Top MBA Essay Analysis from Jon Frank---P11: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING MBA APPLIC

JonFrank

3 MBA Application Mistakes that can Wreck Your Chances
You’ve spent weeks and weeks working on your MBA application. You’ve doubled the number of stress lines on your forehead, your local barista is genuinely concerned about your caffeine intake, and you might be developing carpal tunnel. But it all paid off because your essays are compelling and convincing, and your resume is formatted to perfection.

BUT WAIT.

Before you crack open that celebratory craft beer, let’s go over a few last-minute details for your MBA Application. You’ve already invested so much time (and sanity) in your application, it’d be a shame if the adcom flags your application for something small. We’ve worked with thousands of MBA applications, and we see a lot of the same careless, obvious mistakes.

Before you submit your MBA application, check for these common (and avoidable) mistakes.

1. Careless Errors

First, run through the spelling, grammar, all the standard obvious mistakes. Then, check your SCHOOL NAMES. We see this aaaallll the time. Our guy submits his Wharton application, but all his essays talk about how Duke is the right fit for him. Nothing sparks a red flag faster than having the wrong school names in your essays. Spell check will not catch this, so you’ve got to go through your essays with a fine-toothed comb.

2. Letting Your Recommenders Run the Show

Have you checked in with your recommenders? Do you have an idea of what they’re writing about you? Simply asking them to help is not enough. When it comes to LORs, the adcom isn’t only looking to see what those people say – they know you’re smart enough to choose those recommenders wisely (right?) – they’re also looking to see how you manage a project and another person. This is your chance to prove to the adcom that you’re a good manager. If you can’t get them to submit their stuff on time, it reflects badly on you. So… get out there and manage them! Also, you’ll want to give them a little bit of guidance in terms of what they should focus on in your (RICH!) work experience. Make sure those recommendations support the claims you make elsewhere in your application. The content of your recommendation should confirm what you’ve featured elsewhere in your application, while also bringing some new stuff to the table.

3. Waiting For the Last Minute to Submit

This is the most devastating mistake of them all. Through pain, sweat, and tears, you’ve birthed this beautiful application and now you’re having trouble letting go. So you’re going to wait until the verrrrryyy last minute to submit. What could happen? Well, here are some things that have gone down*:

The website servers are overloaded and can’t process your MBA application. You end up submitting late.
You think the deadline is at 5PM but really it was at 12PM… five hours earlier.
You go to submit your MBA application and your Internet cuts out. Comcast is not sympathetic; neither are adcoms.

JonFrank

MIT SLOAN MBA ESSAY ANALYSIS
The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and generate ideas that advance management practice. Discuss how you will contribute toward advancing the mission based on examples of past work and activities. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

The MIT Sloan MBA essay is not a goals essay. Yes, they are asking you about what you will do “in the future” toward advancing their mission, but, they want the evidence to come from prior experiences. Now, before we get all twisted up, let’s simplify it and cut to the heart of it.

Where in your past should we look to be wowed?

What are the moments (either or both inside and outside of work) where we catch a glimpse of something SPECIAL about you? Run-of-the-mill isn’t gonna excite anyone, folks—especially not the ultra-elite like MIT. So, it’s gotta be stuff that’s frickin AWESOME. They’ve done you a favor (hopefully) by limiting your choices to something that has occurred in the past three years. If you’ve read our stuff, attended our webinars, met our guys, you’ll have heard us allude to “assembling your greatest hits.” Well, this is a perfect example of when you’ll wanna be familiar with only the COOLEST things in your personal repertoire, and figure out how to answer this question from there, rather than let this question be the driver of you.

Once you’ve selected the stuff that makes your special sauce shine the MOST (aim for two examples, maaaaybe three, but that may be stretching it), now you’ll wanna engineer this sucker to wow MIT. Don’t come out and state plainly that aspect X of your achievement shows how principled and innovative you are. Show it. How?

Here’s a “thought exercise” to help you tease out possibilities.

Consider ways in which someone ELSE in your shoes may have approached the SAME task in a way that was UN-principled, or LESS principled. And in the same vein, not-so-innovative or LESS innovative. Surely you can imagine this, otherwise your example may not be the best one.

Let’s look at it another way.

