5 Biggest MBA Interview Mistakes

Hey everybody. Good morning. I hope you're all having a good day wherever you're joining us from. Just to get things started this morning, please let us know in the chat where you're from. We'll be going through a lot of interview tips today too, but of course we'll have some time at the end for questions. So if you want to send those while those questions pop up or leave them for the end, whatever is easiest for you, we'll try to get to as many of those as we can. So we'll just wait a couple of minutes for people to filter in. But today we'll be going through the main interview mistakes that we see people make. So after training hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands at this point of people, I generally tend to see a lot of people making the same mistakes over and over. So today's webinar is designed both to help you understand what those are, what those mistakes are, and of course, how to fix them and to ensure that you have a better, a better interview. So just to go a little bit through what we'll be talking about today, we'll be learning how to avoid critical mistakes to make sure that your story shines. A lot of people kind of spend so much time stressing about the essays and the gmat and then they get to the interview and they say, oh, you know, I've got this, like I've already prepared plenty. And then they end up making a lot of mistakes in the interview. So we'll make sure that, you know, your story shines here and really secures your spot within your top choice program. We'll also focus on making sure that you come across as prepared but not robotic. A lot of people, I think over prepare, which it's great to prepare a lot, but you know, you don't want to prepare so much that it seems really robotic or over rehearsed. You're not connecting with your interviewers. So we'll go through some tips like that and then we'll also think about how to prepare tough questions so that you can answer them with confidence. So we'll be going through a list of certain questions, what they're looking for, how you want to answer those, just to make sure that you're ready for anything that they throw at you. So I'm Ellen. I'm the founder of Ellen Wallace Consulting. So I'm an award winning writer and career coach and I have almost a decade of experience working with applicants to get them admitted into their top choice programs. I attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville. I do Miss L in Nashville. It's a wonderful city. If you haven't visited, I highly recommend it. And I also got a degree in advertising before starting the company. So I've split my time right now through Texas and Brazil, and I've gotten into sailing recently. It's kind of my new passion. My mom got me addicted to it, so it's a little bit about me. And with our company, I have a team of amazing people that we've put together. Interview experts, essay experts, CV experts. And we've worked with clients from all over the world and have a 98.7% success rate that we're very proud of. And we focus from start to finish on making sure that you highlight what makes you unique. That's really the most important thing in any application. And that does not end with the interview. So our goal today is to make sure that you have everything you need to feel confident and ensure that you get into your top three schools. So let's jump into the mistakes. Number one, I think people don't master the basics. This is a mistake that I see all the time. People come to interview preps with us and they just don't bring a lot in terms of preparation, and then they falter a little bit in the interview prep. That's a good place to start to recognize those mistakes. And then, of course, avoid making those in the interview themselves. A lot of times when we, when re applicants come to us and say, hey, you know, it just didn't work out last year, we start to go through things. We realize a lot of times that they just didn't have those fundamentals really well covered in their interviews. And it really just makes it seem like, of course you're not prepared. But even more so, these are questions like, why mba? Why do you want to go to my school? How are you going to contribute? What are your goals? So if you have a great interview or a great story about leadership, for example, oh, you know, I led this amazing project. We had these great results. But you can't tell me why you need an mba. Your interview didn't go very well. Also, you know, you really need to think about how these reflections, the things that you already began discussing in your other aspects of your application, ensuring consistency and bringing those forward. So these kinds of questions, I call them foundational questions, are essential to all part of the interviews, except for hbs. HBS has a really different interview format. It's very personalized. It simulates the case study experience. So they're not really spending a lot of time Going through, why Harvard, you know, those kind of things. So. But for all other schools, it's going to be a really critical part of your interview. Most interviews will start with these questions and it sets the tone for the rest. So, you know, tell me about yourself. What are your short term and long term goals? Why mba? Why now? How will you contribute? Why are you applying here? So these really set the tone for whether or not your interview is strong and whether or not you have a good profile. You know, if you're starting an interview out, and I'm sure none of you would do this, but we've seen it and you say, oh yeah, I really want to go to UCLA because I love to surf and I want to be at the beach and I don't like cold weather. And then you go through and present some other examples that are strong. I'm still kind of got, I've got the impression that maybe you're not the most serious applicant in the world. Maybe you're just applying for the MBA to go on vacation. So