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Completed my interviews recently. Both interviews were pretty normal and outgoing conversations, myself doing a lot of the talking and walking my interviewers through my resume. The usual stuff was present (why an MBA; why INSEAD; why now). I have a pretty compelling story (I want to move into management consulting) so these answers are all pretty straightforward and consistent in my case My first interviewer did make some tricky questions about when did I believe the EURO currency was going to collapse (¿?), probably to test my knowledge of Europe and its current political/economical situation. Even though my answer to this particular question was not very solid I believe I had in overall two very good interviews and I am definitely looking forward to decision day. My story made sense to both of them and the fact that I've worked abroad for some time definitely helps a lot.

The interviews are done! Both were positive experiences but very different type of interviews. I never had the impression that I was being grilled or that they were playing a "bad cop". 1) First was 100% in the local language, the alum has been doing interviews for some time so he was straight to the point: I want to hear about your story, career path leading to an MBA and career goals, and see that everything makes sense. After that, he asked a few questions because he needed to fill the form. Those were about culture shock, extracurricular activities, etc. After that, he said my story was coherent and that now he was there for any questions and to help me make this very important decision that is doing an MBA. He said the his career would be very different had he not gone to INSEAD. We spent some time on that and he offered some good advice. Total duration: 90 minutes 2) Second was half in English and half in the local language. The alum asked many more questions this time. As I was explaining my trajectory from university until my current job, he stopped to ask questions and really understand my motivations. Lots of questions on soft skills, I think he covered everything: leadership story and style, culture shock, weaknesses, etc. During the interview we would go back and forth between these questions and him telling about his experience. He always had a smile when talking about his time at INSEAD and you could tell that he enjoyed it. He said my story made perfect sense and that he was in a very similar place when he did his MBA. Total duration: almost 2 hours Last comment to those who are still going to pass their interviews: times goes by super fast! Do not be scared of interviews that are very long, trust me, I would have stayed longer talking had I not been on a tight schedule.

Hi guys, I just had my first interview. And Pierre it was indeed in French, with just a small section in English. She is a 2008 alum doing innovation strategy for a tech company: My feeling about the interview is mixed. She was nice and she said she liked my profile. Yet I felt she really grilled me on future goal questions. First she asked me to describe my company, what we do, clients and so on, as she is from a completely different industry. The classic walk me through résumé and the trinity questions, all the while stopping me on the way to get more detail. We then spent a significant amount of time on my future goals (aka why don't I just go for them without an MBA, why this particular country, why that business, which segment I am interested in and why, and it went on and on and I provided tones of examples and personal anecdotes that landed me to wanting that particular line of business ). Other questions were: - Did you get in touch with people from the industry you are targeting? What did you learn from them? - How are you going to contribute at Insead - What are your plans B and C and so on (in terms of both region and jobs). Did you apply to others schools and why?. - What does your company (boss) think about you applying, how will he take the announcement, will you consider going back after the MBA, why? - Why do you choose Fonty over Singy? - What makes you stand out on your current job Then we talked about her career journey since INSEAD and spent some time on her previous job (until 4 months ago she worked for the same company as my partner so that helped). We then started talking in "future mode" and she gave me some pieces of advice to fully enjoy the best year of my life :) :ie. to do as many things as you can before school starts: a. Get rid of the third language requirement before september (not even sure I need that 3rd language, have to check), b. Waive the finance core courses of P1 and P2, so that I can take electives during this period and ultimately have time to travel when in Singy. c. Stay in fonty on weekends (and not go back to Paris) so as not to miss out on social events. d. Get my résumé ready to shoot before I start the programme Waiting for interview two! EDIT: Here is the debrief of 2nd Interview: Interviewer: 2003 alum, Managing Director of a Subsidiary of Real Estate company. It lasted two hours, he was actually nice, but clearly challenged my short term goal. To him, Consulting just didn’t make sense. He said that I would waste my time there, that it wouldn’t get me closer to my future goal that he actually liked. All the questions were around the countries in Africa in which BCG and McKinsey are based, who the heads of offices are, the types of projects they work on, who I talked to… Then he added that his friends in Consulting in Africa don’t get so many interesting projects other than with the governments, because African companies can’t afford MBB and that multinationals signed contracts with Europe or the US. So clearly going for Africa wouldn’t help, I’d rather work from a European office, I would get more African projects that way. Then questions on my long term goal, why Kinshasa and not another city, how I would get financing, which organisms do finance projects in Congo, we talked of the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, infrastructure projects in the country, the mining industry in the east, political uncertainties, the war, my family members’ projects and it went on and on. (thank you Jeune Afrique for keeping me informed). He then said that I would be better off working in PE or for the World Bank or UNDP, and that if there are no offices in Kinshasa I could build one. He actually had a point, but I had to defend my consulting position no matter what. That was hard :lol: :lol: He said that he got it that when people had no idea what they wanted they would go to consulting, but that I have a great project and he just doesn’t believe consulting is the way. I then asked him what he said he wanted to do when he applied to INSEAD, he answered CONSULTING :). No comment. All in all other than the job part that lasted almost an hour and a half, we only spent a couple of minutes on a couple of other questions: the 3 whys, a cultural choc, and ultimately how I would qualify my personality. And that was it. On the positive side, an hour before the interview I received an email from INSEAD informing me that I was awarded a merit based scholarship, the “INSEAD’s women” one. €15k, should I be admitted of course. So I mentioned it, he laughed and said, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I wouldn’t have spent so much time writing”… I just don’t know what he meant by that!!! :shock: :) Now the long wait! Good luck everyone!!!

