Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

As Bill Gates retires, Joel Spolsky has written a great article about what it was like to work for the world’s most successful entrepreneur. It’s definitely a must read article. If you love real stories, you will love this story too.

In this article, Joel mainly talks about Bill Gates’ detailed oriented approach in running a giant software company and his passion to get involved in small technical decisions while running the business as well.

What did I take from all this? Bill Gates was amazingly technical, and he knew more about the details of his company’s software than most of the people who worked on those details day in and day out. He understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables — and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date and time functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer.

Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand. But often, you can’t.

Though Joel strongly gives Microsoft’s success’ credit to Bill Gates’ technical abilities, I tend to disagree with him to certain extent. I think that apart from Bill Gate’s great technical knowledge and passion, he also has very sharp business acumen. And for example, that’s precisely the reason, he could license DOS to IBM though it was originally programmed by Tim Paterson. I firmly believe that just because you can write the code doesn’t mean that you can also able to sell it. You got to have the strong knack to sell the products and make money.

Also, as a counter example, when Steve Jobs founded Apple, he was a nonprogrammer, but he still runs one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world. He didn’t know how to write the code, but he knew how to configure a team which knows how to develop the code. He didn’t know how to design a product, but he knew what needed to be designed in the product. He is a visionary who has a great taste and powerful salesman aptitude. So being a nonprogrammer he could still run and grow Apple to a highly respectable scale.

I think Joel’s view about nonprogrammers is little extreme. Sure, knowing programming and having technical knowledge can give you an unfair advantage over other MBA people, but similarly understanding business world will also give you an advantage over hackers and programmers.

Finding balance and acquiring knowledge from both worlds is the key!

Have a great week ahead!

I was discussing with my friend that why sometimes people misunderstand that young would-be-entrepreneurs are in rush to start a startup.

I think it’s not young entrepreneurs are in rush, but it’s just that their tremendous passion to build something on their own and their excitement to do it for the first time – get portrayed as their act of urgency.

When I ask this question to myself – if am I in rush or not – I find that I’m neither looking for an overnight flip nor in rush to become a successful celebrity. But at the same time, I know that I’m in rush to start the process of starting a startup.

I think even if we want to start a ‘real’ startup say after one year or so, we should just get started today and should not delay the process at all. If we decide to start a startup after one year or so, we may not have many ingredients available at that point of time like team, skills, market, etc.

My point is – why not start working from today only? How about – we start building a team, we start developing skills, we start developing chemistry, we start brainstorming the problems, we start finding the solutions, we start catching the market waves and one fine day – we unitedly decide – this is it – this is what we want to start.

If today we feel that we are not ready to start, then I think that’s ok. But that should not stop us from working with our team on some problems which may be our future dreams. Whatever time available on daily basis – say 2-3 hrs, if we work patiently towards building something meaningful, I believe we will be in a much better position after one year to start something really compelling.

Our main aim right now should be to build a rock solid team, which in future will build a great company. We don’t need to know what ultimate problem we would solve, but at least we will build a cohesive team, which will be capable enough to solve any problem in the future.

I believe that being in such kind of rush is actually a great problem to have. So we should definitely start the process right now!

Most of the times when we discuss startups, we only discuss success stories. We just see the end result of entrepreneurs making multi-million dollars. We talk about what a great life that entrepreneur must be living now. We always neglect the other side of entrepreneurs’ life. The painful life.

I was discussing this painful part with my entrepreneurial friend the other day, who is juggling between building a successful company, managing his married life and coping up with his day job. We discussed how hard it is to balance both personal/married vs startup life, and how we should still try to find some ways to manage the balance and achieve our dreams.

James Currier, founder of Tickle gives following advice to someone who is considering starting a startup in a book Founders at Work -

It [starting a startup] is incredibly painful and it will take over your life. If you care about it and if you have any chance of succeeding, you will stop being present for the softer things in life like you family, friends, or dating life. And when you are there with them, you’re not really there with them; you’re thinking about this thing because you’re creating it, and it take that amount of passion to it work.

