How to Ace the MBA Interview

So you've submitted your application and now you finally have time to start thinking about interview prep. If you've applied to Harvard Business School you're anxiously awaiting the hear back from the Admissions Committee October 2nd and 5th to see if you received an interview invite. How can you best prepare for the interview?

1. Start now

Don't make the mistake of thinking that you should wait to see if you receive an interview invite before you start preparing. Sometimes the earliest turnaround between receiving an interview and the actual interview date is two weeks! Instead, use some of the downtime now to start preparing and rehearsing for the interview. Understand which kind of interview you will have (student, alumni, or Admissions Committee) and do you research on what to expect.

2. Know your application inside and out

Your entire application is fair game. The Admissions Committee may end up spending five minutes on one of the interests you listed on your resume, or the project you completed junior year of college. Make sure you can talk intelligently about what you did, what you learned, and what the impact was. More than anything, the Admissions Committee is going to want to know why. Why did you do what you did?

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3. Be concise

What the Admissions Committee is really testing for is to see if you will be a good contributor to the case method in a classroom setting. Will you be able to clearly and concisely communicate your thoughts in a way that is easily understood by your fellow classmates? if you haven't practiced for the interview, you're more likely to start rambling and not getting to the point. Since the entire interview is only 30 minutes, it's to your best advantage to get across as much information about yourself in the time allotted.

4. Rehearse out loud

Continuing the theme of being concise, you won't really know how good your answers are until you practice them out out loud, preferably in front of a friend. Sometimes what we say in our head or have written down comes across poorly or stilted when we actually try to say it. Also, practicing out loud will make you feel more comfortable and relaxed the day of. Interviewing is a skill that can be practiced.

5. Film yourself

If you know your application inside and out, know what points you want to get across, and have rehearsed out loud, the next step is to film yourself. This process is unpleasant for most people, but is often where you can gain the most. Film yourself either conducting a mock interview with a friend, or just saying your answers into the camera. When you re-watch the film, pay attention to a few things -- how do you look? Nervous? Listen to your tone -- do you have up-speak? Do you sound confident? Are you fidgeting? What are you doing with your hands? When we're so focused on what we're saying, we often lose track of these things, but they can have a big impact on the impression you make on the interviewer.

Does it help to network with current students? If so, what should I ask?

When I first started researching MBA programs, I reached out to everyone in my network who was at that school to chat about their experiences. I’m not sure why I did it – perhaps I thought that the admissions committee would somehow find out all the effort I was making and take it as a sign of my commitment. Boy was that wrong. Now that I’m a student at Harvard Business School who is constantly bombarded by requests from strangers to “pick my brain” about MBA programs, I understand just how annoying and pointless such conversations can be.

School research is a critical step on your admissions path and students can be great resources. But recognize that arranging phone calls with MBA students and alumni will not in and of itself improve your odds of admission or reveal to you what you should put in your application. Instead you should have specific goals that you want to accomplish by reaching out, which I outline below.

Okay to reach out:

To get a feel for the school culture

Admissions websites are full of hard information about the school: graduation requirements, curricular opportunities, and admissions criteria. What they often can’t capture is the soft information of the school – those elusive hard-to-define experiential aspects we call culture. Culture is an incredibly important part of any matriculation decision and it is something that current students feel constantly. Not only are current students most attuned to the school’s culture, they are often the ones most interested in talking about it.

To plug into an affinity group

Affinity groups for veterans and ethnic minorities are often plugged into the admissions department. They help with outreach in the community to broaden the applicant base, and they host special events for prospective students on campus. Using official channels to connect with these clubs and their “admissions ambassadors” can be a great way to get on the club’s email distribution list for admission events, access to any official club admission advice, and see what support resources exist at the school of someone in your community.

To make sure your application “speaks the school’s language”

MBA programs have unique vocabularies. Admissions committees and students alike can easily identify outsiders by the odd and foreign way they talk. For example, no one at HBS call it the “first year curriculum” – it’s the “required curriculum” or “RC”. Being able to talk about a school using its own language is essential to presenting yourself as a credible candidate.

To know what you get out of specific classes

Many applicants try to show off their knowledge of a school by talking about what unique benefit they seek to get out of specific required and elective coursework. I thought about it when I was applying, but there was only so much I could tell about what I would learn from a class by its title. Looking back, my intuition was WAY off and I’m glad I didn’t say anything about those classes. Anyone who has taken them would have immediately seen just how little I knew. Conversations with current students can help close this knowledge gap.

To verify likelihood of career transitions

Everyone goes to business school to make some change in their career. But is the transition you seek to make common or likely at the school in question? For example, if you want to work at an elite Venture Capital firm and are thinking of applying to a less competitive school, does that firm even recruit there? If you want to pursue a really non-traditional job, is that even one that an MBA will help you get? Having realistic career goals is an absolutely essential part of any application and current students (usually second-year students) will know best what career transitions are feasible – and at that school in particular.

