One of the most important things to demonstrate when applying to business school is teamwork skills.
Applying to business school requires a deep and thoughtful self assessment as well as a thorough and accurate demonstration of some critical core competencies including aptitude for quantitative analysis, leadership potential and most importantly, teamwork skills.
Business is a team sport and top b-schools are serious about bringing in candidates who play well in the sandbox with others. They have also gotten really good at sniffing out who don’t. But why is teamwork so important?
Just about everything in b-school is done as a group.
There is actually very little individual work in a business school curriculum. Sometimes, even tests are done with your study group or class partner. The reason for this is that business schools know in the real world, nobody works in a vacuum. Getting along with others is a critical skill to achieving results in the workplace and most projects on the job are done either in concert with others or with the approval of others. When you go to business school, the assignments and projects are allocated accordingly and professors are often just as interested in seeing how you perform with partners and groups as they are interested in your individual performance.
Teamwork is not always easy to demonstrate.
Saying you are a people person is easy but showing that you are one is hard. Start by telling business schools about projects or activities which required you to work with others. This sounds simple, but a common mistake b-school applicants make is to over-emphasize their personal achievements because they feel like they need to impress the admissions committee. What really impresses the adcom is to talk about how your achievements came by leveraging the collective power of collaboration.
Working across varied cultures or locales is particularly impressive.
The world is a global marketplace and working with diverse teams especially in areas outside the US tells the admissions committees you offer a unique perspective that will be valuable to your classmates. Since what you bring to the table is just as (if not more) valuable than what you have accomplished at work, convincing the adcoms you can work in a culturally diverse environment will communicate your value working in a culturally diverse classroom. B-school students hail from almost every developed country in the world, with a typical class being at least 30% international. Being able to bridge this culture gap by leveraging your experience having worked in a culturally rich environment will only encourage the top schools to bring you in.
For information on how we can guide your business school application process, email us at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com or go to http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/contact