Rhyme's Totally Fallible Guide to Interviewing

Thanks rhyme! That does make sense.

If my interviewer drops my first name, I respond with his/hers. Tit for tat.

Also, my alumni interviewer from Texas emailed me today and we're setting up at time to meet. Just out of curiosity, I googled him, and it turns out we went to the same school for undergrad (!!), he's written a book and has a blog, which I am reading (on company time, naturally). So now I'm going in with some advance intelligence that I can drop and totally wow the dude with.

Just be careful. This can come across as awful creepy. I once had an interviewer dig around on linkedin finding things that my business partners had done and asking me about them. It didn't come across as research, it just came across as inappropriately weird.

I noticed one question from an 07 post that I didn't find an answer to.
1. For non-blind interviews, is it good idea to reuse stories from our essays/short answers/resumes or show something new?
2. Is it better to draw examples from work or outside of work?
and my own addition here:
3. If we are asked about a story from one of our essays, should we reiterate what is said in the essays before moving on to explain or should we just answer with new information that supplements what is already said in the essay?

Rhyme
Thank you for the wonderful post. It's very elaborate.
I have a question for you and in general for others too. What's the ideal preparation time for interview?
I'm doing the Tuck interview on 7th and have about 3 days to prepare before that. Maybe 12-15 hours in all, to

a. draft rough answers to the main questions - why mba, why tuck, what goals and why?
b. pointers for situations like leadership, strengths, weaknesses, ethical dilemma etc
c. to practice all these by doing a mock.

Do you think that is enough time?
Also, what is the best way to start the answer a "Why MBA" interview question? any tips on that?
thanks
WG

hi rhyme
this is a very lame Q, but I have to ask.
What exactly does the interviewer mean by " tell me about a teamwork experience". Isn't that a very abstract questions? Most of the projects I do are in teams, so what do they want to hear specifically? Conflict management? Multicultural teams? Dealing with someone difficult?
what would make a good teamwork example?
thanks
WG

It's a vague question, but that's a good thing -- you can use it to tell almost any story that you want. I like to take questions like that and define teamwork at the forefront of my story so that we both know exactly what we are talking about. The risk of not doing so is that the person is expecting a story about X and I tell a story about Y -- which likely comes across as having no point at all to someone expecting X. On the other hand, if I tell them, "To me teamwork is really about Y" then the story makes sense.

So, with that in mind, feel free to define "Y" however you see fit.

Some ideas:

Y = "Teamwork is really about bringing together a disparate group of people to achieve a goal" (broad, but you can use it in just about any story)

Y = "Teamwork is about identifying individual strengths and weaknesses and ensuring everyone is properly aligned for success" (the one I tend to most like)

Y = "Teamwork is about influencing others to work together towards a common goal" (google Cialdini principles of persuasion or perhaps its principles of influence, I forget, but just google Cialdini)

I have to run to a meeting, hopefully that helps.

When your interviewer says "Walk me through your resume..", do you go choronologically - i.e. start with undergrad move on to first position then second etc... or go in the order of the resume - i.e. Here is where I am NOW but how I got here is ....

And do you work in the EC's/Personal interests into the Resume walk through? Or is it just an exercise in determining your professional history?

Entirely up to you - whatever makes more sense in your storyline / whatever you prefer. In general, my experience has been that bottom up (chrono) flows slightly better only because you get to where you are now and then can jump to where you want to go post MBA (I did A, that lead to B, and now I want to get an MBA to do C). That tends to be a bit more of a natural progression than jumping to post MBA goals from your oldest job (I currently do B, used to do A, and now want to C)... but honestly there's no "right" answer, just do what you think makes more sense given your plans.

Gotta jet to meeting.

Thanks Rhyme. The flow is so much better when I begin at the beginning and end with where I am now. I think that is what I will do.

Hope the meeting went well!

Any chance someone could shed some light on MBAgirl's questions?

I have my Sloan interview coming up and was wondering if I can reuse some stories?

I have a Sloan interview coming up as well

How about reusing examples in the cover letter? (only mentioned for a few sentences, not an entire essay)

I guess I will answer my own question

I had my sloan interview on Friday and I was told not to reuse stories from my essays. I asked if I could use stories from the cover letter and my interviewer said yes.

I ended up not using any "stories" because I really wasn't asked any BEI type questions but rather many questions related to my application itself. No curve balls though

Contributions to school:
- what you will bring to classroom discussions (insights into industries, disciplines, ham baking habits in England, etc)
- what will you bring to your teams
- what will you do outside of the classroom
- what clubs
Clubs you want to participate in:
- they care if you know the school well enough to know their club names
- they care if you contacted clubs
- they care if you really want to join clubs and which ones

Bump

Bumping the topic for R2 interview candidates.