Hi,



Could you please help with an evaluation of my profile for Cambridge MBA. Thanks in advance.



Nationality- Indian

Gender- Male

Undergrad- B.E. in Electronics and Communicatin Engineering with 74.4%

GMAT- 660 (Q47, V34)







Work Exp :



10.5 years of work experience in IT industry and I am currently working as IT Operations Service Manager.


Nov 2018 to Present

Role: Operations Service Manager



As a HR and Learning IT OSM, I'm responsible for the management of a global team of L2&L3 consultants and HRIT application analysts for the support of Enterprise IT systems for Global R&D, Regulatory, Finance, HR, Legal, Global Compliance and Corporate Affairs businesses.



Initiatives:



- Introduced Gemba board and Daily Huddle to the ways of working to efficiently manage operations

- Completed two Practical Problem Solving (Lean) which reduced approximately 1500 incidents for every global training launch (two trainings in 2019 and three in 2020)

- Implemented a shift-wise ticket dispatching system within the team that helped in achieving all the stretch KPI targets in 2020 so far. Significant improvement has been observed on all the Service KPIs between 2019 and 2020

- Introduced an upskilling program within the team to upskill the Level 2 resources of the team in Level 3. This exercise has also significantly reduced the key person dependencies in the team.

- Implemented a weekly audit of the Customer Satisfaction survey and the findings helped us to improve the CSAT scores.

- Completed a Kaizen project to reduce 20% of the overall incident reported on Learning systems which helped in improving the overall user experience.



Key accountabilities



Delivery of end-to-end Application Services through the operational management of the Learning & HR IT teams and third-party suppliers across the service management disciplines.

Responsible for all aspects of team management including Planning, Recruitment, Skills Development and Performance Evaluation

Work in Partnership with End to End Capability Service Managers (E2ECSM), Project Managers & Business Relationship Managers to deliver Application Lifecycle plans that align to IT roadmaps and business priorities for Enterprise HR and Learning IT applications.

Maintains Support plan roadmap, working with Change Management teams to identify system and technical environment changes that may impact the applications.

Works with suppliers and third parties to resolve any technical issues that Vendor is responsible for.

Manage a globally distributed team.





Jan 2017 to Oct 2018

Role: Service Lead



- Assited the Operations Service Manager in the day to day IT operations of HR IT systems.

- Responsible for representing the team in service calls.

- Configured and implemented telephony service for HR in 15 countries, saving a direct cost of $150K for configuration and development.

- Performed service introductions of multiple enterprise IT solutions in HR domain.





Oct 2015 to Dec 2016 Role: Microsoft SME



- Transition the development and maintenance activities of identified applications in Global Compliance space from third party supplier (Infosys) to inhouse IT

- Gathered requirements user requirements and created functional and technical requirements based on the user input

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Jun 2013 to Oct 2015 Barclays Technology Centre India (Captive IT unit of Barclays Bank plc)

Role: Senior Analyst Programmer(Location: Pune, India)



- Developed solutions for regulatory requirements relating to UK Retail Banking applications such as Career Development Loans and Individual Savings Accounts.

- Created bespoke MI reports for the UK Retail Banking leadership team and assisted the business processes during End of Tax Year period.



Feb 2010 to May 2013 Steria India Pvt Ltd (Third Party Supplier for Barclays Bank plc)

Role: Software Engineer (Location: Chennai, India and Knutsford, UK)



- Maintained the database containing dormant accounts details of Barclays bank and acted as single point of contact for all IT-related queries for the dormant account system.

- Designed and developed the RFL module for the identification and transfer of dormant funds to Reclaim Fund Ltd.

- Proposed and implemented several service improvements in the Dormant Account Database system that helped reduce the processing time of reclaim applications.



July 2009 - Oct 2009 Allsec Technologies

Role: Customer Care Executive (Location: Chennai, India)



- Answered service calls at the Tata Docomo Service Desk to obtain consumer complaints and to explain the call and data plans.





Why MBA:



I would like to transition to entrepreneurship following the MBA programme. Outside of work, I'm working an online education startup, which is aimed at delivering skill based online courses for free and I'm currently in the process of releasing the Minimum Viable Product. I believe MBA will equip me with the skills that would be needed in my entrepreneurship journey. Entrepreneurship concentration, experiential learning and the Cambrige Accelerator are the reasons why I'm applying for Cambridge MBA.

[Edited by Syan on Sep 24, 2020]

In my opinion, it doesn't sound like you have much that stands out as a potential MBA candidate at a top school like Cambridge. There are so many candidates with your profile - male, Indian, work in tech (IT or engineering). Your GMAT score is a bit on the low side too for a top school. You might want to look at improving your GMAT score and considering schools in the next tier down.  

Also, I suggest you look carefully at your 'initiatives and achievements' (I assume they are from your resume.) I work as an IT Director/Head of IT and in an IT context I would say they aren't really anything special and definitely not in a wider non-IT context. Most are bland, generic and vague. Can you make them sound much more tangible? 
IT Service Manager is not really the kind of profile top schools are looking for. Think carefully about what have you done in and out of work that is going to sound impressive in an application form or interview.

[Edited by aslamo on Sep 24, 2020]

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback, aslamo. I can see I have made some assumptions when drafting the the initiatives. I can certainly make it tangible by adding the monetary impact and KPI figures and improve upon the bland items such as introducing gemba.

I'm working on my startup alongside my full time employment and my post MBA plan is to transition to entrepreneurship. The startup is an online learning provider that offers video courses to students and working professionals for free of cost. The platform's build is complete and I'm currently working with the content providers to launch the courses. I was planning to cover this in the goals however please advise if it would be beneficial to cover it in the CV to outline what has been done so far.

Also it would be useful to understand why ITSM profiles may not be preferred by the Bschools, since the ITSMs are potentially next in line Directors/HoITs and eventually VPs in the IT world. please advise.

Thanks in advance.

IT heads (Outside India) don't have or need MBAs. 

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback, aslamo. I can see I have made some assumptions when drafting the the initiatives. I can certainly make it tangible by adding the monetary impact and KPI figures and improve upon the bland items such as introducing gemba.

I'm working on my startup alongside my full time employment and my post MBA plan is to transition to entrepreneurship. The startup is an online learning provider that offers video courses to students and working professionals for free of cost. The platform's build is complete and I'm currently working with the content providers to launch the courses. I was planning to cover this in the goals however please advise if it would be beneficial to cover it in the CV to outline what has been done so far.

Also it would be useful to understand why ITSM profiles may not be preferred by the Bschools, since the ITSMs are potentially next in line Directors/HoITs and eventually VPs in the IT world. please advise.

Thanks in advance.

IT heads (Outside India) don't have or need MBAs. 

A lot of students leverage a background in IT plus a good MBA to swing into a big firm like Amazon or Apple, in a less IT-oriented role. Now this isn't a path to CIO by any means but a viable career path nonetheless. 

A lot of students leverage a background in IT plus a good MBA to swing into a big firm like Amazon or Apple, in a less IT-oriented role. Now this isn't a path to CIO by any means but a viable career path nonetheless.