Job Related Essays

1. Current Job
1. Please give a detailed description of your job, including nature of work, major
responsibilities;
and, where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, number of
clients/products and results achieved. (250 words)

While the essays for most programs begin by addressing the overall progression of your
career up to this point, INSEAD’s first question is requesting a snapshot of your career at
this moment. Even if you have held a number of positions within the same organization,
your focus should be your current position and responsibilities. Keeping in mind that this
will be the adcom’s introduction to your materials, it’s important that you provide the
context necessary for the reader to understand your place within the organizational
structure and the work that occupies your days. While there is some room to talk about
“results achieved,” don’t get bogged down in the specifics of certain projects or
engagements - you’ll need to keep your comments fairly general (and focused on the
present) here, and incorporate some more specific information about your career’s
“greatest hits” later on in response to other questions.

2. Career History
2. Please give us a full description of your career since graduating from university. If
you were to
remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of
position? (250
words)

This is a tall order for a 250 word essay, so brevity and efficient use of language will be
key here. The adcom is looking for an applicant who can present her career as a coherent
whole, and demonstrate that she has been on an upward trajectory since the outset. While
it would be ideal for you to include some comments on lessons learned and skills gained
over the course of your career, the primary focus should be touching upon each full time
post you’ve held, explaining the reasons behind each move you’ve made and
commenting on increases and changes in responsibility.

How to write an essay about career in 250 words?

First, write everything you want about your career, sounding as logical as you can.
This will be 600-900 words.
Second, structure this brainstormed draft and underline point, which you cannot
throw away at any rate.

Third, condense every part as much as you can: rewrite every sentence, shorten your
phrases. Be a surgeon. No regrets. You have to have about 350 words by now.
 Forth, eliminate any articles and comparisons you have (if you can).

Fifth, read it aloud and eliminate or rewrite anything that sounds bad. You're done :)

And after it (paraphrasing a famous Russian anecdote about tea), throw away
everything you've done - and write yourself a proper essay. :)

Essays
1. Personality-400
1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you
feel to be your
strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal
development, giving examples when necessary. (400 words approx.)

Description of yourself, stress on Personal characteristics (strength and weakness) and

why end up with such characteristics? Also give examples

For a question like this I recommend two strengths and one weakness. If you can choose
one anecdote that reveals both the strengths and the weakness, you will have a strong
essay. Don't forget to discuss how these qualities influenced your personal development.

A word on weaknesses. Be honest without going overboard. Don't make up a phony

weakness. Take advantage of the essays: Give it some thought and respond with the
benefit of that reflection

This essay is actually very similar to Harvard’s “strengths and weaknesses” question, and
the same general approach applies - applicants will want to lead off with two or three
positive qualities (grounded in specific illustrative examples) and then comment on one
or two weaknesses that they’ve taken steps to address. INSEAD’s framework gives
applicants free reign to select personal, professional or extracurricular examples, so make
sure that you select your examples with an eye to presenting a balanced picture of your
interests and experiences.

2. Accomplishments-400
2. Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to
date, explaining why you view them as such. (400 words approx.)

Try to take accomplishments from different arenas of your life. (But don't go back to high
school and earlier to do so.) The accomplishments should show impact, contribution, and
for Insead at least one should have a multi-cultural flavour.

This is another fairly straightforward question. We would recommend that one, if not
both, of the examples you use in this essay cover your professional achievements.
Remember that it will be important to ground your comments in specific details and fully
explain why these achievements were significant, both in terms of the results you
produced and the lessons you learned.
 3. 3. Failure-250
3. Describe a situation taken from school, business, civil or military life, where you did
not meet your personal objectives, and discuss briefly the effect. (250 words approx.)

In choosing the situation, here's a case when you can go back in time a little -- let's say 2-
5 years. You can illustrate how you learned from this situation and were able to meet
similar objectives next time around.

This failure essay has a particularly restrictive word limit, making it all the more
important for applicants to summarize and explain the failure as concisely as possible.
Make sure that you avoid ending this essay on a negative note. While not meeting a
personal objective would undoubtedly have some negative repurcussions, it’s likely that
“the effect” included a valuable lesson learned.

Any applicant who tries to claim or assert perfection on the application would, at best,
be treated as a joke. No one is perfect, and no admissions committee expects perfection.
Yet, more than any other question, this one strikes fear into the hearts of applicants.
However, answering this question does not need to be difficult. You must get past the
biggest hurdle -- your own reticence.