that kind of taints the rest of your interview. Or if you say, you know, I want to go to the MBA because I want to build my network and that's it, that also taints the interview a little bit because it just doesn't seem like you've either done the reflection or really have good motivations for wanting to attend the mba. So this is a really critical piece and it's an opportunity to really reinforce your passion for the school and make a case that you belong there. So what are these questions? These are the main ones that I always consider. Tell me about yourself. Why MBA by now? Why our program and how will you contribute? Of course we could also include what are your short term and long term goals. So let's go through a little bit about what you should be looking for. Looking for when answering each of these. So the Tell me about yourself. This answer should be around three minutes long. It's the only answer that I really give a specific limit for because otherwise sometimes people talk for just a minute or they talk for 15 minutes before I'm like, hey, hey, sorry, gotta cut you off. So three minutes is kind of, in my opinion, the ideal sweet spot. If we go less than three minutes, it's a minute or so. We're not really learning anything about you that wasn't already on your cv. If you go really long, of course I'm not really paying attention anymore. We all have kind of shorter attention spans these days than in previous generations. So what do you want to do here, you want to think about. Here's my story, here's almost like my elevator pitch, and here's the backstory of my cv. So I usually suggest maybe starting with a sentence about you. You know, I've always been really passionate about sustainability. I grew up, you know, in the Amazon or in a city in the Amazon, or, you know, I grew up in a country that's very focused on sustainability. Or, you know, we had a client in Indonesia who was saying, you know, my city is sinking every year and soon we're going to have to move the capital to a new place. So that's always been something that's. That's been on my mind, or I grew up all around the world. There's a lot of different ways that you could start that, but I like to have a slightly more personal start rather than, here's where I studied, here's where I work, just so we get a little bit of a sense of who you are, what your values are, your interests are. That shouldn't be a random fact. That should be something that connects with the rest of your story. So if you're going to tell me you have a really international background, that international background should come into play somehow. If you're going to tell me sustainability is an interest of yours, that should also come into play. We don't want to just mention a random fact. Once you do that, then I like to have you go through a little bit of your education. So here's where I studied, here's why I chose to study what I did. And then if you did any study abroad or any special research projects, you want to mention those, too. If you did a lot of internships and a lot of activities, please don't go through each of them individually. You can say something like, you know, I did several internships my school really admire, or my school really, you know, pushes us to do that. So I did more than five. But the one I'm most proud of or the one I like the most was this. And then you can kind of preview that a little bit. If I really want to know more about those internships, I'll ask. And then about involvement, you can mention I got really involved from X to Y to Z, or just highlight one in particular. Don't go through every single activity that you were involved in again. That'll get a little long and a little difficult to follow. Then you want to go through your career steps. So essentially from college, why did you choose to go to the career that you've selected for Yourself. Once you got there, what were some of the highlights and achievements? Did you get promoted? Did you work on a project that was particularly interesting or relevant to your case? So, for example, you're going to tell me you want to specialize in healthcare or start your own healthcare startup. Mention a project if you have one that was on healthcare during, during these work experiences. It doesn't necessarily have to be exactly related to your goals, but it's nice if it is. Again, go through the highlights. I worked on this amazing healthcare project in Chile. We were sizing a market for new tool and it was the first time that they'd ever had that done. And we were able to help thousands of women gain access to this kind of care that they'd never had before. That's enough. You don't need to go through everything that happened. You can expand on that star story later on. And then I like to mention if you switch jobs, a little bit about why you switched, what was the motivation? Always focus on the positive. If you do that, don't say, oh, my boss was really mean or I didn't like the culture or I thought it was boring work. Maybe mention something like, you know, I was looking for something that was maybe a little bit more international or that was a bit more dynamic or that had a bit more diverse workplace and that's why I joined this. So instead of focusing on the negative of the company, left, focus on the positive of the company you joined. And then of course, at the end, if you have a little bit of extra time, some people have shorter work experiences or more kind of cut and dry work experiences. You can mention a little bit about what you do in your free time. If you're already right up against that three minute limit, maybe leave that for a separate question. But always also make sure to include some kind of conclusion like so that's me in a nutshell. Or so that brings us up to today. I suggest don't go into your goals, don't go into your reasons. For an mba. It's better if those are left for separate questions again so you can