Go back to the starting point of the task/example. Imagine someone looking in on this from a distance. Imagine this person PREDICTING how one would solve this problem/approach it. Hopefully, they’d say something like “well, in this scenario, I would expect for you to do X, Y and Z in order to achieve this thing.” But then something much cooler happens. You do what you did, and it SURPRISES THAT PERSON. How? Because you did something that was remarkably “innovative.” And remarkably “principled.” And it makes that guy say “Hunh, I’m impressed by the way you handled this in such an innovative and principled way.” What did you do that would have surprised that guy?

If you look at it using either or both of these hypothetical ways, you may be able to isolate the “thing” that made your example (and therefore you) special.

Here’s how it might look:

Establish the problem, situation, status quo, etc. Establish the goals. Establish the challenges.
Rather than robotically walk us through the stuff you DID, here (for MIT), be sure to incorporate some insight into decisions you made that went above and beyond “what the other guy would have done.” Show us how you could have done X but chose to do Y. Or, that normally the approach here would have been A but YOU chose to do something innovative by doing B.
Rinse and repeat with a second example.
As a final “tag” to this essay, take a few sentences to articulate why this stuff matters to you, and how this instinct (of being principled/innovative/etc.) underscores everything you do, and is a big reason you’ve been successful in the past, and why it’s gonna make you successful in the future. Let us taste it. Connect all this past greatness to something in the future that creates in itch in us to want to share in your success.

xperilla

Jon, hi! I have a question here. My IR score of Gmat is super low, only 1. Do I need to write an optional essay to explain it? Do AO value IR very much now?

JonFrank

Don't use the same essays for every application. Rewrite and reuse wisely
1.Don’t “fix up” an essay for a different question. If School #1 asks you for a 500-word essay on your long-term goals and School #2 asks you for 250 words on why you want to join THEIR school, avoid the urge to “squeeze” your first essay to fit the second question. You’ll spend just as much time editing it to fit the new requirements as you would writing a new one. Furthermore, since the questions asked are different, you won’t deliver YOUR BEST work with unrelated material.
2.Never “fill in the blanks.” Likewise, if you DO have to answer two similar questions, never “fill in the blanks” by changing a school’s name. It’s a surefire road to embarrassing mistakes – you don’t want to accidentally tell Harvard that Yale is your dream school.
3.Rewrite stories. Instead, your best bet is to rewrite your story a second time – keep in mind all of the lessons you’ve learned during your previous application but start fresh. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can tackle a topic the second, third, or fourth time—and most of the time, you’ll write an even better essay.
4.Reuse sentences. Ok, so you don’t wanna reuse entire essays, but if you’ve written a particularly brilliant turn of phrase, there’s no reason NOT to reuse it. Just stick to individual sentences instead of entire paragraphs.
5.Tired? Try something new. If you’re truly stuck, however, it may be time to find a new topic. While your short-term and long-term goals will stay the same, some essay questions are more open-ended. You don’t NEED to use the same failure story each time; if you’re suffering from writer’s block, your best bet is sometimes to try a new approach and a different story.

So remember:
•Don’t “fix up” an essay for a different question.
•Never “fill in the blanks.”
•Rewrite stories
•Reuse sentences, not entire paragraphs.
•Tired? Try something new.

JonFrank

LBS MBA Essay analysis
What are your post-MBA plans and how will your past experience and the London Business School programme contribute? (500 words)

If you look at the 2014 version of this question (“What will your future look like after completing your MBA?”) and compare it to this year’s slightly tweaked version (“What are your post-MBA plans and how will your past experience and the London Business School programme contribute?”), it’s not hard to catch the vapors coming off of the LBS adcom:

“Let’s just ask the question we wanna ask a bit more directly…”

What does this mean for you as the applicant? Give them what they want: a clear, precise, well-argued case for what you hope to succeed in, and why you will be successful (based on your past experiences combined with an LBS MBA). That’s all, folks. If you accomplish those two things, everything extra (“a novel idea,” “a big goal with big upside,” “a socially-responsible and inspiring vision,” etc.) will be just that… “extra.”

Most people will miss the KEY to this essay, by packing too much stuff in. Slow down, take it one simple step at a time, and get the key stuff NAILED down first (you’ll be 98% done at that point).

Now, here’s the danger of going too far with Part I of the question (the GOAL part) without considering how Part II supports it. If you pitch an incredible idea/vision for the future, but have limited ability to back it up with evidence in your past experiences that convinces us that you have the necessary chops to execute on that idea… the idea may sound tasty, but it won’t be worth the risk for an elite MBA program. Remember, elite MBA programs rely on PLACEMENT statistics. Things like “how many students from the graduating class end up… employed” end up making XXX dollars in their first X years out of school, etc. Why? This affects their rankings, and rankings affect the caliber of student drawn to their program–which in turn affects the school’s ability to churn out success stories that juice those stats that then improve rankings and the future caliber of… you see how the cycle works.

