Nontraditional Candidate MBA Odds Assessment

You don't have a weak GPA, but you don't have a lot of quant in your background. You might have a weaker test score, so it's probably going to be a good idea for you to take some quantitative coursework in preparation. That's something you can start after you finish the test. The test is still the most important thing, but once you have the test squared away, taking something like MBA math or a Berkeley Extension program or even HPX Core. Something where you’re being graded, you’re showing them like, hey, not only am I so serious about the MBA that I’m starting my education now, but I can hang, I can do math, and I can get an A in a class. That will at that point then obliterate any concerns that you're not ready to handle the coursework. So that's what I would say, to just square away. We're still really only talking about the first of these profiles. It's like there's so much more that goes into this that's much more important than your brainpower profile, but we always have to start with the brainpower profile because once you hit submit, you can't alter it and it is kind of black and white. So there are situations where someone who's knocking it out of the park on all these other four dimensions (career progress, school fit, passion, character) isn't getting in because of their test score, because of their GPA. Schools hate it when that happens, but sometimes their hands are tied. So that's my advice there. Just keep going. It sounds like you're doing all the right stuff so very happy to see that. Yeah, excellent. And whatever happens, don't let the test stop you. Okay? So if you get to the end and it's like, I've got a 580 GMAT score and that's it, that's as good as it's going to get, still apply. Still apply to the same schools. One of your schools was the online MBA at Michigan and the online MBA programs are a lot more forgiving about those statistics. So Michigan's average GMAT for their…

Bob: I believe it was like 680? I think their residential was 710, 720.

Angela: Yeah, exactly. So it's 680 average GMAT, which is lower. So they're going to look at you and they're going to want to want you. I think if they can, they will. What we always advise is when you have something in your profile that's like a glaring weakness, like a weak test score, to add safer schools on the bottom. Still aim high, still apply to your reach schools, but then just give them the chance to say yes. Don't force a no without giving them the chance to say yes to you. But then plan for something on the lower end in case they have a problem with the test score. Great! Okay, so now let's dig into your career profile because this is really where I had the most questions. When I looked at your resume —

Bob: Uh oh!

Angela: No, it's just what most people find when they get to this moment is that their resume is toilet paper and they have to start over. They have to start entirely over. And that's for sure, I mean, just look at your background, you've never had to present yourself to a business audience. So of course, your resume is not going to be in line with an MBA expectation. But let me see if I can share my screen here and bring up your resume so that we can actually talk through some of these specific aspects. So I noticed that your resume has the name [redacted] at the top, which is probably the person you got the template from and just put information into it. There you go. So this is on the back end of Microsoft Word. You want to go in and change the author, change the information in the Word document before you print it to a PDF, and then put your name there so that they know it's you. It's a funny thing. People don't realize that this happens when you convert a Word document to a PDF.

Bob: That is such a dumb mistake, but I appreciate you pointing it out.

Angela: Everybody does it. Everybody does it. It's these little things that you wouldn't think of unless you're spending your whole life inside these programs. Okay, so I'm always a fan of removing the qualifications when you're working on an MBA resume, so we'll just assume that you get rid of that. But now let's look at this work experience. I'm thinking, if I'm the admissions committee, I'm looking to see that there's career progression, there's consistency, there's a track record of staying in one place, growing, advancing, moving up. My read on some of this is that some of these were contemporaneous, I can see. So that's also something you'll have to deal with in the timeline because at first glance, it looks like you've had five jobs, which isn't the best look and it's going to beg some questions. So let's discuss this. So I guess all of the missionary stuff happened contemporaneous with your law enforcement career, or were there times where you were full time doing the mission stuff?

Bob: Sure. So yes and no. So law enforcement has always been full time. I transitioned, so if you're looking at the second from the bottom, Prince William County, Police Officer 1, I was there. I was full time. Then I transitioned to a full-time graduate degree, and that required us to move about 7 hours away. I had thought that I was going to pursue that online. I was really blessed with the opportunity to go on a full ride scholarship, but it was contingent upon having a decent GPA, which I maintained, and then the other side was being residential and being full time. So that's the reason for the move. Once I began my MDiv, I was pursuing that really as a full-time, full-time student. So, I think the average is something like 9 to 12 credits. I averaged 18 credits a semester during my Masters and then continued on. One semester, I think I did 20 credits or something crazy. While I was doing that, I had that missions position that you saw there, I worked for the school. That was a part-time role that felt full time. So I was there on paper 30 hours but due to the international work that I did, I'm working all hours of the night, and so sometimes I had a 45-hour work week, sometimes it was less. And then on the tail end of my MDiv, and before I walked into my doctoral program, while still maintaining that mission's position, I had the awesome opportunity to join a local church in the area. I got to work with the pastoral team. So it was a hodgepodge of both. Then in the midst of all of that, COVID happened and there's just gigantic layoffs. So that's partially what you're seeing. There's definitely some discrepancies, but that's what those are.