This is an incredibly truthful advice which is often neglected. When someone advises you about how to start a startup, they never tell you – how painful it is. I understand they don’t tell you this because they don’t want you to get de-motivated by this advice. Optimism is good, but I think if you know the other side of startup dream as well, then your dreams will be aligned to more of a reality world than the fantasy world.

My friend asked me to review her resume, and also asked if she needs to include Objective in her resume?

It’s a very commonly asked question. My answer is "Yes". If you are looking for certain specific things, then state it clearly. Why let recruiter keep guessing about what exactly you are looking for?

1 or 2 lines are enough to grab the attention of a recruiter and convey what exactly you are looking for. More importantly, it’s the first line of your resume, and gives you a chance to impress the recruiter by writing a compelling objective.

That brings us to another most commonly asked question – how to make objective of our resume the most compelling one.

Most of the times, I have seen objectives on the following lines only.

A position as a hardware design/layout/verification engineer, in an organization that fosters skill development and enhances analytical insights.

A full time position that helps me gain experience and expertise in the area of Software Development.

The one concern I have with such objectives is, they don’t convey how hiring you will benefit the company. All it tells about how it will benefit the candidate.

Here is how I would write my objective if I am seeking for a job –

Seeking a full time position as a Software Developer in the fields of Internet & Database applications to learn cutting edge technologies and develop awesome products that are aligned with the company’s business interest.

How would you write Objective for your resume? Let me know if you have different opinions or other suggestions. Your inputs will be very helpful for fellow job seekers.

Related Articles:

• How to write an effective cover letter
• How to write an effective resume for job hunting
• Bulleted approach of writing work experience details in your resume

I get lots of requests from people to review their resumes. Unfortunately, I am just not able to review all resumes because of time crunch. Instead of reviewing each resume one by one, and not giving due attention to it, I had compiled a list of suggestions about how to write an effective resume and an effective cover letter based on my experiences and observations.

My sincere apologies to those people whom I didn’t reply with my feedback about their resumes. I strongly request them to visit above links because when I will be reviewing your resumes, I will be looking for those suggestions only.

But recently, I reviewed one resume, and I found one suggestion, which is already mentioned in the above linked articles. The suggestion to write an effective resume is –

Do not write paragraphs under your work experience details.
Try to list down your details in the bulleted points. For a recruiter, bulleted approach is a handy and quick approach to grasp important things from your work experience details than a paragraph approach.

Here is how the resume was written before in a paragraph format –

As a Software Developer and Project Leader, I am leading two applications, which mainly involves understanding the existent systems, identifying enhancement requirements, and performing impact analysis of proposed requirements. I am also responsible for estimating the efforts and assigning it to the development team. I am using VB script, JavaScript technologies with SQL Server 2005 for these applications. I am also responsible for the production support of these applications.

Here is how I suggested changing above paragraph format to a bulleted format –

• Role: Software Developer and Project Leader
• Analyzed client’s existing 2 different applications
• Defined new 2 major and 4 minor enhancement requirements
• Negotiated with client on feature scope, schedule and resources, which resulted in more business to the company
• Managed a development team of 3 members for software development efforts
  • Estimated efforts and defined schedules for different tasks
  • Allocated resources to appropriate tasks
• Developed enhancement requests in VB script and JavaScript with SQL Server 2005
• Supported the time critical production issues

I hope that you will find my bulleted approach effective than the usual paragraph approach.

There are many ways to improve how you write your resume. Things that I have mentioned in above linked articles are not exhaustive ones. If you have suggestions or feedbacks about how to write an effective resume then please write your views in a comment section below. I would highlight those suggestions in future posts for the benefits of readers of this blog.

I want to share a quick tip about improving your efficiency of getting things done that I learned from my colleague while working on a project. 

I already mentioned the power of creating to-do lists in regards to getting things done. But getting things done is not the only thing that we want. We also want to complete the tasks in a timely manner. And that’s why our conventional approach of just listing down the tasks in a to-do list is not enough. Here are two important tricks that you can add to your daily to-do list creation process to increase your efficiency –

1. Assign approximate required time to complete a particular task.
You don’t have to be accurate while assigning the required time. Make a reasonable guess.