So, MBA programs prefer SURE THINGS to high-volatility applicants. Given all that, the best chance you have of proving future success is to point to evidence in your PAST of success in a similar arena. Now, typically this means success in ROLE and INDUSTRY X and then pitching future success that is essentially an EXTENSION of those two things. If you’re a marketing maven, then you may have a hard time painting a picture of yourself as a logistics whiz. “Why should we believe that you will be successful here?” they will ask. This is why industry/career switches tend to be red flags, unless you’re able to convincingly draw a crystal clear connection between your success in the past and your future goals.

Start there: looking back at your career, what have you done? What have you achieved? What are you good at? What MAKES you good at the things you’re good at? Isolate it, sharpen in, be able to describe this to someone in ONE sentence. “I’m the guy who can mobilize a team of 50 people on ten continents.” “I’m the guy who can take ten department’s confused and contradictory initiatives, and seamlessly cohere it into a winning, universally beneficial, perfectly aligned strategy.” “I’m the guy who…” Find evidence in your past. Be messy at first, list ten chaotic forms of support. But then sharpen it, boil it down to three defining MOMENTS. Three episodes, where your actions PAINT A PICTURE of the value you brought.

Once you have that piece LOCKED, now we can cook up a “plan” that is a mouth-watering EXTENSION of it. Now we’re willing to go wherever you take us. If you’re Elon Musk, and you give us your resume, you better believe we will be interested when you tell us “I have an idea for how to revolutionize public transportation in third world countries.” If your background is in sales, however, we’re less interested in your Big Idea.

As you’re building your “post-MBA plans,” focus less on the flash of the idea, and more on the strategy behind EXECUTING it. Show us how well-thought-out the plan is. Do this with detail. Do this with evidence that walks us through how each step is necessary for the next one. Practical, pragmatic, bulletproof. This is the plan that excites MBA adcoms. You want them to say “this guy is gonna be successful.” Or “this guy has success written all over him.”

You don’t want them to say “Wow, this is an absolutely brilliant and inspired idea! … I’m just not entirely sure he’s gonna pull it off.” That reaction is potentially a death sentence.

Here’s the structure that’ll keep you very safe for your first pass:

Hit us with a high-level sense of what kind of ISSUE or PROBLEM you hope to fix. Or an OPPORTUNITY you’re hoping to take advantage of. Quickly provide this background (sentence or two, max). Explain why solving this (or executing on the opportunity) isn’t easy. Explain why this hasn’t been done a million times successfully already. Then explain (super high-level) what your idea is. What your big picture plans are.
Now take us through the story of how this all came into play. What’s the backstory? Where did you start, where did you cut your teeth? And most importantly, show us the evidence as you take us through the KEY NODES of your past, of your value. Don’t just rehash your resume. Present value-defining ACTIONS that made it very clear what made/makes you valuable.
Now that we’re sold on how credible you are in this arena, give us a more detailed walk-through of your plans, showing us exactly how you plan on achieving each step. Details, specificity, show us how much thought went into it by convincing us that there are no holes.
Last but not least, spend just a little bit of time making an argument for why LBS of all the business schools on Earth provides a few UNIQUE opportunities to propel you toward success. Don’t explain that it’s a good b-school, or that you’re interested in LBS. You need to isolate just a few idiosyncrasies of the LBS offerings/class/setup that somehow IMPROVES the probability that you will success as compared to, say, HBS, Stanford, or Wharton. The coolest test to give yourself (embrace this conceit!) is to imagine getting offer letters from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and LBS. Make a case for why you would TURN DOWN the other three and go with LBS. All it takes is two or three bulletproof reasons and you’re home free.

catcatmiao

Jon Frank  is professional , I love you  thank you so much  for sharing experiences

JonFrank

Highlight your accomplishment with simple language and hard evidence

If you’re applying to a top-ranked school, you’ll almost certainly have impressive academic and professional achievements under your belt. Unfortunately, too many applicants either brag about or undermine their achievements in their essays, doing more harm than good. Here are a couple of sentences from a prospective applicant that attempts to demonstrate his can-do attitude but doesn’t quite measure up:

In the record 70 days that it took to reorganize operations, I had to think outside the box and work within limited resources: operating out my apartment, and even sometimes, my car. Without disrupting company procedure too much, I tried to make the most of shared resources among EchoRinse companies.

