5. Additional Information and Achievements 

This section is where you highlight your most significant extracurricular achievements. It should include a robust variety of activities that highlight the unique experiences you wish to convey to the admissions committee. Don’t just add any and all MBA extracurriculars – focus on adding high-stake accomplishments that show your focus, ability to apply yourself, strong work ethic, leadership potential, and collaboration skills. Every point added here should be impressive and unique. These entries should also be verifiable and back up the contents of your personal statement, essays, and other components of your application.  

These are some of the key significant achievements and experiences you can highlight in this section:

• Business relevant certifications
• High performing projects
• Associations/clubs with leadership roles
• Media pieces where you were positively featured
• Publications
• Awards
• Conferences where you presented
• Industry blogs/vlogs with a significant readership you were featured in
• Languages and sports/hobby achievements or recognitions

How do you know what’s worth including and what should be discarded? Think about whether this experience is unique to you or whether it is something many people have accomplished. For example, simply running a marathon isn’t a big deal; but climbing Mt Kilimanjaro is. Similarly, simply playing a sport recreationally isn’t an achievement – but did you start and grow your own team and/or lead your team to multiple victories? The latter would be considered as a relevant achievement for your MBA resume.  

6. Skills 

This should be a bullet-form list of your key skills. Prioritize adding industry or business skills and avoid adding generic soft skills or functional/role-specific skills. 

Here are a few examples of what you can add: 

Remember, do not include too many skills or it will look like you’re just trying to stuff your resume. Only add the ones that are easily verifiable via your experiences and achievements.

7. Optional Sections 

While the above are the mandatory sections in all MBA resumes, there are a few optional sections you can add depending on your unique profile. For example, you might have numerous creative projects you want to talk about in more detail; or maybe, you want to highlight multiple significant volunteer experiences as the USP of your application. In such cases, rather than stuffing this information into the “Additional Achievements” section where it may get lost on the page, you can opt to add a separate section such as “Projects” or “Volunteer Experience”. Remember, the following sections are optional and work best for those with a unique area of expertise. If this doesn’t apply to you, consider adding this information in your “Additional Achievements” section. 

Volunteer Experience 

Volunteer experience is not mandatory but is highly desirable for an MBA applicant. It can be a great way to prove your passion in a particular area and to gain measurable leadership skills and collaboration experience. The key here is to link between your volunteer experiences and measurable business impact.

So rather than just saying “Volunteered at Adult Literacy Awareness Society”, you should try and highlight what you achieved there, for example “As a volunteer at the Adult Literacy Awareness Society, created a system to leverage cross-platform user data to improve community outreach by 30%”. 

If you didn’t have time for volunteer work, you can also choose to highlight the impact you had beyond your academic record and professional responsibilities. For example, you can mention if you organized university groups to help underrepresented communities, led a campaign to raise awareness of a specific issue, etc. Admissions boards love to see volunteer work on a resume application, especially if it aligns with the values and mission statement of the MBA program. 

This isn’t mandatory, so many candidates skip this section in their MBA resume. But if you do have any worthwhile volunteer experiences, it can make you stand out from the crowd. 

Awards and Certificates  

You should consider pulling this out into a separate section only if you have a significant list of stand-out awards and certificates such as honor roll, dean’s list, college fair or subject-related awards, volunteer certificates, industry awards, and so on. 

MBA Portfolio and Key Projects 

This type of section might be more relevant for those who have a solid line-up of impressive creative, academic, or professional projects and want to highlight them. Otherwise, you can simply include a portfolio link in your contact information or add a couple of project related bullets in the Additional Achievements and Information section of your MBA resume. 

MBA Cover Letter 

Finally, after you have created your MBA resume, you should also draft an appropriate cover letter. It should demonstrate why you want to apply for this specific business school, why you are uniquely suited to it, a summary of your background, and your ultimate career goals. Avoid repeating your resume in your cover letter as much as possible. Let the cover letter be more of an introduction that leads into the resume. 

Additional Tips for an MBA Resume

Here are a few additional tips and tricks to help you refine and perfect your MBA resume! 

1. Avoid irrelevant job descriptions. These will take up unnecessary space in your resume and add nothing towards conveying your unique value. Instead, focus on measurable, verifiable impact and results-oriented descriptions that demonstrate your value. For example, a bullet point like “Performed impact analysis for training projects” doesn’t really add anything to your resume. Instead, you can say “Completed impact analysis for training projects, highlighting gaps in training that helped to improve workplace productivity by 40%” 
2. Wherever possible, illustrate with examples, figures, and numbers. The rule to follow here is: “show don’t tell”. On a resume, numbers grab attention and stay with the readers. It really helps to quantify your achievements. For example, rather than saying “Completed website redesign for fashion merchandizing client that significantly improved sales” say “Completed website redesign for Happy Luxury Brands that helped to increase their SEO traffic by 35% and led to 20% increase in sales over 3 months”. 
3. Always focus on what YOU contributed rather than the general growth of companies you worked at. Avoid saying that you were “part of a team that achieved a growth of…”. Instead, point out exactly what you did that led to quantifiable results. For example, “Developed a cross-functional digital communication that reduced project completion timelines by 3 months”. 
4. Skip the technical jargon. Jargon refers to role-specific certifications, technical skills, etc. Remember that the person reading the resume may not even be from your field and technical qualifications are most likely meaningless to them. What they want to know is the business impact of your every achievement. So, try and highlight achievements that will be universally appreciated rather than focusing on a list of tasks and responsibilities. 
5. Focus on key differentiators wherever possible. What makes you unique? What did you do that no one else did? How do you stand out amongst your peers? Let this be the guide as you draft each section of your resume. 
6. Have an in-depth and holistic resume. Don’t just focus on one area such as education or professional experiences. Try to highlight your passions and achievements through many different activities and experiences. 
7. Don’t stuff your resume. Avoid impressive sounding words or exaggerating minor achievements just to fill the space. At the same time, there’s no place for modesty in your MBA resume. Be clear and direct in communicating what makes you unique.  
8. Be completely honest. Honesty and integrity are two qualities all admissions boards consider non-negotiable. All your achievements should be easily verifiable.  
9. Proofread, proofread, proofread! Check your resume format, template, and language before submitting it. Keep it clean and simple, in keeping with the submission guidelines (if any). There should be no errors or typos. In fact, it's even better if you have MBA admissions consulting services look it over!
10. Use approximates when necessary. If you have NDAs with your workplace, you might find it tough to write about your professional experience without violating confidentiality. For example, you may be forbidden from mentioning client names or specific figures. If that’s the case, don’t fret. It’s just a chance for you to get creative with your language. Instead of saying the client’s name, you can say “top fashion merchandizing brand”. Instead of mentioning specific figures, convey information in terms of percentages and approximate figures. 
11. Prioritize the best experiences. If you’re running out of space, prioritize your professional experiences first. Also, you should talk more about your most recent experiences, professional or otherwise.  

FAQs

To your success,

Your friends at BeMo

BeMo Academic Consulting 

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