2. Assign a failsafe action.
Failsafe action is basically deciding what will be your immediate next action item in case you fail to complete the task in required time period. When you fail to complete the task, first you may want to evaluate your progress. If you think you are closed to the completion, then you might want to continue working on the same task. But if you find that you haven’t done significant progress, then you might want to act on a failsafe action.

Example:
If you want to solve a bug, then you would assign say 2 hrs to find the issue. And the failsafe action you will assign to it would be – discuss the issue with supervisor. So if you fail to debug that issue in 2 hrs, and if you haven’t really made significant progress, then you may want to talk to your supervisor and get some hints to proceed with debugging. You don’t want to just keep trying and not measuring how much time you are investing in debugging just one issue.

I hope these simple tricks will help you to get things done in a timely manner.

Have a super productive week ahead.

Only intelligence is not enough to carry students to the top. I think it’s the passion. I have already mentioned about the importance of passion in my previous post.

Passion is a force – sometimes an uncontrollable force – that infuses life with meaning, joy, and even outrage. In any event, passion fosters commitment and determination.
It creates the energy and drive required to do what others think is impossible. Passion is something which creates fire; and it also provides fuel as well.

I have seen highly talented students getting ‘Grade C’ in their courses because of their lack of hard work. And not being passionate enough is one of the main reasons of not working hard. 

Please note that I am not worrying about failures. As long as the passion is there, it doesn’t matter if an individual fails or how many times he fails. I would still work with a person who is passionate enough to learn but failed few times in the past than a successful person who is not passionate enough to learn more. It doesn’t matter for passionate but failed students what other people are saying about them. They will keep going forward, and will eventually achieve the success.

We are aware of the intellectual capital or the potential talent of an individual who is also studying the same course that you are also studying. So we don’t have to talk about that aspect any more. Now it’s the actual passion and energy that someone is putting into his studies that matter the most. Passion is one way which will differentiate you from the rest of the students. 

The bottom line is, passionate students keep moving forward, and keep climbing to the top and make the most of whatever intelligence they possess.

Note: For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

2007 was a great year for me and I hope it was a great year for you as well. I wish you great health, lot of luck, huge success and tremendous joy in year 2008. Wish you all a very happy new year!

As I do every year, I had decided some resolutions last year. I couldn’t complete all. I failed in some. I am doing progress in some. And I achieved success on some fronts more than I expected. In all, I think it was a great year. I am satisfied with my activities and progress when I look back at year 2007.

As I said, I couldn’t meet some goals in last year, and this is a perfect time to redefine those goals, and try to achieve again in this year. I am approaching this year with high hopes for a better and more fulfilling life. I am setting some resolutions again in this year.

I think resolutions are a powerful tool to focus and achieve some positive change in our life. If done well and consistently with the right mindset, our resolutions can help us to have a great year compared to last one. It’s okay if we don’t achieve 100% positive change as defined, but as long as it’s a positive change, I’m happy with it.

Here is a list of tips that I learned from Lisa Haneberg on how to create resolutions from her eBook Resolutions –

How to Create New Year’s Resolutions

If you are going to take the time and energy to create a New Year’s Resolution, make it something meaningful, worthwhile, and exciting. This is a perfect time of year to reflect on life and set or recommit to goals that can make a positive difference. This is not a time to beat yourself up over prior unmet goals. Previous failures do not predict future ones, especially when you are focused like a laser beam and unstoppable!

Characteristics of a good resolution

1. Resolutions should be big and inspiring! This is not the time to wimp out or get conservative. Making a resolution come true takes a lot of work so it should be something you can get excited about and will make a big difference in your life.
2. Your resolution should apply to YOU. A resolution should state a personal goal for development or accomplishment.
3. Your resolution should be something you are seriously interested in creating, even if the work will be hard, uncomfortable, or require life changes.
4. Your resolution should be challenging, but doable.
5. The best resolutions will provide your life with greater meaning while allowing you to contribute to others more fully.
6. Good resolutions can be easily explained in a sentence or two.
7. Your resolution needs to be measurable. You should be able to define success.

