I suppose I could be wrong about all of this, but I find the use of “, MBA” as part of your name to be a bad idea.
Yes, I know that not everyone has an MBA, but in my opinion unless you are a CPA or a Ph.D., you need to exercise a little caution in the initials you place after your name.
My sister sells commercial insurance and as I understand it, every time you take a test of some sort you get another set of initials you can use after your name. At meetings where you might be introduced, they read your name and ALL of your initials which everyone at these gatherings of fellow insurance folks apparently understands. To the rest of us normal folks it sounds the very popular nursery rhyme that ends in “E I E I O”.
While I don’t recommend using these initials after your name, they should appear in your resume with proper “respect.” By that I mean, instead of just putting your designation initials you should spell them out. For those of us who are not as learned as you are, it helps to know what they stand for so we can make some judgments as to their relative importance.
As much as I see members “abuse” their designations by over playing them, I see the opposite as well. While I may know that UCLA is the University of California at Los Angeles, I think seeing it as an abbreviation makes it look plain silly. (Ever wonder why abbreviation is such a long word?)
Anyway, giving all aspects of your background their proper respect is important. As you go through your resume and cover letters, I would suggest you err on the side of being more complete. I will let you in on a little secret: I hate all abbreviations.
If you have ever examined The FENG membership directory you will notice that we go to great lengths to spell things out. I think they look nicer that way. Among the silly abbreviations are words like “Lane” and “Drive”. Let’s see: Ln. or Dr. Hopefully you can “afford” the one or two additional letters.
We are always torn between appearing pretentious and appearing redundant. (There is, of course, nothing worse than a redundant redundancy, but I digress.)
I guess the “take away” here is don’t sound like a nursery rhyme.
Regards, Matt