go into more detail. But it is nice to have a conclusion just so we know it's done, it's time to move on. It can be a little awkward if it just feels like you end a sentence randomly and we're not sure if you're going to keep talking. So give us a little conclusion. That's always helpful. And then if you do decide to mention your goals as a separate question, you can do that. We'll add it into the kind of Y MBA here. So when talking about Y mba, this is a critical component of your application. Some schools have a goals essay. So what are your short term and long term goals and how does an XYZ MBA program help you achieve those? So if this school has that, of course you want to make sure it's consistent. A lot of schools don't ask those kind of questions anymore. For example, Kellogg doesn't ask anything like that. So if you're interviewing for Kellog, you know this is going to be outside of the video essay. One of the few times that they really get to see in depth why you want to do an mba. They have a couple short questions in the application, but this is really the time that they see it in depth. So regardless of whether that is the first time they're hearing it or it's maybe the second time they're hearing it, it was in the essays. You want to make sure to be really thorough here. So the first thing I want to always encourage people to do is start with your goals. So recap your short term and long term goals and why you want to pursue these goals. It doesn't need to be long, you know, So I think before getting into my Y mba, it'd be interesting to just recap a little bit about what I want to do with my career after I graduate. So short term I want to do this, long term I want to do that, and then here's why. So the why is really important. I don't know if you guys have read the book. Start with why. If you haven't, it's a great one. Super recommend it. But the why is always really important. It really helps us understand what you're passionate about, why you're motivated, how you want to use your goals to make a greater impact. So never, never leave out the why. It's very, very important. Additionally, you can start with your long term and move to your short term afterwards. So let's say your long term goal is this is my mission. And then your short term goal is just a part of achieving that. That can be okay too. You can switch the order. And then you want to go through your reasons for why an MBA makes most sense for you. So I usually suggest choose three to four reasons. And I like to use language to prime your interviewer to understand what you're going to talk about. So then there's three key reasons why an mba. I think it's going to be essential to help me reach those goals. First, second, third, I know that can sound sometimes a little bit elementary to say, you know, three reasons. First, second, third. But it really helps. It also helps if your reader gets, or your listener gets a little bit lost to refocus them. So second, okay, okay, got to pay attention. Starting a new example. So it's a really good way to help them track with what you're saying. It also helps you give more, give yourself more structure so you don't kind of wander off and talk about this and talk about that and talk about this and, you know, kind of have it be this very nebulous answer. I think it also helps keep applicants more focused during their interview. So things like, you know, I want to do an MBA because I want to work on my leadership skills. So here's a little bit about why I want to do that. I want to round up my business fundamentals. I'm a lawyer by trade, wanting to move into the business realm. And I did never get to study business. From a theoretical standpoint, that's going to be important. I want to prepare to be an entrepreneur. I want to deepen my healthcare knowledge. I want to access best practices in education policymaking. There can be a lot of reasons and it should be a mix. I would suggest leadership is always one of those. Leadership is one of the things that the MBAs do best. And so there's a reason why it's kind of a cliche, but it is good to mention the other ones can really range. And then I always suggest at the end mentioning something about building your network, getting plugged into a community of international students. You know, the mba, one of the greatest things that they do offer you is a network. So mentioning that that's something you're looking forward to as well, I think is really helpful. Why now Is a question that sometimes you'll get asked individually. So it's good to have an answer for that specifically. But a lot of times this can be incorporated into your Y mba. You're kind of mentioning your goals, mentioning you're at the point where you want to start pursuing them. So the Y MBA is really understood. However, if you're a particularly young applicant or a particularly old applicant, the why now Is more important. So if you have one year of work experience, it's important to let us know why you think an MBA already makes sense. Most people do an MBA with anywhere from three and a half to five and a half years of work experience is usually the average. So if you fall outside of that, be ready for asking, being asked and answering why you want to do it. A little earlier, a little later, if you're a little young, trying to really reinforce the experience that you have had. You've had a fast tracked career and you're ready for this challenge. You're ready to take the next step if you're a little older. Make sure we understand why you didn't do this before, why you think it's the right time to make this career shift. And also make sure that we understand that you have good reasons for not doing an executive mba. I wouldn't explicitly state that unless they ask you, like, well, why not an executive program? But make sure that you really show them that you aren't just applying for the MBA now because you didn't get a chance to do it