I suppose that kind of depends on your work background. For instance, I had a technical background and my first resume I made for business school was the same as the resume I would make looking for a job which is a huge mistake. I showed it to a friend that works in banking and he looked at it for a minute then said, "I dont understand anything on your resume." In other words, I had way to much technical jargon on my resume. I had to rewrite everything to explain what I did, but in a manner anyone off the street would understand.

I would recommend showing your resume to someone that knows nothing about the field you work in and make sure they understand all the points on your resume. Just keep in my Adcoms work as Adcoms, they probably know nothing about technical aspects of your field so best make your resume as readable as possible.

Other then that, I think format is generally the same, work experience first, with most recent job first, education at the end, unless you are coming out of school.

-J

I agree with the above post. I would also like to add that make sure the skills and experience that you put on your resume are transferable. If you have been working on say xyz technology for 5 years then put it in a way that makes sense to the reader (who has no info on the subject) and in a way that your skill is transferable to business school.

Here is one example:

Professional resume: Worked as a research scientist in XYZ Labs and analyzed the percentage of biodegradable organic wastes in landfills to determine the percentage of lead in them.

B-school resume: Led a team of 5 scientists in data collection and quantitative analysis of organic wastes in landfills.

the above is all made up but i think you get the picture!

The format is often similar (although some schools request a special resume "format") but you do want to be careful how you phrase your experience. One thing to keep in mind is that you do not need an "objective" section. Also, you want to "quantify" things as much as possible (percentage increases, number of people you managed, size of a budget, etc. - business schools like numbers!). Unless you have worked for 20 years (which is usually only the case for those applying to executive programs), keep the resume to ONE PAGE!

You usually have plenty of opportunties to expand on extracurriculars and experiences in your essays so you want your resume to not get too bogged down in detail and instead make an impact with your accomplishments! Similarly to any "good resume" - you want to start bullet points with action words and focus on things important in business school "managed" "created" "analyzed" "evaluated" "executed" as well as things that show teamwork and leadership.

Hope that helps!

I have a quick question relating to the topic at hand. I was very involved in undergrad and held a number of leadership positions (teaching classess, Philanthropy chair, etc) and I was wondering if it would be appropriate to put this information on my B-School resume in addition to my work experience and current activities?

Thanks

You should absolutely include signficiant extracurriculars/awards/experiences from undergrad. This helps show the type of contributer that you are in an academic atmosphere and also demonstrates skills, initiative, etc.

These types of accomplishments should be bullet points in under your undergraduate institution (just make sure to condense as much as possible - no lenghty descriptions are necessary).

If college was a long time ago, condense these even further (potentially one line that lists the various achievements).

Hope this helps!

Jessica@VeritasPrep wrote:...This helps show the type of contributer that you are in an academic atmosphere and also demonstrates skills, initiative, etc.

I never thought of it like THAT before... Thank you Jessica!