Making the Goals Essay Work for You

As for existing skills and competencies, she brought a lot to the table. She understood the technical, legal, and project-management aspects of working on projects. Since being a developer was going to involve selling others, it was crucial that she had the personality makeup that would thrive in that environment. Happily, earlier in her life she’d had some retail-sales experience, and she was outgoing and collaborative by nature. When Irina wrote her goals essay, in addition to showing how she was passionate about building, I had her discuss the shifting economic and social situation and resulting real estate opportunities in her home country. She also mentioned several real estate development firms in that region with whom she’d like to work after graduation, from which she could build practical experience and a network before launching her own firm. I think this is a great example of Passion + Skills/Experience + Opportunity.

Think big

As you may have noticed, Irina wanted to move into a nascent field so she could make a tangible impact in her country. You don’t need to envision developing and marketing the cure for the common cold to get into a top school, but you do want to think about how you might have an impact beyond the bounds of your job description. For Susan, who was married and had a child, this included creating career paths in corporate finance for women with families, both by doing so in her own company and working with industry associations to promote this. Realizing he was heading into a field with no universal standards, administrative infrastructure, or bodies through which to coordinate with other business players, Martin proposed being a leader in shaping this budding industry’s future. So think beyond the walls of your office/cube and your building/garage when you’re crafting your career goals.

Just a few words on “Why our school?”

I won’t be covering this in detail here, but in most cases when you’re asked about your post-MBA goals, you’re also asked how attending the school in question will help you achieve them. Really know the school’s program inside out and tie your goals to particular program features. This may sound obvious, but if they sell themselves for being strong in a particular domain that lines up with your goals, mention this! Do they have a reputation for cranking out alums who are successful in your chosen field? What unique classes do they offer that will help you learn what you need to learn? Are there professors there who are on the cutting edge of your field? Do they provide hands-on learning opportunities that will expose you very directly to the types of situations you’ll face?

For example, if you want to go into management consulting, does the program arrange for you to work on substantial projects for real clients? Is the school located in the thick of your industry’s action (e.g., Stanford and Silicon Valley, or HBS and Route 128)? Does the school host conferences related to your chosen field so you can hear from and network with successful people working in that domain? Do you have access to other schools on campus—perhaps an education, government, medical, engineering, environmental, or design school—that might give you insight into your future stakeholders’ needs and perspectives? Do they have clubs related to your area of interest? Make sure to do an in-depth assessment of the things you need to learn to achieve your goals. Take, for example, Irina. Writing only about her target school’s real estate–related offerings would have been a bit narrow. She knew she needed to learn more about finance, negotiating, and leading teams of different stakeholders, and she conveyed that, plus we further differentiated her by having her talk about fun clubs in which she’d like to participate.

You get to show the admissions-committee members a lot about yourself in this essay, particularly how both visionary and practical you are. Take the time to do the in-depth soul searching, skills/experience assessment, and diligence regarding your targeted field to make this essay work for you.

*I’ve been using these three questions with clients for several years, and it only recently dawned on me that they’re somewhat related to Jim Collins’s “hedgehog concept” that he presents in his bestselling book Good to Great. I’ve worked on projects with Jim periodically for the past 22 years (though I didn’t work on Good to Great), so I’m not sure if my approach to the goals essay bubbled up from my subconscious because of what I know about his work or it just arose on its own. In Good to Great, Jim lays out a process through which a company can identify its fundamental strategy, which he and his research team identified after studying companies that had transitioned from being good to being great. The process involves looking at the intersection of the three following questions:

  • What can you best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be best in the world at)?
  • What drives your economic engine?
  • What are you deeply passionate about?

While I don’t require clients to be the best in the world in their stated future field, I do ask them to bring to it some essential skills and competencies, otherwise they’re likely to flop. I don’t ask clients in what field they can most “effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability,” but I do ask them to think about the overall attractiveness of the space they wish to enter, in terms of strategic, financial, and social-gain opportunities. Both Jim and I are passionate about people’s being passionate about what they’re doing.

**All clients’ names have been changed to protect their confidentiality.

Deborah Knox is founder and CEO of Insight Admissions. While she works extensively with traditional MBA applicants, she loves the challenge of assisting qualified nontraditional candidates. Devoted to the study of leadership excellence, Deborah has also served as a researcher and editor on numerous book projects for best-selling management author Jim Collins.

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