London Business School Hub

Okay, interviews have kind of been a disaster for me. I'll tell all details, hopefully it helps someone prepare in areas I wasn't prepared. In person interview: Had my interview back in mid October - and I have NEVER been so nervous in my life. I had to have a surgery this month, so I was down for at least 2 weeks of the interview period. The morning I was assigned an alumni to do the interview, I emailed him to set it up the interview. With my schedule limitations, the only time to do the interview was THAT DAY in 4 hours. I had two hours of meetings left at my full time job, had enough time to go home and throw on a suit, and then drive the hour to his office. No. Preparation. Time. Not in a good place mentally Felt really strong the first hour. LBS is the only school I applied to in this round, I have a very clear reason I want to go there, my resume and essays told a clear story, and I know the school. He seemed very interested in press events I used to manage in Hawaii, which was one of my favorite projects, so it was very easy to talk about In hour two, we did an impromptu a case study where I had to do quite a bit of estimation math in my head, which I was totally unprepared for. Talked about it for about 10 minutes, and by the end I was so nervous I'm sure I was pale as a ghost, because he said that we should take a little break if I needed it. Then I was worried that I was looking like I couldn't handle pressure, which of course meant I was then stuck inside my head for the rest of the interview I feel like I did fine on the Case Presentation portion, the scenarios presented were simple enough. I could have done better, but it was okay. I walked out a feeling like my chances of getting had all but died. My interviewer called me about 30 minutes later and told me that he didn't want me to feel like I had bombed the interview, and that he gives very hard interviews. I thanked him for the call, and told him what a great learning experience it was! I have never been nervous in an interview before, but I'd never had an interview like this. I learned about an area I can definitely improve. So. Feels like I bombed, but maybe he was sincere when he said that I didn't? Video Interview: I work in entertainment, so I have access to sets and photography studios. I set up my laptop in a photo studio, set up 3 point lighting, white background, the whole shebang. Tried to give any extra effort I could :) Obviously, we knew the first question, so I felt fine about my answer there (I tripped over a few words, and wasn't as elegant as I was in my rehearsal, oh well). The second question was related to the single area of the program I knew the LEAST about. I know the program, I know which professors I'm most excited about meeting, I knew which courses I am looking forward to taking the most, the electives I will do, which clubs I'd like to join, the businesses based in London I'm most interested in connecting with, etc. There is ONE area of the program I really never thought much about, and that's the question I got. and I BLEW it. Terrible terrible response. As soon as it stopped recording, I knew EXACTLY what I should have said. My Biggest Take Aways: - No matter what you've heard about an LBS interview, be prepared for something off book - During the interview window, make sure you look interview ready every day until you're interview is officially scheduled - you never know when schedules will suck enough you have to do an interview immediatley - Know the WHOLE PROGRAM. Even the parts that you aren't particularly interested in or don't plan on participating.

Had my interview few days ago at LBS campus. Overall, the interview was more of a conversation than one-way communication. The interviewer was experienced and she interviews many candidates every year (at least that's the impression I got from her conversations). She had a questionnaire and followed a structured approach to cover as many aspects as possible about my profile: 1. About myself : She asked me to talk her through my resume and specifically asked me to focus more on "why I did" what I did. This was followed by some detailed questions wherever she was interested in my profile such as How did you find this experience etc. 2. Why MBA/Why LBS/Why now 3. How will I contribute to the school/clubs/class/study group 4. Life experience questions : Tell me a time when you worked in a multi-cultural team, what is my biggest achievement , what is my biggest challenge in my current role, what are your biggest strengths, Tell me a time when you led a project, My international experience etc. 5. My opinion : What is wrong with the world that businesses are ignoring? What should they do? 6. Presentation: She already chose the topic for me from a list and gave 5 mins to prepare. It was easy and she was focusing more on my approach and perspective than the final answer. I read in this blog that students were asked not to share the topic of the presentation. Surprisingly, she didn't ask me - may be she forgot :) 7. Finally, the conversation ended with her experience at LBS, what they look for in a candidate at this stage and her current role in the firm and why she chose it.. My advice to everyone will be keep your answers short, concise and structured. Moreover, be honest and enjoy the conversation. Now waiting impatiently for the result - fingers crossed. Best wishes to everyone!

