The Application Process

Hi,
I'm looking to apply for a US or Canadian MBA in the fall of 2015, and I have a VERY strange admissions problem that I just can't wrap my head around.

I'm currently a small business owner since the last almost three years, but previously I had worked with the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)unit of TCS, Tata Consultancy Services (formerly known as Citigroup Global Services), for over over five years. They were a BPO company providing services to various subsidiaries of Citigroup. This five-year tenure is where I got most of my grooming, and which is the pillar of my resume, and one that I'm sure will make my entry into a good school possible.

My issues are as follows:

(1) TCS follows a hierarchy that's very, very typical of any Indian company. From the bottom up, the titles/designations were: (1) Band 1 -- Process Associate (2) Band 2 -- Senior Process Associate (3) Band 3 -- Team Leader (4) Band 4 -- Assistant Manager and so on and so forth. This is how HR records an individual's employment with the company.

But, since all of the units/departments in the company were outsourced from the US, the job functions were allocated as per the US hierarchy, which didn't match with a person's job title on paper as per HR's records.

How do I make this clear to the ad-com, considering that I'm one of those whose job responsibility was completely out-of-sync with my designation on paper?

(2) Secondly, in the company, a person's job title (Band 1 -- Process Associate, Band 2 -- Senior Process Associate etc.) didn't dictate or restrict his job function. Band promotions were given more on the basis of tenure than anything else, where a person would get a band hike every 3 years, with an associated salary hike. Band promotions didn't necessarily have any connection to the actual work he/she did.

For example -- There were people who were at Band 2 (Senior Process Associate), but who handled teams of/trained people who were at higher bands than them. AND, there were people at Bands 3 (Team Leader) & 4 (Assistant Manager) who performed job functions that are normally associated with entry level employees.

UNFORTUNATELY, HR doesn't record all of this out-of-sync information. HR considers your band as your "Job Title" IRRESPECTIVE of your actual job function. Also, HR records your "Job Function" as that that are normally associated with your Band, EVEN if that is not the case.

For example -- HR's records would reveal that a Band 4 employee has "Assistant Manager" as his "Job Function" EVEN if he was doing entry level work. Or, a team leader who was at a Band 2 would still have a "Job Function" as that associated with a slightly-above-entry-level employee, EVEN THOUGH this person was doing the job of a team leader.

Such is my case. On paper, I was a Senior Process Associate (Band 2), but in the department that I worked in, Citimortgage Inc., I was a team leader and also did plenty of training for sales and other job-specific training.

Unfortunately, an old buddy of mine who now works in the company's HR told me a few days ago that HR does not keep track of ones ACTUAL job function. It considers ones "Job Function" to be that which is normally associated with ones band, EVEN if that is not the case in reality. This renders ALL the managerial experience, training experience and other work experience I got, which would clearly help my chances to get into a good business school, as good as flushed down the toilet.

And to make things worse, not long after I quit the company in May 2011, Citimortage Inc. decided to withdraw that unit back to the US (which is what prompted my resignation in the first place), so that unit has been long gone from my ex-company, and most of my co-workers and bosses have either quit or are in other departments in other parts of the country, with no connection to the Mumbai branch.

So I guess my questions are: What should I do here? Should I mention this scenario to the ad-com and actually mention all of my work experience even though HR doesn't keep any record this info? Or should I not mention all my additional work experience considering HR keeps no record of it?

I wish to be 100% ethical here, and I don't want the ad-coms to have even a shadow of a doubt about my credentials. So please advice. Thank you.