Hi all,
This essay is the most critical part of my MBA application.I know its a little lengthy, but i would really appreaciate it if you to go through it and provide your valuable feedback and suggestions
Prompt :Describe your vision for your career, your inspiration for pursuing this career path, and the role of The xxx MBA in achieving your goals. If you are interested in a specific concentration or joint degree program, please discuss in this essay.
Thanks a ton!
-----"4th December 2020 - Dear Diary, Its 9 pm and I have had an exciting day at my Consultancy firm which provides complete end-to-end HR and training solutions to help organizations build a high performance culture. The prospect of working on a project to enhance the performance of executives of an Indian multinational bank and to provide advisory service for their re-engineering efforts is exciting. Today our company also took the initiative to support a non governmental organization working with underprivileged children and prison population in India. Our team of trainers and coaches will unselfishly give their energy and resources to these people in need, helping them in captaining their destinies. Everyday, I am wholly committed to my work because I realize that I have an opportunity to impact someone's life by helping them meet their professional or personal goals. As rewarding as this role is, it is also one of sacred responsibility and always presents different challenges. When I am coaching a manager, or acting as a consultant for a professional sports team or when I enter a hall with an assemblage of people, the thought that they are putting their faith in me to make positive difference in their lives, is very humbling. For me to continually help people, I have been, and will continue to be a relentless learner myself; meticulously planning my own development and being a lifelong student of cognitive science, human behavior, management science, leadership practices, career development, sales and more. I am happy that I have followed my passion all these years and have had the incredible privilege and opportunity to meet with a wonderful diversity of people, inspiring them to create success in their lives."
This is how I envision my career in a ten year horizon.
I have always been fascinated with the workings of the human mind and how it influences ones behavior and actions. This interest further grew as I gained experience in human resources management and understood that people are the prime movers of an organization and HR is a vehicle of change. Furthermore, when I witnessed, first hand, the power of influence that trainers and coaches exercise to assist people in achieving personal and professional mastery, it was made clear to me that training and coaching are some very important tools to transform individuals and organizations. Many companies are moving away from transactionally oriented human resources department to a more strategic human capital management model that includes the transactional component but also leadership development, coaching, mentoring, talent acquisition and retention. My long term aspiration is to be able to assist this change by being an external consultant or a primary adviser to these organizations, capitalizing on my wealth of experience and tacit knowledge in these areas. There have been many experiences that have contributed towards the inception of this vision.
At 17, I was a part of AIESEC, the world's largest youth run organization which aims at providing young people with a platform to discover and develop their potential. I was involved in running projects to impact issues plaguing my immediate environment, such as HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, Child education etc. The blue print of this organization was such that it forced one to think of the community as a whole, the larger picture. But before one gets lost in serving, it taught one to observe one's own existence, know oneself, one's strengths and weaknesses and what one can give the world; and then serve. I found fulfillment in living up to my moral responsibility in the society - in finding some way to feel I was helping others, or at least connecting genuinely with others. I went on to head the organization's 'Talent Management' activities, deploying tools that would help create life changing experiences for other young people that joined AIESEC, molding them into change agents who were culturally sensitive and socially responsible future leaders. This was the first time a role of this nature was introduced in this non-profit set-up since it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep volunteers engaged in the core work and enthused about the vision. Our ability to retain them was being affected by the many other hobby clubs .... up at the university campuses. This was not an easy task as it required me to set up HR systems and processes that would support a complex unit running entirely on volunteer efforts. A basic HR framework was put in place, with processes like competency mapping and development, structured recruitment, attrition management, performance measurement, goal setting, rewards and recognition structure, succession planning, training etc woven in. . The successful implementation was evident from the success of our projects and our numbers soaring in a span of a year. We witnessed a change in culture as we saw young volunteers renew their passion toward their duties and responsibilities and strengthen their commitment to their own learning and development. I knew then that I wanted to replicate this success for other organizations too.
After discovering my calling in AIESEC, my next step was to join a firm reputed for its HR and management practices to further enhance my learning in the field. My search brought me to xxxxxx Pvt Ltd, where I spent 3 months understanding the nitty-gritty's of human capital management. I worked on a wide variety of assignments that not only strengthened my analytical and problem-solving skills, but exposure to other departments taught me how large retail businesses managed their sourcing, processing , distribution and marketing functions. My biggest learning here was to realize the significance of synergy between different departments, a collaborative effort crucial not only to build a peak performance culture but also to sustain it. After enjoying this productive and educational experience, I decided I wanted to explore opportunities in training function which the company could not offer at that point.
During my tenure with xxxxxx Bank as a Trainer, I encountered challenges that motivated me to seek a management degree. As a trainer entrusted with the task of creating a customer-centric frontline which has an intellectual and emotional level of commitment towards the mission of the organization, I found myself struggling to deliver. When asked to identify reasons and provide solutions for the low-morale and under-performance of executives in a department, it slowly dawned on me that providing soft skill and knowledge building classroom trainings is not sufficient to impact bottom-line productivity. When one is studying too narrow an area, the perspective is woefully inadequate and one has to understand the business end to end. Therefore a generic understanding of the processes across businesses is imperative. Besides, as a Human Resource Consultant, an in depth understanding of disciplines like Organisational Behavior, Human Psychology, Leadership, Motivation, Coaching etc is a basic necessity.
The Business Degree which I seek provides me an understanding of disciplines core to a Business; and coupled with the focus on the Human Resource aspect, managing people and processes, would create the right blend to impact business in a positive and meaningful manner. For this reason, the management concentration offered as a part of the xxx MBA program appeals to me. I strongly feel it will equip me with the right tools and knowledge to help me achieve my short term and long term goals.
-----"4th December 2020 - Dear Diary,
^i understand what you are doing here, but i strongly question the effectivness of this narrative. it is rather cliched for my liking, and it is almost as if you prepared this because you are trying to impress your reader, rather than genuinely impress the reader.
There have been many experiences that have contributed towards the inception of this vision.
^Unless you can prove that this statement, you can afford to remove it because as it stands on it's own, it is redundant.
Your essay is very long and i lost interest in reading it almost half way through. The entire paragraph, on AiESC, needs to be expressed more succintly. Also, i could not quite tell if your experience there was
your inspiration for pursuing this career path
if it was not, then i could not quite garner any practical use for that paragraph.
the role of The xxx MBA in achieving your goals
^You do not discuss this in any detail that effectively conveys the importance of you studying the MBA, for your unspecified goals.
You can take my advice or ignore it completely. Either way, good luck with your application.
