Here's a recap that some of you may find useful:
My Kellogg interview was on campus with an adcom. It was a blind interview so based just on the resume I brought with me. The general flow was:
- Intro
- Tell me about your education, why this school?
- Went through resume, talking about each position with some standard questions about what did you learn, what was especially challenging, etc.
- Discussed short and long term goals (Kellogg has you write these down on a form when you arrive)
- Why MBA, Why now, and Why Kellogg (I also discussed MMM since I applied to it)
As you can tell, all these questions are pretty typical for an adcom interview and consistent with what you can find here and on the ClearAdmit wiki page. That being said, it was my first business related interview ever and I was pretty nervous. Due to madness of finishing apps I also had not done any mock interviews or really had time to rehearse in my mind either. Here's what I took away from it:
- Being nervous is ok but the more practice you get the less you'll be likely to either draw blanks or ramble on. There weren't any questions that I had no idea what to do say but I did ramble on too much.
- Putting military work experience into understandable terms is really hard. It was challenging for a resume and it's equally hard in person. Avoid too much jargon and assume the person may have no idea what you're talking about. At the same time it still needs to be concise!
- Most military types (whatever branch, officer or enlisted) have some pretty impressive and unique things to talk about. Once you get that across, the real challenge is to show that that the skills that developed are useful in business. Obviously that's different for everyone, but be able to talk about something broad like leadership then give a specific example of how you will use it in the future. I also think it's a positive to show that you understand that the transition will be challenging and that there are many aspects of bschool that can make it a successful crossover.
- To sum it up, reinforce your strengths as a military applicant while easing any concerns they might have about your background.
lakai777 wrote:
can you post an after action or debrief regarding the interview interview experience?
...
as a military candidate, was there any particular type of angle or questioning that you felt could give us an edge and how do you feel we can take advantage of that?