my HBS interview experience was significantly different.. the interviewer had read my application and I could see they had highlighted some parts of my essays.
The questions were very pointed and around specific things I had mentioned in my essays, My advice to you all is this.
1) they all ask you the typical "walk me thru your resume", make sure you put some color to this..i.e. just dont read off your resume, begin with a short intro about yourself, who you are, where you come from..and then just skim thru certain highlights of your career..no need to say i was managing 100 people and i didnt like Joe X and had to motivate em blah blah.. simply note what you accomplished in that job..and move on.
2) based on this..HBS interviews are certainly not blind they have already read your essays..they have done their homeworks..at somepoint they will ask you a specific thing from your experience or something you mentioned in your essays..be sure you are prepared to explain those points...without going into too much details
3) really your work or your life experiences are probably of interest only to you.. so dont ever get bogged into stupid details someone else wouldnt give a rats ass .. they will challenge you with some questions..they are really trying to judge your analytical skills.. i remember i had a conversation over the future of iPhone and how it may change the telecom industry in USA...
4) at the end of the interview Q&A..take a moment to tell them you would like to summarize your candidacy..in 3 min you should be highlight your strengths, why you are unique and most importantly why it is critical for you to have an MBA to further your goals!
for me..point 4 really won over my interviewer..as our interview ended she asked me if had any questions, I responded by saying I dont have any but i would like to take this opportunity to summarize my candidacy and in 3 min i just gave an elevator pitch to her..
annoyance wrote:
Hey all,
As people are starting to prep for interviews, I thought I'd finally post my interview experience from R1
From what I've read, the HBS interview seems to vary quite a bit from the very easy-going/conversational to the almost stress test type where people are getting interrupted mid-answer to move on to the next question. I was fortunate enough to get the former. In general, there were a lot more high-level questions than I thought there would be. Here are the questions I can remember:
Why did you choose xyz university?
How did you know you wanted to go into business?
Why consulting?
Why did you choose your current firm?
Tell me about a typical project
What's the best part of your job? Worst part?
What would you change/improve about your firm? (this seems to be a popular HBS tricky question, which I had luckily seen...)
Why do you think your firm hasn't done this yet? (...but was definitely not prepared for this follow-up question)
Tell me about your experience working with xyz organization outside of work?
What would you bring to HBS?
(no time for questions)
One thing to keep in mind is that the interviewer will have read your application, so they will ask targeted questions. She also specifically asked that I use examples/stories that I did not mention in my essays (although you should probably do this regardless). Lastly, I got my interview invite the day after most people did, so don't be too discouraged if you don't get an invite on day one.
Hope this helps someone, good luck to all