This section is crucial for us to gain a deeper understanding of who you are, not solely as a student but also as an individual, enabling us to understand the unique value you could bring to our program.
What is the most important aspect you would like us to know about you that is not reflected in your resume or application?
You have the flexibility to choose from three formats to express yourself:
Be it written essay, video, or slide presentation, you have three general goals to achieve:
Here are the questions that I think admissions officers have about prospective students - these are the questions that you hope to answer:
When you first meet yourself, how would you describe yourself?
Again, describe something that allows IE Business to gain a deeper understanding of yourself as a person, and what unique value that you will bring to the MBA program. Consider your hobbies and interests; academic areas of interests, including research and/or awards that you have won; interesting or unique skillsets; or interesting or innovative professional experiences (but only the information that does not appear on your resume).
Why are you interested in advancing as part of your career and in what direction? What do you hope to achieve?
a. personal life goals and/or
b. professional life goals
You will need to put together these two questions: How will your prior experience (professional and/or personal) contribute to your reaching those goals? How will the IE Business program contribute to your reaching those goals?
This is not a main focus of the essay, but you should include this context as part of your description of your goals.
This requires you to have researched IE Business and have an in-depth understanding of the program. Generalizations like "world-class faculty" or "international alumni network" will not be adequate.
a. Real-life experience in a professional setting (but only the information that does not appear on your resume)
b. Real experience working in a university setting
c. Aspects of your education / degree that will give you an advantage (for example, research or special projects)
d. A hobby or interest of yours that you have been seriously pursuing
e. Aspects of your personality
f. Demonstrated ability to work with different people from different backgrounds
g. A cultural background that would allow you to work effectively with people who are usually underserved
h. Unique credentials or special skillsets
In other words, how will this MBA program best prepare you for your future career? Again, this section would be based on the research that you have conducted.
You may be wondering how to answer No. 1 - "Who are you?" As the reader, I will be looking for something more than appears on the resume, a brief self-introduction that allows me to understand more about you and your motivations.
There are two ways to approach this. One is to describe your personal background, and how it became the foundation of your interest.
Here is an example of a business school applicant who was describing how her background was rooted in business … leading up to why she herself was a stay-at-home mom:
"I come from a family of business entrepreneurs. My great-great grandfather, George Brumder, built the United States’ largest German print empire, Germania, in the late nineteenth century, and set up each of his sons with a business. My grandfather, Philip George Brumder, whom we called Opi, took over his father’s business and turned it into a global empire. My father, Nicholas, became an artist blacksmith and started his own business, creating unique chandeliers, railings, and monuments. My mother started [Name] Cemetery in Georgetown, Texas, which featured headstones and monuments created by artists, not machines, and became Texas’s first certified green burial cemetery. My mother was very open with us children about the costs of her various businesses, showing us the bills and her balance sheets, and encouraging us to observe the business operations. She hoped that we too would own businesses one day.
I became a stay-at-home mother, but I still love working with numbers. The household duty that I enjoy above all is managing the family finances. I love the satisfaction of organizing our accounts and investments, and keeping track of the balance sheet. In a single-income household, I find ways to be clever with our money.
If I enjoyed managing accounts so keenly, why did I not follow the family tradition of starting my own business? I was good with numbers, but words were my downfall. Vision problems impaired my ability to read for my entire life."
In this example, the business school applicant is describing his motivation not only for going from law into business, but also into the "business of water."
"'Turtle Pond' was once a clear aquamarine fissure in Texas limestone, near the trailer-home-strewn dirt road I grew up on. But when I turned twelve, residents began running their septic systems into Turtle Pond, and sewage seeped intoadjacent residential wells. Aquatic life died, and people got sick. My mother contracted a terminal bacterial infection that will eventually take her life.
Sitting in the 'Business of Water' course almost ten years later, I came to the conclusion that the law couldn’t affect urgent change in some cases. The law settles disputes, answers questions, and tells us where our rights begin and end. But it cannot undo harm that has already occurred. Business, however, can prevent the harms of insufficient water quality and quantity through innovations that leverage policy, water management, and technology."
B. Introductory Paragraph - The A-Ha Moment Example
Another way to approach this is to describe the moment or the experience that led you to your decision to pursue a certain career. Here is an example from a former client who describes coming to understand consumer behavior in an unusual setting:
"When I was sixteen, I spent three months in Yucatan, Mexico, in a small village so rural that houses had no doors and stray animals were house guests. I was a part of a small student group tasked with initiating a sustainable project to improve the tiny town of Teabo. We suggested cleaning up the trash piled along the streets and in front of homes. However, in Mayan culture, trash in the yard is a sign of consumption and affluence, not unlike wealthy people displaying million-dollar paintings that look like third-grade scrawls. With that dynamic in mind, we developed a furniture recycling program that allowed the residents to display their consumables. People would place their trash into recycling bins, and each month they would gather bottles and boxes to create outdoor furniture and decorations. In this way, trash was not collected without purpose, and consumers had control over their goods’ destinies. The key to changing behavior, I learned, was to understand the audience and to give people choices and control.
My former boss and mentor once told me that in marketing you have two paths: one ethical, the other not so much. You can manipulate peoples' subconscious behaviors and tendencies to your own advantage, or alternatively, influence people to make positive decisions. My career goal is to work in behavioral marketing for a consulting firm, guiding companies to understand their customers, while taking the long view for organizations and society. I seek to pursue my master’s degree early in my career in order to prepare myself for the challenges of the field, which require not only the ability to analyze data but also to exercise ethical decision-making."
In this example from someone applying to a graduate accounting program, he starts out searching for a thief, and ends up loving spreadsheet analysis.
