I have advised against using exploration of career through MBA as a narrative. One reason is that schools don’t like applicants who have not dedicated their time in exploring careers or finding a fit in an industry or a function.

Your due diligence and commitment for career growth will be questioned if you are coming from a traditional background.

Modern Creative Careers

But in our modern careers - a technology person can very well have a loyal following through YouTube or TikTok, or a travel enthusiast could have 1 million followers and a traditional career.

Not Just Subscription Count

I remember a year ago when a potential client from China reached out and the only thing she shared was her TikTok subscription count. She was breaking down complex finance jargon into bite sized learning videos. It was highly engaging for the audience. Her day job as a banker in a global brand was not remarkable. It had all the traditional career milestones.
If I had worked with her, the first thing I would have thought about would be to connect these two stories.

Connecting Creative and Traditional Careers

For the Harvard MBA Career Choice or Business Minded essay, I have shared a narrative of an applicant, who is working in Private Equity. But the path to enter private equity was not straightforward. She shares how even as a kid she was really into rock music and guitars. I really wanted to capture that passion in the opening line itself. Then the build up was all about the dilemma of choosing a career.

This works because she continues to have over 50,000 patrons supporting her music, downloading her albums or spreading the word about her new releases. You should not use a dilemma narrative if the only metric that you can share is the subscription count. Because as anyone in modern Video streaming platforms would share, you could acquire followers at a faster pace through advertising. Schools know that. But if you say that over the past 5 years, "I recorded let us say 20 songs, and through each song, I built an audience" – that is much more believable.

For F1GMAT’s Harvard MBA Essay Guide, I have captured a unique story of an applicant facing dilemma of continuing in Private Equity or her music career. And if you are using a similar narrative, you must understand the background of the applicant. She is in the top 1 percentile in Private Equity.

The dilemma is a dilemma because she is doing incredibly well in Finance and for a one-person band with limited marketing, her music career is also impressive.

You can’t use such an example if one of your creative, sports or passion career doesn’t have verifiable milestones like awards, recording, albums, and finally subscription or download counts.