earlier, but you have good reasons. The next one is why our program? So why Kellogg, why Wharton, why Stanford, why Harvard? Doesn't really come up. That's a really, really critical question. We know that a lot of people apply to different programs. What you don't want to convey here is the idea that you just applied to a bunch and you'll go wherever you get in. It's almost like if you were sending out like Bumble or Tinder messages and you're like, yeah, I'm just sending it to 20 people and you know, whoever wants to go on a date with me on Friday, like, that's cool, let's go. That wouldn't be the best pitch ever. You also don't want to take that approach with your, with your interview. So you want to have really good reasons for why you want to go to each school and in your interview for that school, make sure that they see why. It's something that's very special for you and very clear for your motivation. So essentially, if we think about Y MBA as a wish list. So here's all the things I want out of an mba. Your why XYZ school should answer all of those. So I want to study leadership. Here's how Stanford helps me study leadership. I want to study innovation. Here's how Wharton helps me study innovation. I want to build a global community. Here's how insead helps me build a global community. So whatever those reasons are, you want to make sure that your wish list matches up with the school. That doesn't mean that you have to limit yourself just to those reasons. So if there's things that you also want to add that are really special about, you know, Columbia or Booth that you didn't, don't directly connect to your Ymba. That's okay. Again, here, just be Mindful of how long you're, you're answering again, about three minutes is good. It's great to show that you've done more information, like you've done a lot of research, you have a lot of information, but a 5, 6, 7 minute answer here is just not going to be that interesting for your interviewer to listen to. Finally, definitely mention something about the community, people that you've talked to, if you visited campus, if you've attended webinars. It's really good to show that you've gone above and beyond to have personal contact with this school, looking at then how you'll contribute. So this is a question a lot of times that is either, oh, how will you get involved? What will you bring? Why should we take you? How will you contribute? Essentially, you know, if we have a lot of people with similar profiles, what do you think you're going to bring to the table? How are you going to add to the mix? So here I like to think about two things in class and in the community. So in class you want to think about perspectives or skills that you bring. So maybe, for example, you're somebody who works a lot with negotiation and you've negotiated some big deals. Negotiation is a big thing that people want to learn in the mba. So you could mention your track record with that and sharing some of your best tips in classes or in certain contexts. Maybe you have a lot of entrepreneurship experience and you know that, you know, 15% of the class last year went into entrepreneurship. So sharing some of the things that worked, some of the things that didn't work. So how maybe you got some funding so your classmates can be more successful entrepreneurs. That's also something great. When you think about this, I always say, ask yourself, why should anybody care? So if a random student is sitting next to you and you say, here's what I'm going to contribute, why should that student care? What would they find interesting about it? So try to present not just here's a list of everything I've done, here's all my experience, but present more information about, here's what I've done and here's why people should care about it. Essentially, the second part of that is how you'll get involved in the classroom, outside of the classroom. So different clubs, different initiatives. You know, maybe mention three or four that you're interested in joining. Why, what you can bring to those clubs. And when doing that, you know, try to mention something that you like to do for fun. Show that you're a real person with real interest. You Know, that's always nice for us, us to see. So that's definitely something to add. You know, I want to join the wine club, or I love soccer, or I'm a big cyclist, or I want to learn how to sail. Those are great things for us to see as well. So your second big mistake. And just as a reminder, we're going to get to the questions at the end just so I can answer them all at once, but please keep sending them as you think of them. Mistake number two, you fail to position your answers well. So this is also a mistake that people make in terms of how they tell their stories. So number one, you want to use the star format for the majority of the questions that are behavioral. So if I say ymba, you don't mean to say so back in 2014 and tell me this, you know, star format story, but if I say, tell me about a time when that's a big indicator that we need a star story. So tell me about a time when you had to convince a team to follow your recommendation, or tell me about a time when you had to take a risk. That's a really good indicator that a star story is going to be necessary. So that is situation, task, action, result. Very likely you came across this when you were doing your essays and writing your essays. You want to follow a similar structure here. Here's the context, here's what I was responsible for or what the conflict was. Here's the actions that I took and why, and here's the result as well as what I learned. So for a lot of these questions, especially ones that have a negative angle, you know, tell time you failed, didn't get along with someone, had a setback. I think it's really important to add a lesson that you learned. So here's what happened, and in the end, here's how I learned from it, or it made me a better person or