Preparing for Your MBA Interview
You’ve submitted your application. You’ve waited, waited, and waited some more. And finally, you’ve been invited to interview! Great! But you might now be overwhelmed with questions about this next stage of the admissions process. How do you prepare for an MBA interview? Is it the same as a job interview? Will your interviewer have read your entire application? Who will interview you? What kinds of questions will they ask?
Don’t worry, we have answers for these questions for you in this post, along with tips to help you prepare for the big day so you appear poised, confident, knowledgeable, and relaxed. And remember, being invited to interview means you’ve already passed the biggest hurdle. They like you! So the interview is your opportunity to convince them to admit you.
Table of Contents
- What the MBA Interview Is Like
- Who Will Interview You
- What Your Interviewer Will Already Know
- Commonly Asked Questions
- Final Tips
What the MBA Interview Is Like
The MBA interview is similar to a professional job interview, but your interviewer will not be focusing on your technical skills. Instead, they want to assess how you fit with their program, understand why you are interested in their school, hear your reasons for pursuing an MBA, and evaluate the feasibility of your career goals. They will determine whether you have the skills, knowledge, and personality to be a contributing member of the next incoming class and whether your proposed career objectives make sense, based on your professional history.
Who Will Interview You
Who your interviewer will be differs from school to school. It could be someone from the school’s admissions department, in which case, they will often have read your entire application before your interview. It could also be a student or a graduate of the school, in which case, they will likely have seen only your resume. This means you can feel free to repeat any stories you shared in your essays.
What Your Interviewer Will Already Know
Most schools prefer “blind” interviews, meaning that the interviewer has seen only the applicant’s resume, not their full application. This eliminates any unintentional bias toward candidates based on their GMAT/GRE scores, grades, letters of recommendation, or the like. The interviewer’s knowledge is limited to just what is presented in the applicant’s resume. However, if the interviewer is an admissions officer, they will most likely have read the applicant’s entire application, which means they could ask questions about anything in it.
Commonly Asked Questions
Most admissions interview questions are designed to reveal more about who you are. Your interviewer wants to learn about times when you’ve shown initiative, whether you have leadership experience, what kind of teammate you might be, and what your strengths and weaknesses are. The following are commonly asked questions that you will most likely encounter in your admissions interview:
- Walk me through your resume.
- Why did you apply to our MBA program?
- What are your weaknesses?
- Why do you need an MBA?
- What are your short-term goals after the MBA?
- How will you contribute to our program?
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflict on your team. What did you do, and what did you learn?
- Tell me about a time when you faced an ethical dilemma. What happened, and what did you do?
- What questions do you have for me?
Now let’s break down how you might respond to these questions.
1. Walk me through your resume.
This is typically the first question asked in an admissions interview. You do not have to go through your resume line by line and give a long description of everything you’ve ever done. In fact, if you start your story too far back in history and work your way up to present day, you could easily use up all the time allotted for the interview and prevent the interviewer from asking other important questions they wanted to pose! This kind of behavior sends several negative messages. One is that you are not good at reading body language and can’t see that your prolonged response is making your interviewer’s eyes glaze over. And another is that you have your own agenda and are more interested in telling the interviewer what you want to say rather than what they want to know. That’s two strikes! So don’t let this be you!
The best way to answer this question is to simply give your reasons for your choice of undergraduate school or major, explain what motivated you to move from one role to the next throughout your career thus far, and then share what you’ve learned in your professional experience that has led you to your current goals. In other words, offer the “why” behind your career choices to date and highlight the impact you’ve made. Your interviewer is less interested in the “what” and more interested in understanding how and why you made the decisions you’ve made.
Do not use more than two or three minutes to respond to this or any other question. You will probably have only 30-40 minutes for the entire interview, and you should generally expect to receive about ten questions. Plus, you want to leave time to ask your own questions. So, highlight your most important accomplishments and move on. Do not spend time here explaining why you feel you need an MBA or why you are targeting the school. That is not what the interviewer is asking, and you will likely have other opportunities to offer this information.
If your interviewer instead asks, “Tell me about yourself,” then it is appropriate to include some personal details in your response, such as where you are from, what your hobbies are, or how you became interested in a particular industry.
Practice your answer several times to ensure that you’re providing the appropriate content in a concise way. Recording yourself might be helpful so you can hear how you actually sound. Also consider practicing in front of a mirror to see how you look. If your interview will be conducted via Zoom, Skype, or another visual medium, you must remember to look at the camera – rather than the screen – and practicing this sufficiently beforehand will help you better maintain eye contact with your interviewer.