Once again, have an exciting and challenging year ahead!

I’m a big fan of multiple projects. I cannot think of myself doing just one thing. Sure, sometimes it becomes difficult to focus my energy on one important thing as I easily get distracted in other non-important projects. But I’ve also experienced that if I work diligently on one project, irrespective of how tired I am, I also tend to work very well on other project.

I’m not talking about learning skills from one project and applying it to another project. Irrespective of the nature of two project domains, if we work diligently and responsibly on one project, I think we tend to achieve better results on another project as well.

I’m talking about the passion to achieve best performance, the confidence we gain by accomplishing small tasks or milestones, the discipline and sense of time management we develop by executing multiple projects efficiently, the vision we develop to foresee what’s coming to us and plan accordingly, and the sense of loyalty and feel of satisfaction that we are executing our job responsibly.

I’m talking about the cascade effect. They are of two types – the positive and the negative cascade effect.

If I slog well during my day time job, I tend to produce more code when I go home for my part time project. If I produce more code in the evening, I tend to help my wife happily in cooking and doing dishes. If I help my wife in daily household stuff, I become more satisfied and tend to think more positive. When I think positive, I tend to generate more ideas for my projects, for my blog and also for my book. And the positive cascade effect continues…

Same is the case with negative effect. If I screw up in early phase of my day, I continue to be less productive for all future tasks in a day.

The conclusion is obvious. Whatever project or task we are starting our day with, let’s start it with bang! Let’s give our best shot to whatever task we are doing. The positive cascade effect will help us to achieve more by the end of the day.

Have a positive cascading effect!

This post is related to my previous post about trying what you want to start. On the same note, I read an interesting quote –

This is so simple it sounds stupid, but it is amazing how few oil people really understand that you only find oil if you drill wells. You may think you’re finding it when you’re drawing maps and studying logs, but you have to drill. — John Masters

That’s why I said, if you have some idea that you want to start, just drill it. Don’t worry about not having related prior experience or competency. Don’t worry about the domain knowledge. Don’t worry about what’s your day time job and what’s your part time startup require. There are tons of ways to acquire that knowledge and get started.

If you are a biz-dev types of a person, then don’t fear to make your hands dirty and crank out some code. If you are a hacker types of a person, then don’t hesitate to attend few networking events and talk to few people about your idea and getting guidance from them.

Believe me, it’s not just some "theory" advice. I’m doing it. And it’s not a big deal. It’s possible. Just start drilling it, and then just keep doing it. Don’t give up, until you find oil!

I read interesting thoughts by Paul  Buchheit on why to join a startup Vs why not to work for a big company in his recent post Is there more to life than money? Here is excerpt from that post –

There is plenty of evidence that happiness is only loosely correlated
with wealth. People seem to derive a much greater sense of satisfaction
from good relationships, and having a sense of purpose and meaning in
their life. Money matters too, but not as much once the basic need for
food and shelter are addressed, and those aren’t big issues for most
people deciding between joining a startup or a big company.

Furthermore,
most people who do join startups will never experience a huge payday.
Google distributed billions of dollars to thousands of employees, but
that was truly exceptional. Even moderately successful startups that
eventually sell for $50 million dollars or so will only make a couple
of people rich.

If all you care about is money, I doubt that
joining a startup is the right way to go. You’ll probably make a lot
more at a hedge fund, or by becoming a lawyer, or something like that.

Maybe
it now seems like I’m defending the boring 9-5 job, but it’s actually
just the opposite. Those 8 hours/day are a huge chunk of of your waking
life, and don’t forget that you’ll probably also spend a few hours
preparing, commuting, and "unwinding". Even worse, bad or boring jobs
can sap our energy, so that at the end of the day all we feel like
doing is sitting in front of the tv.

That’s no way to live, if
you can help it. Why surrender such a huge chunk of your life just to
get some money? For some people, that’s the only option, but for those
fortunate enough to be smart and educated, there’s a better way.

Instead
of throwing away your "working hours", why not make every minute count?
Why not find work that you can actually enjoy, work that’s fun and
meaningful?