a better leader. So let's take a quick look at an example. So here's an example that's told in not star form. So I had my greatest success last June while working on a turnaround for a pharma company in Argentina, where the company might have closed. Instead, we saved them 20 million and nobody lost their job. I was an associate working with four people, but I was given the lead role, which was impressive for an associate. It was important to help this company because it would have devastated the local community. So it's my biggest success yet. All the aspects are there. You know, we can see that this person generated a lot of results that they were in some kind of leadership. But we don't really get a good sense of what was going on and it's not really in, you know, beginning, middle and end order, which is the way that usually we like to hear stories. So here's how we were able to kind of change it and still not make it super long. You could be longer that you could have a longer answer than this, but here's a shortened version. So when our team joined the project, our client's 4,000 employees were nervously waiting to find out whether the company would close that week or the next week. We were tasked with cutting expenses while retaining as many as employees as possible. So I proposed using lean methodology to identify savings opportunities, leading us to renegotiate credit terms and moving non essential employees to contract roles. Since then, the company's grown by 4%. And on the day of the company's celebratory picnic, I was invited to eat alongside the company's employees and their families. Cemented this experience as my greatest success yet. So by telling it as a story, it's a lot more interesting, it's a lot more engaging, and we get to see more of what you did in a more comprehensive way. Of course, if this were a real answer, I would suggest you add more to this and go more into a couple of the details. But in general, you can see the difference that using star format makes. Next thing, bring numbers and data, show your results. You're competing a lot of times against people who have similar backgrounds. If you're a consultant, if you work in ib, if you work in big tech, a lot of people have really seen similar profiles and do kind of similar projects. So numbers, data and results are one of the best things to show. The size of your achievements, what you did, the scope of what you've accomplished. So at the end of your answer, you always want to show, you know, it saved the company $20 million or we retained 5,000 jobs, or we've reduced expenses by 25%. Always showing us some kind of result really clarifies what you did and how important it was essentially. So here's an example. I created a new finance project that had major success and we gained several thousand new customers. Great that he mentioned several thousand new customers, but major success. What is a major success? Your definition might be different than mine. So we want to really clarify that a little bit more. So for example, we could say something like, in 2017, we had several competitors join the market. So our team set a goal of reaching 15,000 new customers by 20, 20, 18. To do so, I created a finance product that had a 23% conversion rate and brought on 23,000 new customers, all by Q2 or Q3. So of course, we would go into a lot more detail telling it as a star. But in short, you can see just that adding these numbers, adding these stats makes a huge difference. And as I mentioned previously, results should also be personal. So, you know, we brought on 23,000 new customers. For me, this was really important because it showed me xyz. So you also always want to include the result for the company and the result for you. How did it shape you? Why are you proud of it? And so on. Let me just take a quick drink of my coffee last. Tell us why. As I mentioned, why is critical. If we don't understand why everything was happening, why you did this, why you did that, the answer just doesn't feel very complete. So here, for example, if I ask you about maybe a weak point in your application, I left my undergraduate program in the middle of my sophomore year. Okay, you know, that's not a very good answer. It doesn't really give you the chance to shape my understanding of it, to shape my view of what was going on. So instead if we add the why, you know, I'd left my undergraduate program in the middle of my sophomore year because my startup received $10 million in VC funding and I needed to relocate to San Francisco. I felt like it was the right move to pursue this goal, so I took the risk. After a year, things had stabilized, so I went back to school part time and finished my degree while scaling the company. So that tells me you didn't just drop out. Which leaves me wondering, were you a bad student? Did you get put on academic probation? Did you commit a crime? You know, my mind can go a million places about why you needed to leave school, but then by telling me why, you get to highlight it's not always going to be an achievement like this. It can be something more difficult. Like, you know, I was struggling with a health issue or, you know, a family member passed and I needed to go home and help. But no matter what the situation is, telling us why really matters makes us understand that there were extenuating circumstances and you had good motives for doing what you do or doing what you did. It also gives you the chance to shape my understanding. So you get to tell me essentially how I should interpret the situation, which is always to your benefit. So moving on to mistake number three, and I think this is probably one of the biggest ones, is that you falter on tough questions. There's always going to be tough questions. Some are tougher than others, but. But a lot of times people either don't prepare for them or they don't really think about what they need to say for these kind of answers. So