"In past operational roles, I have been limited in my exposure to the financial control side of management. My 'A-ha!' moment – the one that sparked my interest in accounting – came during my last management position. I had been promoted and sent as a trouble-shooter to a location that had been losing inventory at an unsustainable 'shrink' rate. The previous management team had compiled several years’ worth of data on inventory shrinkage, but not seriously tracked the changes. When I began to investigate, it became clear we were far outside industry norms. The numbers revealed when the changes occurred and a pattern regarding particular personnel. Analysis of daily operational financials uncovered theft of close to a million dollars, previously explained away as 'typical shrink.'
Analyzing spreadsheets for hidden meaning gave me insight into what was happening and direction for our investigation. By the end of the first week, the other team members were complaining about the long days of searching Excel reports. I was just the opposite. I found myself wishing that I could do similar work all the time. Although the reason for our work was stressful, the actual work was very enjoyable."
Although you should explain your professional motivations, you should also introduce a bit of the personal to explain who you are and where you come from.... and make it interesting for them to read.
If you have a lot of the potential to illustrate what you are saying with graphics (photography) and/or super-short videos, then you might consider using the 10-slide PowerPoint presentation. Fifty words should be the maximum on a slide.
Important: Formatting is important. You are sharing personal details, but keeping it professional.
The IE Business video essay is only three minutes long. You should write out a video script to look at, and then you and I will brainstorm.
IE Business wants you to be authentic, but don't set a low standard for yourself. Plan out all aspects, and get creative. That is the benefit of the video essay!
I also recommend using a little humor in your video introduction – don't take yourself too seriously.
Of course, do NOT repeat your resume. Enhance your resume with something new, and add something that they wouldn't get from your resume.
Although I recommend that you use a script (again, I would like to review it in advance), but memorize it so that you are not obviously reading.
There are several approaches to the video essay, and I have collected a few from different schools. Note: These are NOT IE Business examples, they are not three minutes long, and they are not providing the information that IE Business seeks (see above). These are only to present different visual approaches that applicants have used in the past.
One approach is to stay still and talk. It gives the Admissions Committee an idea of what you would be like in an interview situation or giving a presentation.
If you are shooting indoors, set up a background that is calm and uncluttered, and make sure that you have good lighting. Try to make the background represent yourself. Don't shoot the video in your bedroom, even if it's an uncluttered bedroom. Make sure that the camera is raised to be centered on your face - you do not want a video shot up your nose.
Here is a good example of someone sitting down, talking. (Note: He makes the mistake of mainly focusing on his resume, which is never the point of these video essays). Notice how he posed in front of a world map, representing his global interests.
In the next two videos, the applicants stay still and talk, but they both choose locations that depict career plus personal life. Of course, if you choose to shoot from an outdoor location, be sure to use the best sound equipment that you can!
Consider how your background, locale, and props relate to your story. Another approach you may use is the show & tell -- you don't just tell them, you show them as part of the video.
A past client spoke a little about her rescue dog, to whom she had been devoting a lot of time after work. She sat on a sofa with the dog snuggled up to her. Sure, it was an obvious play for the "Awwwww" factor, but it was authentic. It also worked with her professional goals - she was in healthcare technology, and she went into that field because she wanted to improve healthcare for doctors (her dad is a doctor) and patients. Her rescue dog was part of that care-giving personality.
Another client took his video on a skiing vacation. He spoke about how skiing helped him to learn to get right back up after inevitable falls, and taught him appreciation for the natural world, in line with one stated goal of putting environmentalism on the same level as capitalism. He also mentioned that he had taught his wife and many friends how to ski, in line with his volunteer work as a soccer coach. After telling his story, he skiied down the slope.
One of my clients, who was co-founder of a food manufacturing startup, did a walk-through of the factory that she built. As she walked, she named the assembly line workers. Her co-founder occasionally popped up in the background and made faces. She wore a blue cap to keep her hair out of the food. The effect was both goofy and serious, in that it conveyed she had built a real business.
This one is filmed inside, but he moves around and his activities are an example of show & tell.
You may want to edit in simple photos to show what you are talking about.
Alternatively, you may wish to comprehensively stitch together various videos and photos from the past and present.
You don't want to come off as cheesy, or do something that has not been done too many times before. For example, people often put on and take off hats to show their many "hats" (roles). Similarly, people stand and talk, then put on a hat, or hold up a picture, put that down, pick up something else, put that down, and so forth. Sadly, this has been done too much.
In general, avoid using lots of props. When you use props, make sure that you are really showing the admissions people something new about yourself.
In this video, the applicant combines location, photos, and prop use ... but most of all, she turns on her personality. She doesn't use props as a crutch.
In this one, the applicant relies very heavily on the use of photos on her tablet, swipe, swipe, swiping away ... so she's using the equivalent of the many "hats" approach. But she's so charming and confident about it, that she gets away with it ... because she stays focused on talking to the viewer.
Most videos are not as good as these examples. Even if your video isn't super-spectacular amazing, you may still be accepted.
I hope that you get some good ideas from these! Be strategic, but also, have some fun with it!.
Prompt: Once you have submitted the online application and paid the application fee, you will receive a link to the online assessment, known as the Kira Assessment. This allows the admissions team to get a sense of your personality and potential before proceeding to a possible interview.
Completing the assessment is simple. You will be given 3 questions to answer in a set amount of time. One of your responses will be written, and two will be recorded via video. The whole process should only take 20 to 30 minutes to complete.
At this time, we are not sure of the time limits on your responses. However, you will have the opportunity to practice as many times as you wish before completing your final video assessment. So we can find out in advance!
IE Business provides the following information:
I provide you with practice questions, and you will practice the One Minute Response.
You will also need to answer one question in written format. Examples: