Manager
Joined: 19 Oct 2017
Posts: 109
Location: Russian Federation
GPA: 4
WE:General Management (Insurance)
Re: Calling all McCombs(UT Austin) Applicants: (2018 Intake) Class of 2020
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01 Nov 2017, 02:21
Had my interview with 2nd year student via skype. Overall great experience, very friendly approach and not stressful at all. Questions were not stressful either, and no unexpected questions at all.
30 min for the interview and 15 minutes for my questions. One interesting thing to note: the interviewer has the same career goals as i do. i am not sure this was the intention, since the goal of product manager in tech is very common these days, however i believe the school tries to match applicants with interviewers having similar goals whenever possible. our background with the interviewer was also similar in a way, because we both have entrepeneurship experience. So interviewer asked questions about my current business, and i believe he was just interested in this in the context of his personal background, not because the interview prescribed these kind of questions. This actually made the conversation much more interesting and meaningful.
For applicants, who are open to different options in terms of career goals and do not have them set in stone , i still suggest to have a very clear career plan down to position and company (or companies). although mccombs is not among the schools which are obsessed with super detailed career goals, do not relax just yet. even though my interviewer did not drill me hard on my career goals (maybe because he sensed that i really did my homework from some small details of the conversation), but i can see that coming from some students especially if they sense that you didn't do detailed research. so i suggest to over prepare by doing brief research on these questions (in the context of PM role of course, but you get the overall idea):
- why exactly this company?
- what is the product of this company that you would like to work on if given a choice?
- what new product would you suggest to the company's CEO if given the opportunity?
- what do you think about competitors x,y,z of this company?
- what excites you about the strategy of this company ?
- what skills are most important for this position in this company?
- what classes exactly do you want to take and how do they relate to this position?
the probability is not high due to limited interview time, but if these questions are asked and you don't have anything to say, that might really hurt i guess.