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Commentary: Haas MBA Career Goals Essay (Technology to Consulting)

For the Berkeley Haas MBA Career Goals essay for an applicant transitioning from Technology to Strategy consulting, the challenges are two fold.

One – the applicant must quickly establish that his motivation for career transition didn’t happen after he underperformed in his current role.

Second – quoting the Berkeley Haas MBA curriculum in itself is unlikely to persuade the admissions team to consider his candidacy if there is no relevant experience related to the post-MBA target industry.

Clean tech is the target industry for the applicant.

Luckily, he had experience preparing proposals for the government through a non-profit engagement.

I get this question quite a lot.

If the non-profit engagement in the target industry is shorter - that is 2-4 months. Does that mean that my goals are feasible?

That is the #1 challenge that I face while guiding clients with essay comments and edits.

You must establish authority on the most pressing problem – in this case, what cleantech is facing.

Many of the challenges are regulatory.

Many are around supply chain bottlenecks.

Most are around incentives so that the entire ecosystem moves towards cleantech without disrupting livelihood in a drastic manner.

Now another challenge for me was to position the applicant as an entrepreneurial candidate because the person was quoting starting a boutique consulting company in cleantech regulation as the long-term goal.

From a pure technology role in multiple industries to a cleantech consulting role, I have captured the most essential career milestones, green-tech related skills and a strong understanding of the challenges that awaits him in cleantech.

Once these three points were established, when I quote the curriculum in the Career Goals Essay example, it is much more believable that just quoting how the person will achieve this career goals with Berkeley Haas MBA.

That is one reason you see me opening with the line, “I led a team of three to take the office security solution live for 3m+ customers with minimal glitches.”

Establish competence as a leader working on complex technology solution early on so that the admissions team has no doubts on the motivation for switching industries.

When you quote entrepreneurial long-term goals, you must be extremely careful not to choose random business models or entrepreneurial finance-related courses from the Haas MBA curriculum.

It must be tailor made for your goals. That is what I have done for the Berkeley Haas Technology to Strategy Consulting Career Goals Essay Example.