Let’s begin with some questions: what did this applicant even do? We know he reorganized operations, but what does that mean in this context? Why did he have to work out of his car? Finally, what did he accomplish and can he prove it?

The first thing this needs is a point… an accomplishment that justifies even mentioning this story. By telling us what he did and what he accomplished, these sentences can go from obtuse claims covered in jargon to a powerful demonstration of the writer’s abilities. Furthermore, it can shift his bizarre aside about working out of his car into a new light.

Take a look at what he sent us back after our comments…

In the record seventy days I took to reorganize EchoRinse’s operations (20% ahead of schedule and 10% under budget), I had to find creative solutions to such problems as our lack of office space. Working from my home and even occasionally from my car, I not only set up our Indiana branch but also used company resources to ensure we’d have 7.3M$ contracts from clients such as Whaley Motors from day one.

What a difference. We now know what he did (found office space and negotiated contracts) which justifies his working out of his car. We also have hard numbers, which not only PROVE how big of an accomplishment this is but also make it seem EVEN MORE impressive. Finally, he uses simple language so we understand EXACTLY what is happening. With these quick changes, this accomplishment has gone from puzzling to perfect.

So remember:

Find the accomplishment behind the story.
Use numbers to back up your claims.
Use direct language.
Avoid using jargon to cover up a lack of clear information.

JonFrank

Northwestern Kellogg MBA Essays are looking for character
Resilience. Perseverance. Grit. Call it what you will…. Challenges can build character. Describe a challenging experience you’ve had. How were you tested? What did you learn? (450 words)

What this is… is a great question. Before we dig into how to answer it, let’s soak up all the hints first. Why would Kellogg make mention of “resilience, perseverance, and grit” unless those were things they valued (and are therefore looking for specifically in would-be MBAs)? Whatever your story, whatever your challenge, if they don’t lead to the development or sharpening of those things in particular, you’ve missed the purpose of this prompt. In other words, if the conclusion of your essay is “and this is an amazing example that shows how smart and capable a leader I am,” you’ve missed it. The conclusion you want is “I was pushed well outside my comfort zone, but learned over and over that even the most awkward, unpleasant, direct lines of communication are always more effective than the alternatives.”

“Building” character. Let’s consider that word a bit. When you build a house, you don’t use a crane to drop a magically pre-assembled house onto the foundation. In other words it doesn’t from no-house to… house, with the snap of your fingers. You lay that sucker brick by brick, nail by nail. It’s a process. It’s linear. The experience you describe for this essay must show development, which means there’s a difference between the Before & After picture. Before this episode, there were certain assumptions you relied on in your approach. Or there were certain go-to leadership tactics. Or there were certain principles you had held steadfastly to. Whatever the “thing” is, it needs to have EVOLVED somehow through this experience. We wanna know what it used to be. What happened to “test” it. And how it changed.

This is important. If there wasn’t a shift in your tactical algorithm, a change in your philosophy, a renewed sense of … something, your story is gonna feel like a fleshed out resume bullet point. Instead, we need to see an EVOLUTION from how you were or behaved or viewed things BEFORE this event to how you then were or behaved or viewed things DIFFERENTLY ON ACCOUNT of this event. Identify those things before you begin, and the rest will be easy.

This is what I was like before the experience: XXX
This is the aspect of this experience that challenged that: YYY
That original approach/way of being/understanding of ABC, failed, forcing me to learn something new. That thing was: ZZZ
This is my NEW understanding, my NEW approach (if not new, modified, evolved, etc.)
Once you have that locked and loaded, now we can begin delivering this thing with some punch. (Easy, once the STORY points are solid.)

You have a few choices for how to OPEN this.