2. Why did you apply to our MBA program?
In response to this question, don’t generalize and offer a reason that could apply to any MBA program, such as “The school’s reputation or ranking,” “The alumni network,” “The great location,” “The cutting-edge faculty,” or even “Your job placement record.” You need to delve deeply into every program you are applying to and catalog the different characteristics and benefits of each one. Just as the school wants to know what makes you special, you should know what stands out to you about the school. Good examples are specific courses that will help you fill in your knowledge gaps, faculty research that excites you (and why), clubs or organizations you want to join, relevant study abroad or global consulting opportunities, and special research centers, especially if they relate to your goals.
The best way to learn about a school is to visit it, of course. However, that is not always an option. If not, reach out to the school’s MBA student ambassadors, who have volunteered to be informational contacts for potential students and can give you “insider” information about such topics as professors, clubs, and living in the city. Attend virtual admissions sessions or meet members of the admissions staff at MBA expositions in your town, if possible. Also, watch videos by the school’s students and alumni. There really is no excuse for not getting to know the school! So, if your answer to “Why our school?” is banal, vague, or simplistic, that will raise a very big red flag, especially if you are interviewing with a student. They want to know that you understand the school’s culture and values – and whether you’re someone they’d want on their team.
3. What are your weaknesses?
Your answer to this question will reveal your self-awareness, level of humility, and potential for growth. Think about your work at a high level. What information do you wish you’d had when working on a challenging project? What have your performance reviews indicated as areas of improvement?
When answering this question, state the weakness, and then discuss how you are working on the issue and what you’ve learned or how you’ve progressed thus far. Did you have to step out of your comfort zone? How will the MBA program help you mitigate this weakness (if that is applicable)? Turn a negative into a positive by giving examples of how you have improved or how you are working to overcome the shortcoming.
4. Why do you need an MBA?
This appears to be a simple question, and many candidates respond without thinking about it thoroughly, saying that they want to broaden their network, hone their business skills, or switch careers and don’t know enough about their chosen area. Even worse, some might say, “It’s a good time now, before I get too much experience and have other obligations to deal with.”
It is perfectly reasonable to say that you have depth of experience in one area, but to move up, you need to understand how all the functional areas of a company work together. That is exactly what the MBA teaches, but it is not a magic wand. You will not enter a CEO role as soon as you graduate or be hired for a position for which you have no background experience, even with an MBA. Be prepared to discuss how you are willing to make a lateral move to get into the industry or functional area you desire. And if possible, mention any discussions you’ve had with alumni with similar profiles to yours, and share what you learned about how they were able to pivot to a new position. Likewise, if you’ve had any interaction with employees at your dream company, mention that, too. This initiative shows the interviewer that your expectations for the MBA are reasonable and that you’ve proactively taken steps to understand what you need to do to get to where you want to be.
5. What are your short-term goals after the MBA?
This question gives you the chance to show that you’ve researched your target industry, identified a few companies you’d like to work for, and determined what position you think you’d be qualified for. Yes, you have to do this! The school will help you with job preparation, but they will not just hand you a job. A generic answer like “I want to do management or strategy consulting with an MBB firm” tells the interviewer that you don’t really understand what you want to do. Instead, offer details and insight. For example, what skills do you have that would make a consulting company want to hire you out of the 100,000 other MBAs applying to their company? It is critical that you indicate your seriousness about your career goals and demonstrate that you are aware of exactly what your dream company is looking for. Do you truly understand the difference between management and strategic consulting? Do you know which consulting firms specialize in what?
Investigate the positions your dream company is hiring for by looking at the job openings on their website. How do you measure up? What are some trends in the industry where your experience would be a plus? Do you read industry reports, such as marketing news and financial updates, to keep up with trends in your desired industry? Combine this information with your current skill set and what you need to gain from the MBA, and your answer is done!
6. How will you contribute to our program?
Imagine being in a classroom where everyone is an IT engineer, or a Wall Street banker, or a data analyst, or a healthcare practitioner. There would be very little diversity of thought or out-of-the-ordinary perspectives, and that would lead to an incredibly boring class discussion! Schools try to compose diverse classes of students that represent a wide range of backgrounds (e.g., education, nationality, work experience, life experience, community service). This type of diversity encourages innovative ideas and “What if we did this?” thinking that leads to creative solutions.
So what do you do if you belong to an overrepresented group? How do you distinguish yourself from similar applicants? Simple. You are you! You’ve had different experiences, a different life history, different interests outside of your work. Highlight the elements of your profile that are unique to you and that few, if any, other candidates can claim.
Look at the MBA program’s curriculum, see where you have expertise that others might not have, and show how you would add value for your classmates. Perhaps you participate in a particular sport or hobby and want to start a club for others who are interested in it as well. Maybe you’ve passed Level I of the CFA exam and can help others study for it. Do you love to mentor others? If so, talk about that and how you’ve supported certain individuals in your life.
To summarize, imagine that the adcom must choose between you and someone else with a similar demographic profile and work experience. What will make them choose you?
7. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflict on your team. What did you do, and what did you learn?