it's good to really prep these in advance and make sure that you have stories that show both your strengths, but also how you handle weaknesses. You know, everybody has setbacks, everybody has things that they wish they'd done better. So, of course, you know, they expect every applicant to be able to speak to a few of those. So tricky questions tend to center around conflict, weakness, and leadership. So I always say that there's kind of a sweet spot between choosing something that demonstrates a lot of self awareness and also choosing kind of a Goldilocks example. So for those of you who aren't familiar, Goldilocks is this children's story about, you know, not too hot, not too cold, just right, so you don't want something that's too bad or too much of a softball. You want something that's right in the middle, but you also want to demonstrate self awareness. So if I say, oh, you know, what's your greatest weakness? Oh, I'm such a perfectionist. I always try to do everything perfectly and, you know, I always push myself to be perfect. Like, okay. I mean, it's not really a weakness. I mean, yeah, it kind of is, but it's. It's too cold. Right? It's not just right. But on the other hand, you know, a client of ours several years back, we asked him that question during an interview prep, and he said, you know, I don't really control my anger. Well, sometimes I can explode at people, and that's maybe too self aware for this. This format. So you want to find something that shows the maturity to admit that, you know, you were wrong or you made a mistake or you have a weakness, but not something that makes you look bad. Because even if you. Even if you kind of counterbalance it, it doesn't really ever leave my mind. You make that first impression. So again, we had a client who accidentally released confidential information about an IPO to the press. And, you know, he ended up in some legal trouble. Of course, you know, he was an intern and it was accidental. But essentially, he starts the answer with admitting that he did something very unethical, borderline, you know, potentially illegal, or, you know, kind of borderline. So, yes, it was an accident, but we don't want to give them that impression that you were, you know, maybe not Doing the most ethical thing. So that's why you want to really find the sweet spot here. So when thinking about conflict questions, for example, here's a couple examples of questions that you might face. So describe a time that you had to work with a difficult person, a difficult team, a different client, a difficult client, or super superior or supervisor. Conflict is a normal part of life. You're going to have conflicts in the workplace, you're going to have conflicts in the MBA with so many different people coming from so many different backgrounds. You know, not everybody's going to get along all the time, and that's okay. But what they want to see is that you're somebody who handles conflict in a mature way and who can handle it, you know, without kind of exploding. So here, what you want to show is what happened essentially in the best way possible. So. So, you know, he wanted to do this and I wanted to do that, or I felt we should go in this direction, he felt that I should go in that direction, or, you know, he was potentially harassing this person. And I felt like that was, you know, not appropriate. So I stood up for them. So essentially, make sure that you really frame the conflict. Why did it exist? Don't just say, oh, I had a conflict with my superior, so I did this. What was the conflict? What was going on? We need to know that the most important here is that action. What did you do? How did you resolve the conflict? What steps did you take? Why did you think those were the right steps to take? Really go into detail there and let us know what you did. And then, of course, the result. You know, if possible, it's kind of ideal to have the situation work itself out. You could resolve the conflict, but not every conflict has that kind of ending. If you do decide to go for an example where the conflict was, you know, not. Oh, and then in the end, we worked out and we were, you know, on the same team going forward together, best friends. Then mention why, you know, unfortunately, we were not able to get through this conflict. You know, the person wouldn't do their part. And unfortunately, you know, I had to make the difficult decision to let them go. That's okay, too. You know, sometimes that happens. Just really make sure that you show that you can handle conflict in a mature way, similar to handling a situation where a member of your team isn't pulling their own weight. Here, again, we want to make sure that you're not. They're just taking over their work because, I mean, it's not the end of the world, but it's also not ideal because that person's not growing, that person's not learning, but also not that you're just kind of ignoring it or criticizing them. So you want to show that you're collaborative, trying to figure out the situation, trying to work with them to, you know, make it make a better situation for everybody on the team. Ultimately, in the end you want to show what happened. Again, if it didn't work out well, that's okay. You know, you went to the person, you talked to them, you created the development plan. You know, in the end they just wouldn't pull their own weight and unfortunately you had to let them go. That's okay as long as you kind of show it as a lesson that was important for you about maybe how to lead or how to choose the right people for the team. But in most scenarios, people choose examples where they were able to fix the situation. So essentially the main thing here is show that you handle conflicts or these kind of setbacks in a mature way, in a people focused way. You don't jump to conclusions. You try to make sure to help people as much as you can and make sure to show the result. Weakness questions. People