What is your overall assessment of the applicant’s potential for a career in management?
For the entire period he has worked at Midfield, Chaitanya has consistently demonstrated personal and professional qualities which have clearly made him stand out. His efforts have invariably yielded extraordinary results and as a result, he has made a remarkably good impression on everyone at Midfields. For instance, last year, he successfully developed and implemented a new client acquisition model for Europe and Middle East regions. The campaign he came up with was a major undertaking, involving a great deal of focus, mental effort, leadership and teamwork. He spent a lot of time researching the European and Middle Eastern markets, and the particular characteristics and needs that typify our clients. Due to its success, his new model was later adopted as the standard strategy for the acquisition of all prospective new clients by the organization.
Concerning ambition and upward mobility, Chaitanya was promoted from the position of Business Development Executive to that of Business Development Manager in a mere six months of his employment at Midfield. In the next twelve months, he had risen through the position of Business Development Manager to that of Strategy and Planning Manager largely due to his skills in people management and strategic thinking. He clearly exhibits the qualities that typify a successful manager and I can attest to his undoubted exceptional future career growth in management.
Please note any unique, unusual or distinctive characteristics in the candidate’s personal or professional background that differentiate the candidate from others.
Aggressiveness and Innovative Thinking
Chaitanya’s promotion to the position of Strategy and Planning Manager made him directly responsible for many aspects of business development, including the task of acquiring and maintaining a good clientele base in Europe. Up to the time of his promotion, Midfield had unsuccessfully tried to effectively penetrate the European market for three consecutive years. He faced many challenges in his bid to assess Europe’s market potential and to eventually launch Midfield as an additional competitive brand. Probably even more challenging was his need to identify why Midfield’s earlier attempts at penetrating the European market hadn’t yielded much. Ultimately, he proved himself up to the challenge since he devised the idea of using promotional events to increase awareness about Midfield and our range of products.
Consequently, in a few spans of time Midfield managed to establish itself as a brand in Europe and to subsequently register growing sales in Germany, Spain and Greece. Indeed, for the first time in Midfield’s history, Germany became the largest trade partner in this region accounting for an estimated 21% of our total sales. Chaitanya’s analytical skills, innovative thinking and aggressiveness are exclusively credited for these impressive results.
Salesmanship
Chaitanya has been one of the most effective sales persons at Midfields over the duration that he worked here. He exhibits high level of preparedness during meetings with prospective clients by meticulously conducting his research, assessing the competition, and then developing a winning sale proposition for the client. Then, when delivering his pitch, he dexterously and methodically eliminates every single objection the prospective client may have against doing business with us. As a result, he has had an impressive record for closing deals for Midfield in a highly competitive industry. A sufficient example of his prowess in salesmanship is evident in the biggest deal that he closed with a single client on behalf of Midfield that was worth $2 million and I have no doubt of his future success towards this end.
Discuss the applicant’s ability to work with others. (Consider the applicant’s ability to work with peers, supervisors, and subordinates, his or her ability to lead and to delegate responsibility, and willingness to work in a team environment).
In assessing one’s managerial competences, their ability to manage people always makes for a very significant benchmark. In this regard, Chaitanya has grown into a competent and effective manager. When he was promoted to the position of Business Development Manager, he faced an uphill task of supervising people in a field in which he had little or no experience. His first challenge was to establish a solid rapport with his Regional Sales Managers who had already built a successful relationship with some of our biggest clients.
After earning their trust and support, he was in a position to gain an intimate comprehension of our strengths and weaknesses; our greatest opportunities and challenges. This he did, managing to pull off a particularly smooth transition; I attribute his success, at least partially, to the mature and respectful manner in which he relates with his colleagues.
Also noteworthy is Chaitanya’s mentoring ability, whenever a new member joined his team, he took it upon himself to assist them in getting adjusted to their new employer and position. His ultimate goal was to help them adapt to the work culture of Midfields during their first two months at the new job. This he accomplished by pairing up new employees with more experienced members of his team. He also made sure that the new members of his team were taken along on client calls with a view to exposing them and therefore equipping them with hands on experience in dealing with clients.
By creating a healthy environment for a creative exchange of ideas, offering guidance and training to newly joined subordinates, being affable and accessible to his peers and juniors alike without compromising his authority, Chaitanya has been able to develop highly successful teams.
What do you consider the applicant’s chief liabilities? What efforts, if any, has the applicant made to improve in these areas?
When Chaitanya first joined Midfield, it was noted that he was overly confident notwithstanding his exemplary abilities and good intentions; this was his weakness. This was particularly problematic since it would cloud his ability to objectively assess his ideas resulting to tactical mistakes that were obvious in retrospect. For instance, rather than sharing the idea with someone else, which would have helped him refine his thoughts and take alternative perspectives into consideration, he would proceed with its implementation resulting in needless review of the project later that proved its unsustainability for instance.
Fortunately for him, he positively received criticism on the same and was able to take it objectively and take corrective action; in the process he had since been able to overcome most of his weaknesses. As his supervisor, I have instilled in him the need and benefit of having a workable plan in place before moving to implement it, especially where significantly huge amounts of resources are involved. As a result, he is now able to contain the excitement of new ideas and I have known him to undertake extensive research on a project before he recommends it for implementation. I would say that he takes in constructive suggestions and incorporates them into his plans. In ambiguous situations, he has learnt to first conduct analysis to test and refine a theory before he advances to a large-scale investigation. As a result, he is able to generate better proposals which have greater prospects for success.
Lastly, while Chaitanya, like everyone else has his limitations, he has learned to accept his weaknesses while working towards improving on them. Above all, he is appreciative of constructive criticism and has portrayed great eagerness to learn during the time that I had known him.
Please provide any additional information about the applicant that would assist the Admissions Committee in evaluating the applicant’s probability of success in graduate school
Chaitanya shows great enthusiasm in all his undertakings. He is ambitious, self-motivated, result-oriented, team worker and has impeccable communication skills. This is evidenced by the role he played as a member of a team tasked with raising investor funding to the tune of $ 13 million for Midfields. He created an investor presentation that ended up securing funds for Midfield’s expansion in Northern India and Dubai. This is in spite of him having neither training nor prior experience in investment fundraising.
With 1,200 employees in 16 countries under me, Chaitanya ranks amongst the top most 1% segment in productivity and resourcefulness. With the above qualities and achievements, I can assert without fear of contradiction, that Chaitanya Velma has great potential for great success in graduate school and a remarkable subsequent career in management.