Option 1 is to present us with the BEFORE version of you. Explain how you viewed something, or how you would typically behave in Situation X. Then introduce the event/situation that tested that approach. Show how it didn’t quite work, forcing you to learn something new… and take it from there. Or,
Option 2 is to drop us directly into the SITUATION. This was the background, these were the objectives, these were the challenges, and this is what was at stake. Then you can walk us through “this is how I was accustomed to approaching it: XYZ. Well, that approach imploded. Uh oh.” And it goes from there, and you talk about how you had to “learn” whatever it is you learned.
In either case, you’ll eventually get up the point where you’re walking us through the execution of the event in real-time. (Don’t tell it with hindsight bias–one trick is to write in the present tense, as though it’s happening now. This will help you not to layer analysis in too prematurely. We want to know understand the gear-churning as it happened, We want to see how you and when you were confused, frustrated, angry, vulnerable, etc. Hindsight bias has a nasty way of whitewashing all of that stuff.)
Now we get to the analysis piece. This is the part where you walk us through what the change was in you, and grapple with what you gained from it, and why it’s significant. If the lesson doesn’t have future implications… who cares. Let’s see why this will positively affect you in the long term.
The key to this essay is to develop a clear picture in your head of Before & After. The sharper the contrast there, the more something in you was TESTED, the better. If the challenge here didn’t force you to step outside your comfort zone, walk into unchartered territories, cause you to feel anxious ever, etc. then you may not have the most appropriate example. This isn’t a question about a time you were placed in a perfect situation and were able to shine from start to finish. There need to be bumps. Times you QUESTIONED others, and most importantly YOURSELF. The more you’re able to puncture your self-confidence, and question your own sense of right and wrong, the better.
Leadership requires an ability to collaborate with and motivate others. Describe a professional experience that required you to influence people. What did this experience teach you about working with others, and how will it make you a better leader? (450 words)

Again, let’s pay attention to the hints. They could have just asked about a leadership experienced, right? Instead, they define leadership as they see it, using words like “collaborate” and “motivate” and “influence.” There’s also a hint in the word “teach” – it implies that you STRETCHED somehow through this experience to grow your sense of collaboration, teamwork, leadership, etc. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you didn’t LEARN anything on account of this experience, it’s not gonna pack as much punch. People who are able to demonstrate the way in which they learned something tend to more likely to have internalized that idea than those who have difficulty remembering what it was like “before they learned the lesson.” This requires… humility. It requires the uncomfortable exercise of traveling back in time to the moment BEFORE you “gained” something. To a time where maybe you WEREN’T quite as sharp, or talented, or effective as a leader. If you can remember that time, and you can remember the moment that changed, and if you can examine why things changed, it all adds up to a guy who has limitless potential to learn, improve, and succeed. It may surprise you to learn that MAJORITY of the essays we read do NOT initially convey this. It takes hard work to confront the way you were BEFORE you improved.

So let’s hop into our Deloreans and zip backwards in time. Now, you’ve heard us talk about choosing your stories carefully, and grabbing only from your greatest hits (as opposed to answering these questions so literally that you ill-advisedly choose the 7th most impressive story in your repertoire simply because it seems to answer the question better—don’t do this!). Once you’ve chosen your BEST leadership story, before you begin shaping your response, we need to identify a few key pieces:

What aspect of leadership and collaboration was NEW to you in this experience? There must have been a moment when one of your previously-held beliefs was called into question. Or a tactic you were comfortable with failed, or was ineffective. Or a moment where you simply didn’t know what to do. Something OTHER THAN… it all went exactly according to plan before you were perfect from the start. This won’t give Kellogg any sense that you have a bend to your learning curve potential. The capacity to stretch, and proactively seek improvement. So, dig deep here and figure out where there was a shift. An evolution. A surprise. Something.
Now, consider TWO separate scenarios: Scenario 1 is how the experience would have played out according to your PREVIOUSLY-HELD assumptions, or familiar tactics, whatever the “Before” version of you was. Extrapolate how it would have ended, what the collaboration/teamwork would have looked like, etc. Scenario 2 is how the experience ACTUALLY turned out, given that there was a slight SHIFT in your abilities as a leader, because presumably, you learned to do or try something different. This version HAS to be more compelling somehow—ON ACCOUNT OF that thing you picked up along the way. Considering these two scenarios will help you isolate exactly what the difference was in YOUR leadership tactics that led to gelling your team more successfully. We’re interested in the DELTA here folks. We wanna know that YOU know how sensitive leadership tactics can be. And that minor shifts can lead to major differences in outcome.
Once you have these two pieces licked, now you can start building a compelling narrative. Structurally, fairly straightforward:

Start with setting the scene, acquainting us with what the objective was, what the team looked like, all that table-setting stuff.
Now, acquaint us with how you were USED to handling this type of objective. In other words, what was your default approach to LEADING THIS TEAM specifically? Explain what that approach was and why you believed that it would be effective. (Don’t be afraid to be partially correct here, or even wrong!)
Finally, explain what happened along the way that caused you to call this tactic into question, or to MODIFY it, such that it forced an evolution in your understanding of what makes teamwork truly click? Initially, simply explain it in a very straightforward way, just tell us what happened, so we know.
Now, in the final section, you can analyze and dig into the “whys.” Here you’ll wanna explore what makes leaders effective, and try to sell us on why these new insights (gained from this experience) will make you even MORE effective than you had been. What are the applications of this lesson beyond this one story? What else are you eager to learn?