…

the structure and systems in big companies tend to make work
meaningless and life unpleasant, at least for me. Of course smaller
companies can be awful too, but they have a greater potential to be
good.

If your job isn’t working for you, if it isn’t making you
happy and energized, then why are you still there? I can’t guarantee
that you’ll find something better, but perhaps you should at least try
something new. Don’t just give up on life.

I truly enjoy writing
code. I love creating new products and features. I like getting
feedback from users and finding ways to solve their problems. I like
the game of business. I like helping people. Of course there is always
some amount of unpleasant work that must be done, but that can be
contained (my rule is that work should be no more than 10% awful).

That’s why, even though I don’t financially need to work, I choose to work (and end up staying up until 4am pushing new code).

On the same line, I have written why entrepreneurship is a great career path. Here is excerpt from that post - 

The Experience Unlimited

Starting your own company and
managing it to grow is an incredible way to gain experience and grow as
a person. I think, in the early stage of your corporate career, it is
very untypical that you will get very challenging and the cutting-edge
work if you are working with big companies. Sure, some people do get
challenging stuff, but I’m talking about generic pattern here. It’s
also very unlikely that you will learn numerous other things, which are
essential to develop your personality as a whole than your routine job
skills.

On the other side, entrepreneurship
is a combination of all the disciplines like technology,
administration, human resource, legal, and business management. It’s
about passion, confidence, learning, growing, and achieving. You can
learn all these things by staying in the corporate world as well, but
the core advantage of entrepreneurship is the rate at which you will
acquire this knowledge and experience will be incredible.

I think learning lot of stuff and
growing as a person at a rocket speed is a strong reason to seek
entrepreneurship as a career option.

After discussing with many entrepreneurs, one common characteristic I strongly noticed that the main driving force behind their entrepreneurial mind was – their passion. Whatever is the reason to start a startup, eventually it boils down to passion.

It was the passion to innovate the next remarkable product or service, the passion to add value to the customers, the passion to become rich out of the business, the passion to empower the people through generating more employment opportunities, and the passion to change the world!

Their passion is a force, sometimes an uncontrollable force that infuses their life with meaning and joy. It is that incredibly compelling emotion that enables them to go places others are afraid to go, to try things others are afraid to do and to be the kind of people others are afraid to be! It creates the energy and drive required to do what others think is impossible.

At the end, I wouldn’t say, starting or joining a startup is a good thing and joining a big company is a bad thing. Whatever you choose to do, if you are passionate enough in whatever you are doing, then you are doing the right thing. But IMHO, starting a startup can be the most passionate thing.

Have a passionate week ahead!

It’s super foggy here in Silicon Valley today. I really mean it. It was "super" foggy in the morning. While driving to the office, I couldn’t even see what’s ahead of 0.1 mile. You just won’t know what’s coming to you next – is it a left turn, or a stop sign or a traffic light. I was sure about the destination I wanted to reach, but the path was blurry and foggy. The good part was that, the road to my office was known to me. So I could take necessary precautions based on daily experience of driving on that road. All I focussed on every next 0.1 mile. And step by step, I reached to the office.

This reminded me a classic situation – A first time entrepreneur’s startup journey. Isn’t it also a Super Foggy journey?

You know where you want to land up, or what you want to become or what you want to build as a long term product. In short, you know your destination. But you are totally clueless about the journey. It’s blurry. Sometimes you don’t know what’s coming to you – a U turn, a stop sign, an ultimate dead end or bright sun rays. Anything is possible.

The tricky part for first time entrepreneurs is that, the path to their startup’s success is not well traveled as well, like it was for me in my driving situation. For them, journey becomes more challenging, and probably more exciting.

So all it remains in our hand is, to focus on next 0.1 mile. Drive step by step. On every step, look, plan and work for the next step’s destination. And ultimately, reach to the final destination. That’s how I will travel on this path.

What do you think? Do you think the startup’s journey is a foggy one? What approach you would use to travel it then? Your thoughts will be useful to make a first timer’s startup journey a successful one.