This question might be worded slightly differently, such as “Tell me about working with someone on your team who didn’t contribute” or “Have you worked with people who are not like you?” With this question, the interviewer is looking to learn about your teamwork skills. In most MBA programs, you’ll be assigned to a team in your first few classes (rather than choosing a team yourself), and you might end up with a teammate who is too shy to participate, for example, or one who dominates the team and won’t let others speak. This is where you demonstrate your empathy and persuasive skills. Discuss a real example of a time when you had to deal with an uncomfortable team experience. First, explain the conflict, then describe how you helped defuse it; perhaps you managed to get a reticent team member to speak up or subdued an overenthusiastic individual in the group who was talking too much. If you were able to persuade other team members to help you manage the issue, that’s even better. Then, simply state what the result was and what you learned about dealing with conflict.
8. Tell me about a time when you faced an ethical dilemma. What happened, and what did you do?
Most schools have an honor code or code of conduct, and they expect honesty and integrity from their students. With this question, the interviewer wants to understand how you view and respond to situations in which someone is not acting morally or fairly.
Perhaps you’ve seen someone at your company taking bribes from a vendor. Or maybe you have a colleague who regularly takes credit for others’ ideas. What the interviewer wants to know is that you recognize the difference between right and wrong, and if you were to witness an ethical violation, would you let it pass, or would you be a whistle-blower? This can be a very difficult question to answer, so take your time and be thoughtful in constructing your response.
8. What questions do you have for me?
This isn’t just a polite way of ending the interview. Your interviewer wants to confirm that you have thoroughly researched their program and have thoughtful questions that will add to your knowledge. Prepare your answer to this question (i.e., your own questions) before you prepare for any of the others in this list. Even if you have memorized the school’s website, visited the campus, and feel as though you have already asked all the questions you could possibly ever have, you need to come up with two or three new, non-procedural questions to pose. Responding with a blank stare or saying, “I have no other questions” just looks bad.
This will most likely be your last opportunity to ask questions about the program before you find out the adcom’s decision, so make sure your questions count. The best questions will prompt the interviewer to dig deep into their knowledge of the program. They might even need to do a bit of research and get back to you with the answer, providing you with one final opportunity to connect with someone critical to your admissions decision.
There are a few other questions that might be thrown at you, some of which are intended to test your maturity and your ability to think on your feet:
- What is the most useful thing you’ve learned from your past jobs?
- Why is now a good time to earn your MBA?
- What are your expectations from the MBA?
- Tell me about a time when you failed at something. What did you learn?
- What is your definition of leadership? Do you have these qualities?
- Why should we admit you to our program?
- How would your co-workers describe you?
- What is an activity that you are involved in, and why is it important to you?
- What will you do if you are not accepted to any school this year?
- What do you really know about your chosen career path?
These questions are not designed to exclude you or make you appear inept. But your interviewer does want to know how you react to a surprise question. This also happens in job interviews, as you will discover. Do you fall apart? Break out in a nervous sweat? Do you forget your vocabulary or stumble over your words?
Again, the school has invited you to interview because they are interested in you. So put your best foot forward and prepare to show them what you’ve got and why they should select you. It is perfectly okay to respond to a surprise question by saying, “That is an interesting question. May I have a moment to think about the best example?” Your interviewer will appreciate your thoughtfulness – just don’t take too long to come up with an answer!
Final Tips
Here is some additional advice for when you are preparing for your MBA interview:
- Organize your examples by three – have three main points for each example, when possible. If your answer is short, one or two points is okay.
- Use the STAR technique – Situation, Task, Action, and Result – to tell your story in a logical and concise manner.
- Dress as you would for a business interview – no tee-shirts or hoodies, please!
- Be brief, and respond only to the question asked!
The following tips apply to video/online interviews specifically:
- Be sure to maintain eye contact with the camera. Smile and be friendly, but not overly so.
- Have good lighting in front of you, not behind you, or your face will be in shadow, and your interviewer won’t be able to read your facial expressions.
- As mentioned earlier, practice in front of a mirror so you can see your facial expressions and identify any annoying “tics” you might have, such as playing with your hair or tie, looking away from the camera, giggling, or using your hands too much or too vigorously.
- Pay attention to your background – no clutter or mirrors. A blank wall or curtain is best.
- Lock the door, or find a private spot where no one will interrupt you.
- Check the audio and video before you start the interview. You might need to use a headset to avoid an echo.
- Ensure that you have a stable internet connection. Turn off any devices that might be streaming (e.g., television, iPad) as well as all browsers and applications on your computer so your internet feed is directed only to Zoom (or Skype).
We hope that this information is helpful and will set you on the path to a fabulous interview. For further help, sign up for a free consultation with one of our consultants. We will guide you toward the best answers and steer you away from pitfalls.
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