Had my interview some few days ago. It was definitely the most exhaustive MBA interview I've had by far. My interviewer had all of my information, specific things that LBS had requested he should find out, and he even knew to which schools I had applied!! (I guess they get this information from the GMAT report) Overall it was a very complete and exhaustive conversation, where I felt I was permanently pushed to see whether I'd fit at LBS (I definitely think I do). The case was simple, nothing to worry about (Can't share the contents of it) I would recommend for everyone to be really prepared for this interview. Have a clear story, career path, electives you want to do, LBS activities on which you want to participate, etc Best of luck to everyone!

Had my interview with an experienced professional in the industry. Pretty standard interview. Spent a little over an hour. Here's what I remember 1. Tell me about yourself, why MBA, why now 2. What do you think about Brexit and how will it impact your decision 3. What exactly do you want to do in your field 4. Tell me about a leadership experience 5. 5 min to prepare and answer a case.

My interview was scheduled with an LBS alumnus. I was expected to fly to another city as LBS couldn't find a rep in my current city, fortunately the interviewer managed to get his friend (also LBS alum) do to it my city, which saved me the 5hrs flight. The interviewer is pretty high up in a M/B/B. The interview was short as it was scheduled for only 1 hour, had 3 parts: - Questions for me (based on resume, work experience, also behavioral). Questions were: have I led a team, what is the profiles of the people in the team, have I failed in a project, describe my international experience and cultural sensitivity, etc. Also typical ones like: why MBA, why LBS, is LBS my first choice. There was an oddball question to test my ability to handle ambiguity: "How many bathtubs in this country?". I didn't prepare for this kind of question and kinda bombed this part. - 5 minutes presentation (5 minutes to prepare): convince a CEO that he should hire a Data-analysis consultant to help with all major decision making. - Questions for alum, about 15 minutes. I asked him about his LBS experience and if there was any advice for me. He was surprised that I knew in depth about his CV, so I told him I looked him up on Linked In before. In summary, it was a fairly pleasant interview, I did OK. So far I've been waitlisted at LBS. The interviewer was surprised to know that, as he expected me to be admitted. Fingers crossed and see how things turn out!!

Had my interview as well. I think I did just ok, but as alefal said, it's just one part of the holistic evaluation process. Would have liked to crushed every single question, but I guess it's a learning for other interviews. My interviewer asked me questions for only half an hour and then we transitioned to her experience at LBS. She was really excited to talk about her experience and almost seemed like she made up her mind to spend 1.5 hour to give me advice as opposed to interview me. Extremely friendly and gave me some pretty valuable advice. How is everyone spending the next 3.5 weeks to keep their mind off of the decision?

Just had my interview. I think it went very well. Admissions passed him very clear instructions on how to proceed with the interview, with specific questions and what to do. The mini-case was also provided by adcom. At one point I got the impression that the interview was bounded to those questions and that he could not avoid or change his interview path, even though at some moments, you could see that he was making deep-dive questions in order to better assess me. The mini-case is very straightforward and specially for those who have at some point in time prepared for consulting interviews, it will come naturally. One advice I would give is to ask questions about London and the alum experience in LBS. He was clearly eager to share his experiences in LBS and wanted any opportunity to remember his two years there.

Just had my interview, which was with an alumni who was a partner at a PE firm and had a very different background to mine. It went for 1.5 hours. He was very nice, but I'm not sure how well I did to be honest - it was a bit hard to read how well it was going. It started off with the usual walk me through CV/why an MBA/why LBS and also some questions about the career choices I made. He then focused quite a bit on leadership and teamwork experiences. He also asked quite a few questions on what international business experience I had as he said that this didn't come through very clearly on my CV. He also asked what my leadership development goals were. I found the presentation part a bit of a challenge because there were 2 parts to it. It was a case about leading change management - managing restructuring and the fact that people were not happy about it. I was asked to present a) how I would approach this with my team and how much I would share my personal feelings b) Pick one of 3 questions and also talk about that - I picked one that said to describe how to overcome resistance to change. I didn't feel like I had a good conclusion to round off the presentation because the presentation was in 2 parts though I tried to relate them, but the introduction and the points in the middle were fine. The third part of the interview was where I got to ask questions and he gave me a lot of advice on what I should do to prep and what electives I should take. He also advised that to get the most out of career services, you needed to try and fit within the mould and that you would struggle if they couldn't put you in a box, which happened with him. He also said that if I got admitted, to get in touch with him and he would provide me with prep resources for finance given my lack of finance knowledge, and resources for consulting since that was what I wanted to move into, which was really helpful. I'm really hoping I get in! He did say being from New Zealand was a bit of a novelty at LBS so I'm counting on that working in my favour :)