Angela: Okay so it's always a really fun challenge to take someone's career and life and try to fit it all into one page, and that's what you're going to have to do. My feeling is you actually might want to have two sections in the resume, one being law enforcement career and the other being, I'm not sure what you'd call it, spiritual career, mission career, give it a name, right?

Bob: Vocational ministry.

Angela: Yeah, vocational ministry. Because also I think the vocational ministry, I guess, was a less serious aspect of your career. It's closer to the side of volunteering, even though I guess you were paid for some of these positions. Does that fit with your experience?

Bob: Correct. In the theological or vocational ministry world, they would look at my experience and go, “Wow, you were really plugged in. You did quite a bit.”. Probably similar to consulting. If you're an MBA person, they're like, “Okay, you've been around the block a little bit.”. But I think you're right. I think for most folks who are not familiar with this world, they would look at that and say “You helped a lot of people. Okay, I don’t get it, but cool.”.

Angela: Yeah so I think the most interesting challenge for you is going to be to turn this into an MBA resume. And so your formatting can… We could change the format. I would get rid of all this stuff. I would structure this slightly differently. But I think the most valuable challenge for you is going to be drilling down into your experiences here and beginning to frame some of what you've achieved in language that will make more sense to a broader business audience and importantly, someone who has no grounding in law enforcement or church planting residency or all of that stuff. So let's actually do one really quick example together here. I think this would be really helpful. So let's look at your most recent role here as a state trooper. What are some of the things that you're doing in the community, thinking in terms of results? So like, saving lives, preventing accidents, enforcing laws. Tell me how you measure your success.

Bob: Sure. So there's a couple of different ways we could do that. One of them is just quantifying the number of engagements we have with the public. So it's weird because I feel like I'm selling myself and at the same time don't want to be modest.

Angela: By the way, that's where you want to do it is on the resume. So you have to fully pitch all of your awesomeness on the resume so that the interviews and the essays can be all about your character, your heart, your values. But if we can't see like, okay, he chose law enforcement, not what I would have chosen, but all right, that was his choice. What I want to know is, did he kick butt in his field? Did he do a really good job in his field? So now we got to talk about how you did a great job. That's what the whole resume is all about. So keep going.

Bob: Sure. So one of the ways, if we're looking statistically, I believe last year alone, I held the most traffic enforcement stops, which I know makes probably 98% of the population cringe. You're like, nooo! I gave a lot of warnings, but I had the most engagements out of my barracks, which means that I'm having that connection with the community. More on a positive note for what people would appreciate. I volunteer and I work with our recruitment team in an unofficial capacity. So I think coming up this week, I'm going to be at a local college and I've traveled to a bunch of different events all throughout New England.

Angela: Perfect. Now we're getting into the substance of like, as a law enforcement officer, what a guy are you. I'm reading between the lines, and it sounds like in the first category, you just work harder and smarter, maybe, than everybody else, it sounds like. Now this is me, don't take credit for that. I'm just trying to read between the lines here. Then the second side, I see is like you take greater responsibility for culture building and recruiting within the organization. How would we measure those things? The first thing you said is you had 98%… What did you say? 98% engagement?

Bob: I'm sorry, I was saying 98 % of the population would cringe at the fact that I —

Angela: Oh that’s right. That you had the most traffic stops.

Bob: Correct.

Angela: Why do you feel like you had more traffic stops than everybody else? Were you working longer hours? Were you just more diligent? Did you know the places to stand that were smarter? What was the root of that success?

Bob: I did not work more hours than most folks. I would say that that came down to a want to or a desire. I enjoy that side of my work. I enjoy the “what if” of every encounter. I like the fact of holding folks accountable who are breaking rules, and at the same time, I really like extending that olive branch to folks who might be having a bad day. Like yesterday, I stopped a girl and she was crying and I'm like, what's going on? And we literally in the middle of a traffic stop had a little mini heart-to-heart for two minutes where she just told me about her anxiety and about what’s going on at work. And by the end of it, those tears turned to laughter and she was like, hey, I really appreciate it. So, knowing that that could be my encounter during a traffic stop or on the flip side, I could stop you for something ridiculously small and I end up getting a ton of illegal drugs that end up saving somebody else down the line from overdosing. That's what I like. So that's a long answer to a short question but it really is a hodgepodge.