In my previous post, The future belongs to…, I’ve written that entrepreneurship is a great career path. And I also predicted that, one of the categories of people, who will rule the future are entrepreneurs.

One of the readers of Adeologue sent me an email asking why do I think that entrepreneurship is a great career path. This post is to answer that question.

Frankly speaking, I’m not a successful full-time entrepreneur yet. I’m still a part-time and wanna-be full time entrepreneur working on very interesting and cool stuff. I’ll announce what it is when it’s the right time. So I’m answering this question based on my entrepreneurial efforts and activities so far. Hope you will find them useful and relevant.

For me, asking why to start a startup is like asking why to take the road less traveled? Seriously, almost every alternate person I talk to, wants to start his or her startup, but very few of them actually dare and work hard to do it. Certainly, entrepreneurship is a less traveled path. But if you know following quote, then you also know that that’s exactly what makes the difference — taking less traveled path.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”. — Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

There are many reasons why you want to take a less traveled path. But I’ll answer the most valuable reason today.

The Experience Unlimited

Starting your own company and managing it to grow is an incredible way to gain experience and grow as a person. I think, in the early stage of your corporate career, it is very untypical that you will get very challenging and the cutting-edge work if you are working with big companies. Sure, some people do get challenging stuff, but I’m talking about generic pattern here. It’s also very unlikely that you will learn numerous other things, which are essential to develop your personality as a whole than your routine job skills.

On the other side, entrepreneurship is a combination of all the disciplines like technology, administration, human resource, legal, and business management. It’s about passion, confidence, learning, growing, and achieving. You can learn all these things by staying in the corporate world as well, but the core advantage of entrepreneurship is the rate at which you will acquire this knowledge and experience will be incredible.

I think learning lot of stuff and growing as a person at a rocket speed is a strong reason to seek entrepreneurship as a career option.

As I said, there are more reasons to start a startup, but I’ll answer remaining ones in future posts.

Have a challenging week ahead!

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates.

My friend, Ravish sent this interesting piece of article to me y’day. It explains what mistakes we do when we introduce or represent ourselves to someone either through our resume or in person. Read below to learn how to avoid those mistakes and instead, win the hearts of other parties to whom we are introducing ourselves.

Here it goes-

Over-representation
Jeremy Shinewald – Founder, MBAMission

Investment bankers. Consultants. Software Engineers. What do these three groups have in common? You may have answered, "over-representation," and if you are among these groups, you probably groaned as well.  Well, all is not lost for the over-represented. While you cannot change your work history, you can change the way you introduce yourself to the Admissions Committees. So, we, at MBA Mission, have compiled a few simple strategies for introductory paragraphs, as they pertain to personal statements (Questions like: "Discuss your career history. How will an MBA help you achieve your goals?"), which will help you standout.

Our first strategy is more of a "don’t" than a "do." We find that many candidates start with straightforward introductory lines, where they over-represent their over-representations immediately. For example, a candidate might write, "When I started as an Analyst at Morgan Stanley in 2005, I was immersed in excel spreadsheets…" Via this introduction, the writer has basically written: "As one of many indistinguishable banking candidates that you will see, I have done what everyone else does…."

Candidates should be mindful of their very first lines and might consider a non-introduction introduction, where the reader is immediately immersed in a career highlight, instead of a formal and typical chronology. For example: "Touching down in Houston at 5 am, I immediately went to meet the CFO of ABC Healthcare. As an investment Banking Analyst, it was unusual to be seconded to an outside firm, but ABC was one of Morgan Stanley’s most significant clients and our deal was hanging in the balance." By launching into a story and incorporating favorable facts, this analyst has put him/herself "in action" and created a story to follow, instead of facts to digest. Indeed, one of the distinct advantages of the "non-introduction introduction" is that, if executed properly, it also creates mystery. Because the reader is immersed in a situation, he/she wants to know what comes next.

