For the HBS MBA Business Minded Essay Example of an applicant who has consulting, investment banking, and, most interestingly, ballet dance experience, I had to highlight the interesting career transitions. This is not required if you have extra-curricular as truly as an extra-curricular and not as a full-time serious career pursuit before other choices became clear in your teens or more from 8th grade when typically, students tend to choose a career path.
Because Harvard is looking for applicants to demonstrate a passion for business and use business as a force of good, I captured the applicant’s openness to different perspectives as a key skill in influencing a group of decision-makers. To reiterate his business skills that were evident in the resume but did not stand out when you compared other investment banking professionals, I chose to highlight a pro-bono consulting engagement with a non-profit.
The previous failure to sell the satellite internet service is highlighted to demonstrate the applicant’s influence in selling the service through visual storytelling. Since the word count is 300 words, it was quite a bit of a challenge to tie together three career journeys into one essay and establish his business minded skills while also making the narrative personal.
The essay captures three different career paths – creative career as a passion, investment banking as a logical choice, and consulting pro bono as an application of the person’s creative and analytical thinking.
From the client essays I have reviewed there is a large group of applicants who has a history of taking a shot at a different career in the creative or performance arts industry before pivoting back to a traditional consulting, finance or technology careers.
If you are in a rare group with strong creative and analytical skills, highlight them strategically in business minded, career choice essay as I have done in this HBS MBA Essay Example.