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MBA Resume Format: The PAR Method
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When it comes to standing out in competitive applicant pools, your MBA resume is one of the most important parts of your whole application. A powerful MBA resume can help applicants grab the attention of the admission committee and convey an overview of your potential to succeed not only in the business school classroom, but in your future career as well.
MBA resume best practices
When I have conversations with candidates in webinars or information sessions at VietAccepted, I notice that most have a tendency to think of MBA resumes as the same as job resumes. However, they are totally different.
While there might be some overlaps, the job resume and MBA resume target different audiences. While employers look for your professional skills to handle certain problems in the workplace, MBA resumes look for your leadership skills and your potential to succeed.
MBA resume example: The P-A-R Method
How do you demonstrate your leadership in the MBA resume?
One technique I often use to edit my clients’ resumes to make it more impactful and powerful in the eyes of the admission committee is to use the P-A-R method.
The P-A-R method (Project - Action - Result) is a guide to help candidates devise more result-oriented bullets for their resumes. When building their resume, many MBA candidates tend to outline their job descriptions, making the bullets vague and overly general. By using P-A-R framework, you can quantify your impacts and achievements in the workplace.
Crafting your best MBA resume: Why you need the P-A-R Method
The P-A-R method focuses on the most important thing that admissions committees are looking for in a resume: your impact.
Because your goal for writing a bullet should be geared towards the result, you would need to frame your mindset to quantify everything in the bullet as much as possible. If you fail to cultivate a sense of impact in your resume, admissions committees will have no insight as to how successful you were and they may assume that you are inflating the results.
For example, if you simply write in the resume that you manage a project, that is vague and would be a challenge for admissions committees to understand you on a more personal level. They expect to see your MBA skills such as leadership, teamwork, or communication so that they can benchmark you against other competing candidates.
By providing more context on specific projects and elaborating more on your actions that drove impact, you would help strengthen your candidacy.
Effective MBA resumes quantify impact
The next thing you need to do is quantify your results in terms of numbers and relevant metrics. When the results are difficult to quantify, you can use descriptive numbers or values to help your readers better understand the circumstances.
For example, here’s an example of how you could leverage the P-A-R Method to the statement “I managed a team of three people.”
P-A-R Method:
- P (Project): Revise and execute go-to-market strategy.
- A (Action): Managed a team of three analysts to conduct market analysis to identify X, Y, and Z.
- R (Results): Findings leveraged by the organization and increased market share X percent and brand awareness X percent.
And now your final version will be:
- Managed three analysts in conducting market analysis to revise and execute go-to-market strategy, resulting in X percent increase in market share and X percent increase in brand awareness.
I hope you can recognize the difference and how impactful the “after” bullet as compared to your “before” bullet.