JonFrank

QUICK TIPS TO A BETTER STORY
When you’re writing an essay, proper structure is essential. Like the foundation of a high-rise building, your story’s structure is what keeps all of your content organized and in place, supporting it for maximum impact. That’s why we’re here with this refresher’s guide to basic story structure.

Whether you’re retelling a heartbreaking failure, an inspiring story of leadership, or the origins of your long-term goals, the secret to a great essay is storytelling. If you can hook the reader with a good story and back it up with impressive facts, you’ll have knocked the essay portion of your application out of the park. It’s harder than it looks, but with these quick tips, you’ll be well on your way to attention grabbing stories:

Hook ‘em from the start: Your first line should be your BEST line – hook the reader with an attention-grabbing introduction and he’s guaranteed to keep reading. Your first line can be funny, surprising, impressive, or all of the above – just don’t make it boring.
Introduce the problem: Once you’ve written your first line, it’s time to introduce the topic of your essay proper. The reader should know EXACTLY what your essay is about by your third or fourth sentence. Wait any longer and you risk confusing the reader…and totally losing them.
Show us your thought process: In addition to describing physical events, describe how those events made you FEEL. Imagine describing a stressful presentation: you not only need to describe the crowd, the room temperature and the bright lights, but also how those things made you FEEL. Writing about how you felt during a situation will allow your readers to relate to the situation, providing them with insight into your thought process.
Don’t make it too easy: No one likes Superman because everyone KNOWS that he’s going to win – he’s Superman! So instead of portraying yourself as an academic or corporate badass, show us YOUR STRUGGLES. A story is far more relatable if we see the protagonist’s efforts to resolve the conflict rather than seeing him solve the problem without breaking a sweat. Imagine James Cameron’s Titanic if the captain just gingerly avoided the iceberg – not much of a movie, is it?
Bring it full circle: Tie your conclusion to your introduction. This will remind the reader of your AWESOME intro AND sum up the points you made throughout your essay.
So remember:

Hook ‘em from the start.
Introduce the problem.
Show us your thought process.
Don’t make it too easy.
Bring it full circle.

JonFrank

Be detailed in your thought process but brief with technical jargon
Knowing when to add detail to a story and when to be brief is an art in itself. While there’s no substitute for practice and experience, there are a few key rules to keep in mind when structuring an essay to avoid wasting space on content that won’t benefit your application.

Detail is like cholesterol: there’s the good kind and the bad kind. The good kind adds depth to your story, giving the reader insight into your thought process and proving your claims. The bad kind is dry, technical material with no emotional resonance that causes the reader’s attention to drift. Follow these quick tips, however, and you’ll be certain that your essay is 100% killer and 0% filler.

DON’T get technical. TECHNICAL details should be kept to a minimum. Detailed programming or engineering specifications are meaningless to most readers and serve only to blunt the emotional impact of your story, making it seem long-winded and boring. If it sounds like dialogue on Star Trek, it’s almost definitely worth cutting out. Here’s an example of how NOT to write about a technical problem: “Because the motherboard was over-heating, it became necessary to increase our cooling system in a way that didn’t require an increase in voltage. Running a full hardware scan, it became evident that our previous attempts to patch the bug in the XR8’s software hadn’t done the job and a full recode was in order.”
Tell us what you felt at the time. On the other hand, detail that tells us “how you felt” or your “thought process” during an event is almost always worth including. This material both allows the reader to connect with you emotionally and, by detailing out the reasons for your action, you can PROVE all of the qualities you claim to have. Take this sentence for example: “Despite working on this project for 24 consecutive hours, I wasn’t ready to give up; I was determined to hand in a final build in time and when I finally rendered the last file, I knew it had all been worth it.”
Quantify your achievements. While it’s important NOT to get technical, you SHOULD use numbers when it comes to backing up your claims. Don’t just tell the reader that you “earned a bonus,” let him know that “after raising company profits 15%, you were promoted to senior management, earning a 10% raise to become the fastest rising employee in company history.”
So remember:

Don’t get technical.
Do tell us how you felt at the time.
Do quantify your achievements.