Completed both my interviews last week. Interview 1 was an awesome interview, we took an hour than went to get lunch together to continue our conversation. Interviewer stopped short of literally saying he would recommend me but he said my story was very strong and that I had great leadership potential. Some questions I remember: Why INSEAD? Why an MBA? What other schools have you applied to? He asked specifically about my industry experience and how I had progressed in my career (I have a lot of micro-promotions over 5 years) He asked about a time I had failed and how I overcame my struggle What are your weaknesses? All in all, this was a great 1.5-2 hour conversation. I really enjoyed the experience and we had a very organic conversation, made me very excited to go to INSEAD! Interview 2 was equally awesome, but in a different way. My interviewer was significantly more senior (SVP at a public company) and appeared to play more of a bad cop role and was less responsive to my answers (didn't show as much emotion). Definitely a more challenging exercise but I believe I did pretty well - he was almost 16 years out of his INSEAD experience and was definitely reminiscing his experience a lot. He also asked some more odd-ball questions that I had a tougher time with: What book are you currently reading (coincidentally I am reading an INSEAD-book right now :-D ) What blogs do you read? How does your company help other companies and how could you help mine? How do you learn from your mistakes, what process do you follow? In addition to these questions there were some of the standard Why INSEAD, Why MBA, Where else are you applying type questions. Overall, I think my interviews went better than I had expected although I probably could have done better on my second interview. Excited to hear back from INSEAD in 2-3 weeks!!

So yesterday I had my second interview... so let's see how it goes :) Both interviewers graduated quite a long time ago, though maintain the network through the Alumni club. First interview took 45 minutes, was rather conversational without an intention to challenge my aims. The person had the same background (incl. company) as I do and my arguments were extremely clear for him. He was interested in my 3rd essay and the way I spend time out of office. Second interview took almost 2.5 hours. We met on a weekend for a cup of coffee and ended up chatting for quite a long time. I noticed, the interviewer was not keeping track of time and something like after 2 hours found that it is already quite late and asked me if I have any questions. I take it as a good sign, as seems I managed to capture his attention with our discussion. He is an entrepreneur and was interested in my opinion on this or that business idea, basing on my previous experience. Tried to challenge me a bit on not doing MBA, but going into consulting firm. Standard questions are why MBA, why now, why INSEAD. Be ready to provide an answer, that fits your story. Anyway, this was discussed several times on the pages of this forum :) Have my fingers crossed...