Failure often results from good intentions and admirable qualities such as initiative,
leadership, and risk taking. Take advantage of the fact that failure will sometimes result
from our best qualities. Any leader who has tried to forge a new path has made a mistake
somewhere along the way. If you are honest and forthright about the mistake you made,
people will remember the intention over the result. Besides, the committee is not
interested in judging you on your mistake; they simply want to know how you dealt with
it. The only real way to flunk this question is to dodge it. If you choose a trite or
irrelevant topic, the committee will either question your honesty and your maturity or
doubt your ability to lead, take risks, and think outside the box. If you can't admit failure,
you probably can't see it coming, or so they think.

If you are having trouble choosing a situation, consider the following guidelines:

Choose something that has happened recently. Delving too far into your past is an
obvious cop-out.
Do not limit yourself to professional failures, but do not shy away from them either.
Admissions committees are aware of the risk inherent in choosing job failures and
will give you points for being forthright. Athletic failures are trite.

Do not choose anything overly dramatic or that would call your morals into question.
The reader should be able to relate to your failure, not be shocked by it.

If you cannot clearly state what you learned from the incident or the actions that you
took to amend it, then pick something else. When you are writing, take a simple,
straightforward, objective tone. Do not try to excuse your actions. Let your story speak
for itself. Keep your essay as concise as possible
 4. Career Goals & INSEAD-500
4. Discuss your career goals. What skills do you expect to gain from studying at
INSEAD and how will they contribute to your professional career. (500 words approx.)

This is a forward-looking career goals question. Use the past to set context for your future
and show that your goals are anchored in experience. Then explain how Insead with its
intense, one-year, general management program and strong international focus will help
you achieve your goals

This is the standard career goals essay, with an interesting focus on skills as they relate to
INSEAD classes and future goals. The phrasing of this question might indicate that the
school is looking for applicants who have really thought through the limitations they face
given their current skill sets, and have a clear sense of what they need to learn (and how
they will do so through an MBA) in order to be successful in a very specific career path.
This just goes to underscore the fact that well-defined goals and school-specific detail are
essential to a successful application.

Among other factors, B-school admissions committees look for demonstrated leadership
experience (either in the workplace or in extracurricular activities if your work history is
short), a clear understanding of your short- and long-term career goals, a demonstrated
sense of awareness of how an MBA would fit into those plans, why now is the right time
for you to pursue an MBA degree, why a particular school to which you are applying
makes sense for you personally, and an awareness of what has motivated the decisions
you've made to date.

Who are you?

What is your career goal?

How can you convince people that you can full fill this goal in future?

In real business world, the point is how to apply what you have learned at school to solve
challenges.

5. Culture Shock-250
5. Please choose one of the following two essay topics:
a) Have you ever experienced culture shock? What did it mean to you? (250 words
approx.), or
b) What would you say to a foreigner moving to your home country? (250 words
approx.)

These two have been part of the Insead repertoire for several years. Choose the one that is
easiest for you to answer and allows you to bring out a facet of your experience not found
in the other essays.
This sort of question is designed to gauge applicant’s cultural sensitivity and ability to
conduct business in an international setting . It should come as no surprise to applicants
who are familiar with INSEAD’s reputation as a highly international program (73
countries are represented in this year’s class). The first option asks applicants to recount a
trying experience in another country or environment, and to explain the resulting personal
growth and process of adjustment. Meanwhile, the second asks applicants to reflect on
the unique characteristics of his or her own culture and anticipate the issues that a visitor
might encounter. In both responses, the successful applicant will manage to demonstrate
cultural flexibility, offering evidence for his or her ability to operate as a global citizen
and work in diverse teams. Of course, many of the best essays will manage to incorporate
a healthy dose of lessons learned, indicating that cultural adjustment can be fraught with
trial and error rather than sugar-coating a response and failing to outline the struggles or
periods of adjustment. As always, vivid anecdotes will be more supportive of your
candidacy than broad claims.

6. Optional Essay-200
6. Is there anything that you have not mentioned in the above essays that you would
like the Admissions Committee to know? (200 words approx.) This essay is optional.

Take advantage of the optional essay to give them one more reason to admit you. DON'T
use it for a grand summary, a restatement of your other essays, or something similarly
boring, superficial, and repetitive. A tight, focused essay highlighting something you
haven't yet discussed.