Disrupting chronology is another important strategy that can be used. Even if an MBA program asks you to discuss your career history, it does not mean that you must offer a clear chronology of your career, from beginning to end (a method that can be a recipe for over-representing yourself). Consider the case of a programmer who rose to lead a team of thirty. Which of the following is more interesting to you? A) "Joining InfoTech, I spent my first six months writing code…" or B) "Managing a team of thirty at Infotech, I have spent the last six months…" If the candidate were to begin with A, he would risk losing the reader immediately. After all, what is so unusual about writing code? However, few manage thirty people prior to business school, so the opportunity to grab the reader with this fact – from the most current position in this fictional character’s career – is too important to pass up. The writer wants the reader to understand his/her differences immediately and he accomplishes that with a disrupted chronology. (Of course, it will take some finesse to reconnect and reorder work experience that does not follow a chronology. You will need to be skilled at formulating creative transition ideas and writing interesting transition sentences).

Similar in spirit to disrupting chronology, candidates with unique career goals may also consider disrupting the typical pattern of a personal statement by leading with goals. Consider the following essay for Wharton: "Describe your career progress to date and your future short-term and long-term career goals. How do you expect a Wharton MBA to help you achieve these goals, and why is now the best time for you to join our program? Many candidates assume that they must answer each sub-question, within the broader question, in the very order that it was asked. But, that is not the case – the question is quite flexible and by pursuing your own structure, you can truly engage the reader, who has read thousands of similarly structured essays. Still, while leading with your goals, you must have goals that truly standout. So, the Indian technologist who intends to start a software firm might be advised not to lead with goals, but the technologist who aspires to open a boutique hotel, might make the choice to use his goals to differentiate himself. Similarly, the consultant who aspires to start a competitive windsurfing circuit can use these bold goals to differentiate himself right from the start. We emphasize that such candidates need to have a compelling connection to their goals and do not suggest that over-represented candidates strive to imagine or create "wild" goals. If you have a profound connection to an unusual industry, then reordering the question and ensuring that your goals are out-front can make a difference.

Finally, regardless of the essay question, it is important to give profound thought to your opening lines. Few of us have read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, but many of us have heard the famous words: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." A powerful first line can stick with readers long after they have finished reading your essays. Consider the differences between these pairs of openers. Which one captures your attention? A) "After I graduate with my MBA, I want to work in the wine industry." B)  "Blood runs in the veins of all humans, but wine runs in mine." There is no formula for opening lines. In fact, the possibilities are endless and each opener depends on the context of the story itself. Nonetheless, our point is that opening lines need to be carefully considered, because they set the tone and determine whether the reader will want to read more. Of course, as an over-represented candidate, you will need them to read more.

Have a great weekend ahead!

I always enjoyed leading people, organizing events, taking initiative, being creative, doing things in a better way, taking risks, handling more projects at a time, etc. Since my engineering career, my friends always thought I am a better fit for management career and I should try to pursue an MBA. But apparently, I never thought that way. That doesn’t mean that I did not want to go into "management" related career path. Of course, I know that it’s the best career option for me, but I always had certain criteria for my managerial dreams. I always wanted to do managerial or leadership things only in technology related fields.

I am more passionate about technology than management. For me, managerial skills are like – you have it, and then you polish it. But technological skills, you need to learn it, and then you keep polishing it. I always want to learn more technology skills than more managerial skills. That’s why I pursued a MS program rather than an MBA one. I would still prefer to do a PhD in technical area than doing MBA, which apparently my friends think in other way. But then what will be the best long term career option for a person who seems to have good managerial skills, but is passionate to learn more technology skills?

Fred Wilson’s thoughts strengthen my vision of my career path –

Should the CEO of every technology company be a technologist? It seems
like it’s easier to teach a technologist finance, marketing, sales, and
management than it is to teach a good manager technology. And it seems
that key business drivers are increasingly technical. It was true in
the past, when Novell beat Banyan with marketing over technology, or
when Oracle beat a host of relational database companies with sales
over technology, that technology alone didn’t win the day. But let’s
look at Facebook versus MySpace, Google versus Yahoo!, Skype versus
Net2Phone, and Apple versus the entire music business. The companies
with strong technologists as leaders seem to win more often these days.

I wish to be that. A technology person, leading a technical company.