Angela: So this is like for the audience listening, you see how when we start to pick underneath the surface of the experience, how we really start to understand who this person is and how he thinks and what his values are. And so there was a lot of information in that. It's quite cool to me that you see your role as traffic cop as like taking care of your community in so many different ways. It's like both being there to make sure the rules are followed, but also to be kind when someone needs to be slowed down a bit and made to feel better so they could go forward more safely in their day. So, you might frame this as increased safety in my community by XYZ thing that you did that can be measured, something like that. And that's just one facet of it. Then you've got the recruitment, then you've got things like, I'm guessing there were times where you had to pull a gun and manage a difficult situation. And my guess is that in those situations, you manage to do it with minimal casualties, minimal incident. And so that would also be something to highlight. I can tell that you're not the brute force guy. You're the guy who's going to calm everyone down, restore the peace, living up to the values that a lot of people might say are the intent behind being a police officer or state trooper. So you want your resume to really showcase that to the extent that you can quantify it and measure it. And let me tell you, everything can be quantified and measured. It's not always easy to do, but it can be done. And so one of the things I want to offer you, we have what we call the Badass Resume Protocol. It's our online course to help you understand how to MBA-ify your resume. And so we'll let you take that course for free as a thanks for being for being a Bob, for doing this service to our YouTube audience. And I think you'll find that enlightening because part of what you're going to find in the MBA is that you've already got a lot of the core leadership, creative problem-solving, strategic, analytical thinking skills already from your education and from your work. Most people have already cultivated that essential thinking and just orientation towards the world skill set, pre MBA. Then a big part of the challenge to go from pre MBA to post MBA is then up-leveling all of your communication skills and being ready to hang in a business environment and to make yourself understood, even though you are coming from a really different background from everybody else. The resume is one of the places where you signal that to the admissions committee. So I think you'll think you'll enjoy that program.

Bob: Thank you.

Angela: You’re welcome. Let's take one more look at your five MBA profiles because I think everyone watching would agree that, so we’ve dealt with brain power, which is still an unknown, but you’re working on it. The career progress to me looks quite strong. So you’ve got these two parallel paths, but in each path you were growing in responsibility, gaining more authority, presumably also getting a raise, getting more accolades, awards as it were. So I think the career progress, and this is why we spent all that time just talking about your resume because that’s where you’re really going to show that, is on the resume. So that part of your profile is super important and it's especially important for someone like you where they’re going to have no background. Anything they're going to know about what it means to be a successful law enforcement officer or successful missionary, you're going to have to show them and you're going to have to do it in the resume itself because they don't have that background. So that’s why that piece is so critically important for you. And then we’ve got the school fit, passion, and character dimension. And like I said, I think everybody watching can already see there's a strong alignment with school values for the schools you're targeting. You're clearly demonstrating a series of passions in all of your life choices and in embodying the way you do your work and you're also showing character, which is revealing that you're someone who actually cares about others and about making the world a better place. So from here, it's really just about you executing that in the application itself through your essays and getting ready for interviews. But my guess is that as long as you're able to get a test score that puts you on the game board, so you don't have to have the world's best test score, but as long as you have a test score that gets you on the game board, I think all of these schools are going to take you pretty seriously. And you're going to be one of those guys in the class where everybody talks about you. Just like, yeah, this is a guy sitting next to me who was a state trooper. You'll be one of those interesting people who adds diversity and spice to the classroom discussion because you have had experiences that none of your classmates will have had. So I think you've got a really solid platform.

Bob: Wow. I really appreciate that. That's really encouraging. I heard from all the reviews and again, from watching all of your videos and all of your resources — which are super helpful, to anybody watching — I've heard that you're a huge encourager and at the same time you're brutally honest, which I think is the perfect mix and it's what you need. And so, again, anything that you have in that ballpark, even on the brutally honest side, I want to hear. But I really appreciate that you're boosting confidence and taking that step. I really appreciate that.

Angela: Yeah, you're welcome! The brutally honest stuff is I already said it, you got to crush that test score or make it easy for them to accept you even if it's weak. And you've got to get really good at framing yourself in a way they understand. Just let me refer back to the Five Dimensions (brain power, career progress, school fit, passion, character) because it’s so important. Most of the things that are going to determine your success, it is your job to communicate it in a way that they understand it. Your GMAT and GPA are numbers, but literally everything else hinges on how you communicate. And what I'm telling you is you've got the substance, you've got the values, you've got the character, you've got the demonstrated progress that they're looking for, you've got the raw material, but that will all be worth nothing if you can't communicate it in a way that they can understand. So that's the challenge in front of you. And of course, this is why people ultimately choose to work with our team is because that's a complicated and challenging journey and always easier to do if you have a buddy. But I think in terms of the substance of your profile, you have absolutely what it takes and I think any school would really be lucky to have you in their community.

Bob: Thank you so much. Awesome.

Angela: I hope everybody watching really enjoyed this conversation. If you're rooting for Bob, please leave him a comment down below. If you want to be featured, if you want to be featured in one of these sessions, you can fill out our form, which is also linked here. We'll see you next week on MBA Monday. Drive safe, everybody. Don't speed.