To find compelling ways of giving back to the school

The best applications will argue why the candidate will actually improve the school. What clubs will you seek leadership positions in? Which positions are even available? Current students can be very useful in helping you find the best place for you to leave your mark.

Don’t reach out:

To have them lobby the admissions department on your behalf

Individual students do not carry much sway with the admission committee. Unless they know you extremely well, they also would find it extremely awkward to vouch to the committee on your behalf. Paradoxically, the admissions committees will see such endorsements of close friends as biased anyway and discount what they say. Either way, it is a lose-lose except that by asking them to lobby, you spend up any social capital you may have.

To get them to read your essays

MBAs are busy and reading someone’s essay is a huge favor. If you box them into reading yours, they will likely give you short shrift without much actionable improvements. Furthermore, they may have made it through the process, but they are probably not experts at the admissions essay writing process. Finally, a stranger may be able to tell that an essay is bad or even why they dislike it, but unless they work with you closely and understand your narrative intimately, they won’t know what the range of options are for you to improve your story.

To chit chat / “pick their brain”

Again, MBAs are busy. They barely have enough time to hang-out with their friends at school let alone random people who want something from them. If you are going to ask for their time, make sure you respect them enough to have a definite purpose in mind. Send good questions in advance to show the MBA that you have done your research and are asking questions that only someone like them could answer

To collect names to drop in the application

This is probably the biggest abuse of informational chats. First of all, if this is your motivation you are using someone as a means to an end and will likely not even listen to what they say. Second, Elite MBA programs do not care how many people you spoke with before applying. Talk is cheap and there are better ways to show commitment. Third, if namedropping in conversation gets annoying, the same is true for your essays. Keep the focus on you and your story.

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: The benefits of good posture - Murat Dalkilinç

So much of life is how you show up. How you carry yourself also determines much of how you feel and the clarity of how you think. Sure this applies when you're studying, writing your application, and interviewing, but also to your life at business school, whether navigating recruiting events or in the MBA classroom.

Highlights:

• Stand with all your vertebrae stacked upon one another, with two curves in it, this will put your center of gravity between your legs and maximize the efficiency of your movement.

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: How to practice effectively...for just about anything (Annie Bosler and Don Greene)

How do you get better at something, whether it's the GMAT/GRE or your interviewing skills? Three answers: practice, practice, practice. The key insight is that the benefit of practice is highly dependent upon its quality -- which is comprised of the "form" you use, its intensity, and the intervals. If you're applying Round 1, now is the perfect time to apply the lessons of the video below in practicing for those interviews.

Highlights

• Effective practice targets: consistent, intensely focused, and targets content or weaknesses at the edge of one's ability
• Focus on the task at hand (putting away facebook and smartphones)
• Start slowly to get the form right, then increase the speed of the quality repetitions
• Break-up practice into multiple sessions of limited duration
• Practice by imagining that you are completing a task can be just as effective as actually practicing!

How to Act Like a Leader

Now that the HBS Round 1 application deadline passed yesterday, the next step for MBA hopefuls is to prepare for the Admissions Committee interview. There are four kinds of interviews that elite MBA programs use: student (Chicago Booth), alumni (Stanford GSB), video (Kellogg), and Adcom (HBS). Adcom is by far the hardest since you'll be talking directly with a gatekeeper who has already reviewed your applications and will be coming after you with tailored questions to poke holes in your application. In these interviews more an others, presence is a major key.

Our recommendation would be to come off as approachable when you arrive to interview and maintain that demeanor up until the interview. Once you get into the interview room, we recommend an authoritative demeanor. In the lecture below out of Stanford GSB, Richard Cox discusses how to accomplish each.

Richard Cox Lecturer in Management Stanford Graduate School of Business

Highlights:

• 5 S's for Authority: Slowness in speech, Stillness in head, Silent pauses in speech, Symmetry in posture, and Space (taking it up)
• 5 F's for Approachability: Filling space, Fast movement, Folded body, Fidgeting, Flirting (inviting others to share space with them)
• Observe yourself and see how you come across. Filming yourself and attending improvisational acting classes can be a huge help.
• Think about making a pump-up play-list from your favorite super hero movie to get yourself ready to appear on stage the way you want to

How do I know when my MBA application is finished?

One of the most challenging parts of the MBA application is knowing when your application is finished. Your MBA and the school from which you get it can have dramatic impacts on the future trajectory of your life, so it's easy to overthink every detail. Many applicants agonize for hours over every word choice, signing into the online application portals at all hours to change a word or two, only to change them back a day later. Wouldn't it just be easier if you could determine that you were, in fact done?

