Leadership experience

[jj]

Hi Alex/Jeremy -

Will the admissions office take into account leadership experience from undergrad if it is lacking in post grad? I am two years out of undergrad and have a great job (investment finance). Unfortunately, it doesn't provide me with many leadership opportunities. The company is headquartered in NYC and I am in a small satellite office on the west coast- all coworkers in my office are VP and up. While it gives me a great opportunity to go above and beyond what other analyst are doing in the larger offices... I have no one working under me to "lead."

In college:
~ I was a Resident Assistant ("RA") - directly responsible for 50 students, indirectly for 400. Organized events, activities, became sort of a counselor to many kids.
~ I was the "head tutor" at the same complex I was an RA. I was responsible for hiring/firing of tutoring staff (3-4 at any time), monitored payroll, tutored various topics.
~ Worked in property management my last 2 years of college. The guy that hired me as an RA recruited me to help start a student run property management program for the largest off-campus complex (~1300 students). I helped train and lead a team of 8. I was put in charge of all resident conflicts/mediations for the entire complex (may sound weird, but you can't imagine all the situations I was in charge of settling).
~ As a whole... I worked 3 jobs (at once for 2 of the 4 years of undergrad) to put myself through college without assistance from my family or loans.

I plan to work for a couple more years before going off to school, but I feel career progression from Analyst to Sr. Analyst (currently) to Associate will not be all too impressive without leadership.

Any suggestions/thoughts?

[MBAApply]

Yes, you can and should highlight any significant college leadership experiences since you're only a few years out of college.

Good luck

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com

[Guest]

I was hoping for a bit more color on the topic. I know it will be something I'll need to emphasize, but will it be looked at as a negative not having the leadership during my career? By the time I head off to school I'll have between 4-5 years of work experience- throughout that time I won't have too much to discuss about leadership (unless they hire a couple of analysts to support me over the years).

Also, curious how generic start-up businesses are becoming on B-school applications? I can imagine a lot of people are fluffing up their resumes with random "I am the founder and CEO..." of crappy little businesses that are one step past being made up. I have a current web-based business idea being developed by a friend that I hope to launch in the next couple of months. It won't be a huge money-maker, but definitely a cool idea and shows a bit of my entrepreneurial mindset. It'll have the potential of me needing to hire on 2-3 employees which would then help build my leadership "story."

Thanks for your time!

[MBAApply]

I'm not sure what you want me to tell you.

Again, focus on emphasizing what you have, rather than worrying about what you don't have. If you really are concerned about not having enough leadership experience post-college, then GET SOME. And if you are only going to pursue stuff purely for a b-school application (i.e. you wouldn't bother getting involved if it wasn't for the b-school app), then you've got it ass backwards.

Focus on life and career first -- and when the time comes for b-school apps, do the best you can to sell what you have. It's pretty easy to spot someone who is window dressing their life.

You can't game the system. Worrying about what adcoms care or don't care about is really not productive (because in reality, adcoms care about finding high caliber and talented applicants just like anyone else - they like people who aren't worker drones, who have a bit of depth and personality, who are active people, and so forth -- if you want to be that, then focus on developing such things!).

Alex
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com

[Anon]

I am not an admissions consultant but I am pretty well-read on the process, and I think the answer here is to just talk about your college leadership experience. Adcoms will find that more impressive than if you instead try to manufacture meaningful experience out of the last two years. They already know you're working hard at your job and couldn't be managing people in any significant way as an analyst....yet they admit droves of 24-year old analysts every year. It's not because those admitted students invented management experience where it didn't exist.