Current Student or Alum Interviews are BS

Question

Does anybody else not like the idea of interviewing with alums or current students? I would rather be interviewed by somebody who has extensive experience with interviewing, and someone who is more involved with the rest of the process. I feel like current students and alumni might be more inclined to make incorrect conclusions or judgements on a candidate because all they know is what they see on the resume and what they hear in the interview. Whereas if you go for an interview at MIT and they know your application inside out, they can conduct a much more meaningful interview.

I was interviewed by a current student on Tuesday and every time he asked a question I was thinking, "Well if you had spent ten minutes reading my essays and scanning my app I could really elaborate and my response could be much more interesting." But instead I had to give answers that were very high level and boring because the guy didn't know jack about me.

And because some schools use students and alums they have to have blind interviews. I understand that "blind" interviews are supposed to allow interviewers to make an objective judgement on the candidate, but why the f*k do you need an "objective" judgement? Just read the godam application that I slaved over for months, I have nothing to hide, I want you to know about me, I'm proud of the things in my application. I don't care if they come into the interview with preconceived notions, that's fine, that's the way they should come into the interview. 

But I also understand that some schools are trying to save money or manage limited resources by using students and alums, and this is a reason for some blind interviews. But really it's B.S., it's kind of like doing a bunch of research on cars that you may want to buy and having car dealers send you carefully prepared pamphlets that show you why you should buy their car, and then when you're ready to make a decision you send your friend to test drive the cars and report back.

lepium · Answer

I think alumni interviews can be great if you "click" with him/her. They can relate to your experience, really understand what your accomplishments mean (for internationals, at least). 

They won't be like "so wtf it that company you work for" and forcing you to answer "if you had checked the local industry, you'd know it's the greatest local company". Local alumni will know and respect your experience, and know whether having direct reports by a certain age is meaningful or not, etc.

On the other hand, it *might* be unfair sometimes if they decide you are not fit coz they don't like your face...

Cheers. L.

polobrute · Answer

for most everyone, the purpose of going to b-school is to get a job afterwards... a job that you will have to interview for, where they will only have your resume...

so i think alumni and student interviews are there just to make sure you know how to interview to some extent. fact is, that school wants to place you in a job after graduation so their employment percentages are higher for rankings. if your scores and app are great, but you can't interview worth a lick, why would the school think that you are going to get a job afterwards?

3underscore · Answer

It is just the way it has to be.

It is growth for the students in i/view skills etc (something they probably build classes around a little).

Plus, if my company was interviewing for 400 roles, expected a yield of 50%, expected to find one good interview in three... I am up to 2000 interviews. To turn round in three months (taking three application waves). You find me a single company that has the HR department to deal with that (quick answer - there will not be a single non-government agency that can).

I would like to interview with the Dean, but the Dean will only dip in on things for certain reasons, and similar the Adcom. They have to cover a lot, quickly, as best they can accomodate.

Plus, everyone else is in the same boat. It is a little bit of a test of your ability to make an interview work in your favour really.

johnnyx9 · Answer

I understand the resource constraints and why students/alums are used in a lot of cases, but from what I understand some schools only use their admissions staff.

I have to disagree that the purpose of a business-school interview should be to simulate a job interview. That's like saying that a job interview should simulate what you will do after they hire you. The purpose of a business school interview should be to inform the admission's decision. 

If you were the dean of admissions at a business school, and you have plenty of resources (i.e. you had enough people working in admissions to actually have them read apps, and then interview all the candidates) wouldn't you rather have people walk interviews knowing a person's application so they can ask drill-down questions? An interview question could be something like, "So I know in your essay that you said you're interested in international development because of the work your father did in West Africa, but as I look at your resume I don't see that you have a lot of experience in this area, how do you plan on preparing yourself for this goal?" But in a blind interview, that conversation might go more like, "So what do you want to do with an MBA?" and then the candidate would have to go into all the details that could have been gleaned from a ten minute scan of the application.

3_underscore - When you say that an alum interview might not be fair because they don't like your face, I'm inclined to agree that a "blind" interviewer would be more likely to let bad chemistry in an interview influence their opinion of a candidate. Whereas I think someone who has read a candidates application will have more data-points and will be able to sort of contextualize things better. 

Rhyme, you do interviews for your undergrad school right? What are your thoughts? Are you one of the horrible interviewers I'm talking about? (Kidding of course)

3underscore · Answer

Business Schools are about self-starting though, aren't they? Like, if your application is weak in x and you can't see that yourself, it reflects badly on you. Why should the interviewer say "I see you are a bit weak in x- would you care to explain?"

They are after motivated people. They all reject good people in the pool, every year. To a certain extent, you want them a lot more than they want you.

So, in the same way some schools tell me they want to speak to me as they are in town (when I have not even applied), others treat you a bit like **** on their shoe, because - hell - you need to prove to them why you are worth being let in.

Much like jobs - if someone really senior wants to interview you, you are either something really special, or they are trying to sell you a lemon.

Current Student or Alum Interviews are BS

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