Building your profile early

If you're years away, this one's for you

A lot of the people who message me are twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. They've just graduated or they're a year or two into their first job, and the question is always some version of: what do I do now, so that by the time I apply I've got a profile that gets in?

Some of them are coming from IIT. A lot of them are coming from tier two and tier three colleges in India, and they're worried that's already decided it. It hasn't, but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter either.

I was in that position myself. When I graduated in 2017 I already knew I wanted to end up in business, not stay an engineer for too long, and that I'd do an MBA at some point. And when I looked at who gets into a school like INSEAD, I noticed two kinds of people: the ones from very prestigious backgrounds, and the ones already at McKinsey or BCG being sponsored, or heading there afterwards. If you're not from a tier one college somewhere in the world, that's going to hurt your chances at first. The rest of this module is what you do about it.

What business schools actually look for

This is what I tell every candidate, and if you're early it's worth more to you than to anyone, because you've still got time to build it.

1. The obvious stuff, the pedigree. Did you do well at school? Have you done well professionally? Have you worked at good companies? Have you been recognised for anything? This is the part a tier one college helps with, and it's only one part.
2. Who you are outside work. Are you passionate about something, and how far have you taken it? Sport, charity, a hobby, an activity. Not "I play cricket at the weekend", but did you start a club, did you compete, did you win something, is there anything recognisable to show for it.
3. How you give back. Do you teach people? Mentor? Volunteer? Give your time to something? Schools read this as a hint of how you'll give back to your class, and later to the school as an alumnus, and they care about that a lot. They want alumni who carry the school's name forward.
4. What you're planning to do afterwards, and why business school. Based on everything above, they look at your plan. How well have you thought it through, is it achievable for you, will an MBA actually help, and will this particular school help. That tells them whether you'll be successful after, which is what they're betting on.
5. Whether you'll be a good piece of the puzzle. In a class of people from so many different backgrounds, will you add something positive to the mix, culturally and otherwise, or just take a seat.

Notice that only the first one is about where you went to college, and even that one is mostly about what you did after.

Know yourself first, even now

Everything in this course starts with knowing yourself, and that's true five years out too. What makes you unique? What actually interests you? What are you good at, what are you bad at, what do you want in life, and who are you as a person?

Most people at twenty-two haven't asked. The ones who have tend to end up somewhere on purpose.

So make a five-year plan and a ten-year plan. Not because it'll happen that way, because it won't, nobody can predict that. Make it because having it changes what you do today, and that's very understated.

For example, the goalposts. Say you're choosing between two jobs. If you know that in five years you want to be at a school like INSEAD, or in a particular country, or a particular kind of person, that goal is a goalpost, and it tells you which of the two jobs is more aligned. Without the goal you'd never have thought about it, and you'd quite possibly pick the wrong one. It shows up in tiny decisions like that, over and over, and they add up to a profile.

What to actually do

Do your current job really well. This is the baseline and there's no substitute for it. Be the person people come to for advice. Be the expert in your area, whatever it is. Everything else sits on top of this.

Take a hobby somewhere. It can be anything. The question isn't what it is, it's how far you've pushed it. Most people go to work, come home, watch TV, and if they've got a hobby they just do it. Have you started a club? Entered competitions? Won anything? Taught it to someone? Whatever you do, do it with real passion and push it further than the people around you push theirs.

Give back, in whatever way is yours. Teaching, mentoring juniors, volunteering, a cause you'd give a weekend a month to. Pick one and stay with it for years, because two years of one thing is worth far more than six months each of four things.

Plan ahead, and keep the goalposts in view. Going with the flow never works. Every year, check the plan, and check whether what you did this year moved you towards it.

For example, how mine added up. None of this was a strategy at the time. But when I look back at what went into my application, it was: co-founding a startup in my final year and running thirty workshops, teaching myself to code and interning until I got the job I wanted abroad, three years in a community service club including disaster relief work, becoming a member of the national archery association, and two years on a helpline after personal losses. Every one of those started years before I applied, and every one was me taking something a bit further than I needed to. That's the whole trick.

If you're from a tier two or tier three college

I'll be straight with you. It hurts at first, and you can't change it. What you can change is everything else on the list, and most people from tier one colleges don't bother, because they've never had to.

• Work at companies people have heard of, even if you have to take a step sideways to get there. Two years at a recognised name does more for the pedigree box than a fancier title somewhere nobody knows.
• Get recognised for something. Awards, a promotion ahead of schedule, a project that got written about, a talk you gave. One concrete thing beats a paragraph of adjectives.
• The GMAT is your equaliser. Module 4 covers it. A strong score is the clearest signal you can send that you'll keep up, and it's entirely in your hands.
• Go further on two and three than anyone around you. The hobby taken to a competition. The volunteering that lasted years. This is where you stop being "a candidate from a tier two college" and start being a person.
• Have a plan that only you could have. Number four on the list is where a specific, believable goal outweighs a college name.

Do this now

Write down where you want to be in five years and in ten, in a few lines each. Then go through the five things above and give yourself an honest mark on each. Paste both into the chat and ask my clone what the weakest one is, and what one thing you could start this month that would still be on your application in four years.