A Not-So-Comprehensive Guide to Interviewing
I had the opportunity to interview with a few schools this year (Booth, MIT, Tuck, Ross, Stern, McCombs, Foster, ASU) and when
bb asked me to think about some new topics for the MBA forums, I immediately thought about interviews. Who hasn't seen the flood of posts on the school forums about "dude! What questions were you asked?" and the likes to get more insights. Well, I for one, think that knowing questions beforehand (some schools have very similar questions for all their candidates while some let the interviewers improvise), can have it benefits, but I definitely think it leads to over-preparation. So in this thread, I am going to go over some common interview questions, how I chose to answer them, and hopefully, you - the potential class of 2021 candidate can get some ideas on creating your
own interviewing strategy.
Resume Question(s)
Most of the time, the interview starts with a resume question, with the exception of Sloan which generally starts with the question "do you have any update since you submitted your application". Now, resume questions can be in many forms but the generally popular versions are:
1. Walk me through your resume
2. Tell me about yourself
Now those two are essentially the same questions but the second one gives you a bit of a wiggle room to share some personal stories. One of the things about me I wanted to highlight that, even though I came from a very middle-class family, my parents never compromised on my education. They always encouraged me to take risks and supported me in my pursuit of a very nontraditional career. Now, this made sense to me because the overarching theme of all my applications were challenging the status quo, taking risks and investing in my own growth. It could be hard to include that in the "Walk me through your resume" question because none of this stuff is going to be on your resume (if it is, then it is a bigger problem). Another issue that I have seen is that people often go into random tangents describing things that do not really matter. The clearest way to illustrate this is the concept of Chekov's gun (if a play shows a gun, then it acts as a foreshadowing of a future event when the gun will be used; look it up it's pretty cool). My point is that if you are telling the interviewer an
interesting fact about yourself, it should be applied in the broader context. For example, the fact that you went to a boarding school growing up may or may not be super relevant to the rest of your story. If it is, share it. If it is not, skip. Generally speaking, this answer should be longer than others, but if you are speaking for more than 4 minutes, I would recommend shortening it.
My Answer: I graduated in 2011 from XXX University. While I did engineering in my undergrad, my biggest learning were through two experiences - one when I created the first student-run recruitment committee which managed to increase on-campus recruiter by 100% in 2 years, and when I presided over the one of the largest college festival managing a budget of over $50K. After college, I joined a big engineering giant as a design engineer. While I loved my job, I started finding my own passion when I volunteered to teach in Teach For India classrooms in Mumbai. The entrepreneurial spirit with which the TFI fellows excelled in their job fascinated me enough to apply for the fellowship. I joined Teach for India in 2013 and spent the next two years as a full-time math and writing teacher to hundred precocious young adults in high school. I am happy to talk more about my teaching experience if you'd like (this used to be my hook to shorten my answer and leave the room for more interesting stories - learned this from the expert herself at
ApplicantLab). After TFI, I wanted to know more about the education sector and decided to join a school leadership startup XXX in 2015. We grew from a 10-member team in one city to 60 people in 6 cities. I started off as a program manager, helping 25 school leaders in Mumbai to improve their schools, and last year I was promoted to lead the program strategy of the organization, impacting over 500 schools and 30K children. I am now looking forward to my next journey in business school (sort of an abrupt end, but I don't fully remember my segue)
B School Questions
The normal transition from a resume questions can be both towards business schools or behavioral questions. For the most part, in my interviews goals and MBA questions followed the resume question, so I am going to arrange it that way. B School questions can be 1-4 depending how how the questions are framed and what your interviewer ate for breakfast in the morning. From what I have seen they tend to go like this!
1. So why an MBA? Why Now?
2. Why this school?
3. How will you contribute to this school?
4. What will you learn?
5. What are your goals (sort of similar to the why MBA why Now bit)
I would recommend being very specific on all these questions. There is a fine balance between an emotional pitch and an informational overload and you have to find that out for yourself. An answer that only relies on an emotional component can signal that you have not done your research and that relies only on reciting specific resources could mean that all you have done is memorizing the website. Both of them are not great scenarios to be in. I will share my own answer which will be a combination of all the questions. But before doing that, here's a few disclaimers on how to answer these questions coherently.
- Have a lingering hook for your long term goals. If you do not have something passionate in the long term, then it is a hard sell to be honest. You are going to spend $200K to climb the MBB ladder is too vanilla in my opinion. Even if it's that - is there a particular practice you want to lead? What are the motivations behind that aspiration?
- When talking about school specific stuff, make sure to cite your sources. For example, if you are going to namedrop a current student, make sure to give them some context - why you talked to this person? What did this person recommend? You get the drift.
- When you mention school specific resources, make sure to add the long-term vision as to how this resource will actually help you. Otherwise it is just things in the air with no real weight to tie into the ground.
My Answers
So why an MBA? Why Now?