When we run a Final Check on application packages, we comb through every detail with the lens that we know the admissions committee will use. That's a little hard for individual students to replicate, but here are some things that you can look for yourself:

1. Is your resume in the template of the target MBA program?

This is a super easy way to fit in, and demonstrate your commitment to the school. Plus, it creates sort of a cognitive dissonance for the adcom to read a resume in their school's template and then reject that student -- essentially causing the document they are viewing to disappear.

2. Does your whole application tie to one simple story?

You are not under oath. You do not have to tell the whole truth, so help you god. In fact, explaining every part of your job, explaining every reason for why you pursued every opportunity, or listing the many divergent career options that interest you will not help your application, but hurt it. Your application is telling a story, and the best stories are simple linear ones. The best story characters are have clear motives and take decisive action. Often the key to telling a great story in your application is not to add things in, but rather to cut out all extraneous details.

It is also important for every part of your application to tell the same single story, from your resume to your recommender. If your essay is all about working in renewable energy, but your resume is all about finance, the adcom might not think that you're all that credible. The easiest decision that the Adcom can make is to not admit you.

3. Have you mitigated your weaknesses?

Your application is an argument and the best arguments bring up the opposing case and offers counter points. Do you have a lower GPA? Find space in the application to explain why that is the case and what you have done subsequently to prove that academics are no longer an issue. Is your work experience less impressive? Then point out all the ways in which your employer, position, client, or projects were impressive. Ignoring your weaknesses is not a winning strategy. The adcom will still see them, they just won't have the benefit of your counter argument.

4. Have you connected your candidacy to a larger problem you're trying to solve?

Adcoms don't like "admitting students" so much as they like "funding solutions to problems." In that way, you can think of them less like hiring managers and more like venture capitalists: ready to provide funding and mentorship to entrepreneurs out to tackle big markets. If you are able to argue that you have spent your career fighting to solve a specific, important, and urgent problem (ideally one that resonates with the school’s unique values) and that you are now poised to achieve the next level of impact, if only you were equipped with the unique resources that an MBA has to offer, you will be a much more credible candidate than a generic professional looking to go to graduate school.

5. Have you had a second set of eyes? 

One of our most popular options this time of year, with the HBS deadline coming up on September 6th, and both Wharton and Stanford GSB on September 19th, is our Final Check service, wherein we comb through the entire application offering feedback on ways to tighten up and improve your answers, aligning your resume with your essays, and correcting any grammar and spelling errors. For the rest of the Round 1 season, we are offering same day / 24-hour turnarounds. Click the button below to check it out!

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: The Worst-Designed Thing You've Never Noticed (Roman Mars)

This week's fascinating MBA talk comes to us from the maker of the Podcast 99% Invisible is a bit of an analogy -- both as an analogy for good design in business and specifically good design in crafting a business school application. Watch it and then consider the applications I suggest in the highlights below.

Highlights:

• The principles for good flag design - and how they apply to the MBA application
  • Keep it simple (so simple that a child can draw it from memory) - Your application should tell a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end, and you as the hero
  • Use meaningful symbolism, ideally things that play pivotal moments in history - you story should have a theme and cover all the pivotal moments in your life
  • Use no more than 2-3 colors from the major color wheel - choose a few themes, not too many. Sometimes the whole truth can get in the way of a good, truthful story.
  • No lettering or seals, no writing of any kind - here is one departure from the analogy. While good writing will not beat the symbolism and meaning of the prose over your head, we believe that subtly should be minimized in the application.
  • Be distinctive - You want your story to stand out in the mind of the admissions committee. It should easily identify you in some pithy statement (e.g. "That Nigerian education guy")

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: What Pixar and Disney know about MBA Storytelling (Steve Jobs)

One question we often get is why Ivy Admissions Group is more efficient at navigating our Complete School Package clients through the admissions application process than other consultants. The answer comes down to our approach to storytelling. Rather than let our clients flail in the wind by having them writing resumes and essays for us to edit and form into a compelling story, we start with a personal narrative and build the entire application around that. In fact, we don't let our clients write a single word of their resume (of course, in the provided template for their dream school) until they complete the Narrative Bootcamp Exercises that comes with all Complete School Packages.

Don't take our word for it. This is the same approach that Steve Jobs took when he made Pixar, a technique that he argues enabled the movie company to have such a long string of smash hits, while other traditional live-action movie companies plod along with their fair share of flops. In this week's fascinating MBA talk, note the approach that he recommends for storytelling and then think about how to apply it in your own application.

Highlights:

• Traditional movie companies shoot between 10-100x more film than is needed, and then build their movies in the editing room. If they have a flop, they only realize it in the editing room.
• Because animation is so much more expensive to shoot, it is impossible to produce even 10% more footage than is necessary.
• To overcome this and ensure a hit, companies like Pixar build minimum-viable products, watching and perfecting their movies at every phase of construction, correcting problems before it comes time to animate.