EggWhitesOnly wrote:
baky wrote:
I was asking for your experience with HEC interviews, of course... ;p
Hi Baky,
Feel free to PM me with questions about the interview. Also, if you Google "HEC Paris Pagalguy 2009" you will find a very lengthy thread with plenty of useful information about interviews. (I used it for my own preparation.)
Generally, the interview includes a ten-minute presentation (can be about anything) and a 30-45 minute Q&A session with the standard interview questions. You are provided two alumni interviewers if you are not able to go to campus for an interview and you can present the same presentation to both interviewers. I am based in Northern California and my interviewers included one alum who currently lives in Seattle and a previous HEC exchange student (he's actually a UCLA MBA alum) who lives in LA.
Best of luck!
EggWhitesOnly
I had a similar experience. I'm based in Brussels, so I had two interviews with alumni here (although I wouldn't have minded hopping on a train to Paris!). For my presentation - which ended up being more like 15 minutes - I picked something work-related and which helped support my overall application 'story'.
The first half of the interview included the presentation and follow-up questions. The other half was regular Q & A-style. But I have to say that the questions from the interviewers were not what I expected. They had very little to do with what I had been doing to date and were almost entirely about 'why an MBA now?', 'what next?' and especially, 'why HEC (and France/Europe)?' and 'what can I bring to the program?'. But both interviewers and interviews were really easy going. It ended up being more of a conversation than anything, and they made it really easy to relax. More than anything, I think both alumni genuinely wanted to make sure that HEC was a good fit in both directions - i.e., that it was a good fit for me and that I was a good fit for the program.
Regarding preparation, I found this link to be of use:
https://www.accepted.com/mba/interviews/ ... mit&bhcp=1. I also re-read my application a few times, practiced my presentation with a friend to get comfortable with it and wrote out responses to some common questions (which, in the end, I didn't even really need). In general, I'd say to keep your answers pretty short. The Q & A part was only 30 - 45 minutes, and it became clear very quickly that, given this constraint, the interviewers were after concise answers.
What I would warn against, though, is over-preparation (and this is a theme I found to be common in the
accepted.com write-ups found in the link I shared above). I can only speak for the alumni interviews (and not adcom or professor interviews, which are what I think you would see if you had your interviews on campus), but they were really geared toward getting to know you on a personal level. If you sound rehearsed I think you run the risk of not really letting yourself come through.
If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me. And good luck!