Thank you for asking. You know, when I was a full time teacher, one of the things that really helped me improve the learning environment and outcomes of my students was building a strong blended learning tool. Are you aware of what blended learning is? (Pro tip - Every time you use a jargon-ish thing - clarify). No? Well, blended learning is this system which uses modern technology like the iPads, networking apps, learning cloud platforms etc to rapidly improve learning among students. So, in my classroom, creating blended learning helped me give feedback to my students in real time and help them work on that feedback faster to improve their writing and mathematical ability and intuition. When I started working with school leaders in the next job, I realized that building technological interventions will be the biggest differentiator in revolutionizing the education industry. I have worked with EdTech leaders in India like XXX, YYY, and ZZZ and I envisage building my own EdTech firm in the long term. The current EdTech products of India are all geared towards academics, and as I learned first-hand as a teacher, the psychosocial aspects of education are equally important and that's where I want to aim my product at. I am happy to talk more about my entrepreneurial ideas if you are interested. An MBA not only helps me build a strong foundation to start my own company, it also helps me gain access to a network of entrepreneurs and tech leaders in the EdTech space in the US and beyond where I can learn best practices before I start something of my own.
Why this school? (Booth)
You know, as someone who has seen literally thousands of applicants on GMAT Club, I have had the opportunity to interact candidly with a lot of top school applicants. The thing that stood out to me most about Boothies was their constant push to challenge the status quo. That has been one of my mission in my career and I identify with the Chicago approach the most. Moreover, in terms of academic opportunities ….XXXX….
Lastly, I cannot wait to do experiential opportunities …XXXX
You get the point! Basically, use the emotional component first and then go into specifics without overloading on information. Repeat pro tip: Ensure tying back each resource to your post MBA goal to show that you actually researched and not mouthing off the headlines from the school website.
How will you contribute to this school?
Thank you for the question. I have spent half a decade in the education sector and parallelly as an intrapreneur on GMAT Club, I created many new products to drive engagement and partner growth. I want to leverage my background in Booth in its Education Club, the Social Impact Conference and the Entrepreneurship Track.
First, in the education club ……XXX…..
Second, in the SI Conference, I want to bring speakers who are my mentors and leaders in the education industry such as AAAA and BBBBB
Third, in the entrepreneurship track, I want to build on my own product idea to create a minimum viable product before I graduate and help my peers with EdTech aspirations…..XXX….
So basically, these questions will form the major chunk of the MBA interview, and then for most schools, a few behavioral questions will follow.
Behavioral Questions
Behavioral questions almost takes up 30-40% of the interviewing time and this is the perfect place to really demonstrate some of your leadership chops. I think different people have different approaches to this, but I had a special one which was based more on stories than questions. Anyway, here are some common beahvioural questions.
1. Tell me about a time when you faced an obstacle.
2. How do you function in a team?
3. Tell me about a time when you received critical feedback. How did you respond?
4. Tell me about a time when you had to give critical feedback. How did you handle it?
5. Tell me about a time when you did not succeed.
6. Tell me about an experience when you had to push the status quo?
[some questions that do not look like behavioural questions but are…]
7. What are you strengths and weaknesses?
8. What would your supervisor say about you?
Basically these are all questions from your past and it is a way to demonstrate leadership potential - sort of similar to essays. Of course, I am not going to detail about my responses to all of these questions, but I will leave one and then we will go over some tips for behavioral interview questions. This question was "Tell me about a time when you faced a challenge" - It could also be used for "Tell me about a time when you faced resistance", "Tell me about a time when you were a leader", "Tell me about a time when you faced an ethical dilemma", "Tell me about a time when you had to persuade someone"
My Answer: I had just started my second year as a Teach For India (TFI) Fellow in 2014, when the school principal pulled me aside and asked me to do something unethical: convince the parents of my low-income students to join an expensive - and highly-profitable - after-school program he had launched. While this was a common practice, I knew that this program's cost was beyond the reach of my students and would subject their families to excessive financial strain. I refused. He then threatened retaliation by saying that he would eject TFI from his school the following year if I didn't play along. Thankfully, even though this would have an adverse effect on TFI, I persuaded my bosses to support me in my stance.
Realizing that he would make good on his threat, and not wanting to leave the children in limbo during after-school hours, I then spent the next six months developing a plan to create a new community center with a library and computer lab. I tapped into my local network to raise funds for the new center, and also convinced other TFI staff members to commit to working there when it launched. Yes, the principal treated me poorly for the rest of the year, but the parents of my students did not have to spend a fortune to see their kids succeed. Three years later, students who went through this new community center's program graduated high school with an unprecedented 100% passing rate and 85% distinction rate, while the average school rate was 60% and 35%. I am now striving to get them resources for college to fulfil their ambitions.
Tips for behavioural questions
1. Do not try to prepare for 103 behavioral questions. You will never be able to cover them. As you can see, I could use the same story for a number of behavioral questions (leadership, persuasion, convincing someone, challenging status quo) etc.
2. I recommend preparing for five to seven very strong stories that demonstrate - leadership, teamwork, pushing the status quo, failure, feedback. If you prepare these, you will be able to weave them in pretty much any behavioral questions.
3. Do not sound like a robot. You should not come off as a person who is reciting the answers. Take pauses, think about them, and sometimes even ask for a minute to organize your thoughts - your interviewer would appreciate your thoughtfulness.
4. Do not badmouth your peers. If you have a question on a time you had to give meaningful or critical feedback to a peer or a direct report use maturity. Explain that you could empathize with them. Show that you went an extra mile trying to understand the why of a problematic situation rather than jumping into solving it.
5. Know your resume inside out. Most of your accomplishment that you will talk about in the behavioral questions are probably products of your resume. Do not mix numbers. Your interviewer is more careful than you might realize.
That's all folks. Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments and I will keep on refreshing this sticky! _________________