hate these. And it can be tricky because you don't get to the point where you can apply for a really elite mba. If you've made a lot of big mistakes in your career, right? You wouldn't have had the promotions, you wouldn't have gone into the companies. You know, you wouldn't be in this position where your career is going to the next level if you just kept making a lot of big mistakes. So these can be a little bit difficult. But again, try to be very self aware and find good examples. So what are your weaknesses? Again, don't say I'm a perfectionist or I work too hard. Anxiety is also one that I'm seeing a lot more of and it kind of comes across as like the modern equivalent of I'm such a perfectionist. I know that anxiety can be a lot more than that and that can definitely be a valid answer. But like, oh, you know, I'm always like anxious about producing the best results possible, so I work really too hard. And it's kind of a way of saying you're a perfectionist. But if you have, you know, anxiety to the point where I freeze in presentations or, you know, I agonize over things and miss deadlines, then, then that's okay and that's totally valid. But just make sure it doesn't come across as just a synonym for perfectionism. You Want to make sure here that you mention the weakness in context. So here's my weakness and here's why it's a weakness. And this can be a mix of personal traits and professional skills. I would say that if you only have space for one, mention a personal or behavioral trait. But if they ask you for three weaknesses, you know, one of those can be maybe it's your modeling skills, you work in finance and you know you need to improve your modeling skills or something along those lines that can be okay too. Or your presentation skills. Maybe you're a consultant but you really want to make sure that you contextualize why it's an issue. So I think one of my main weaknesses is that I can sometimes be have a tendency to just take over people's work when they're struggling. I do that just because I want to make sure we get everything done. And I'm very deadline oriented. But I know that the best idea would be for me to slow down a little bit, have more time for coaching. And then you want to show. Here's how I'm working on that. So I've been talking to my mentors, to my superiors to understand a little bit more about how to plan time in for mentorship and for coaching. And I started that process six months ago and it's going well, but I still have have some room to work on it. You always want to show us that you're working on your weaknesses in some way for the next two a setback or failure you've experienced and a time you failed. Also here self awareness is key. The biggest mistake I see people making here is that they choose something that they had no responsibility over. So Covid happened and my company closed. Well, that's not your fault, right? Unless you know, you maybe made a big mess mistake. It was your company and your company had to close because you responded to Covid wrong or something like that. But oh, you know, the economy crashed and my company had to close or the bottom fell out of the real estate market and I lost this big project. Those are not your fault. That's going to come across as not being very self aware and not admitting weaknesses. So you want to choose again something that shows that you're very self aware, you understand that you, that you like everyone else can make mistakes and that you had some role in what happened in causing the failure or the setback. Setbacks could actually be a little bit more along those lines of COVID happened and I had to reevaluate. A setback is not something that you caused. But a failure is. So when you're mentioning that you want to mention what happened, why it happened, what the impact was, and then how you responded. So, so, you know, I was rushing and I accidentally sent the wrong proposal to the client or sent the final presentation with the wrong numbers. And in the meeting, you know, the client realized that and got angry and thought we weren't doing our work well. So here's what I did after that. Here's how I fixed it, or here's how I, what I learned from it. If you couldn't fix it, the main thing here again, showing what you learned, how it shaped you, and how you overcame the truth challenge. And then this question is relatively new. We didn't used to see this very often, but it's coming up more and more. What do you see as weak points in your application or what do you see as a weak point in your application? You don't want to say, oh, there's nothing, you know, that doesn't come across as very self aware. So that's definitely something to avoid. But you also don't want to create a weakness that doesn't exist. Let's say you got a 50 on your GMAT quant and you say, oh, I could have gotten a 50 watch. Sure, you could have gotten a 51. Would you call that a weakness? No. So here you want to try to think about, you know, what are things that maybe other people do or might have that are a little bit better than me. So maybe they have more years of work experience, or maybe they have, you know, direct leadership experience, or maybe they have had more international experience than you. So for example, you know, I think one of my weaker points is that I don't, I don't have extensive international experience. You know, my budget was limited during college so I wasn't able to study abroad. And then I chose a career that's very based domestically. So that's definitely something that I think I wouldn't be able to contribute as much to the classroom. However, that is one of the things I look forward most to in the mba. The chance to get that international experience, meet people from all over the world and really round that out in my program. So that's a good way to identify something that yes, somebody else has done better, they can maybe contribute a little bit more. There's a reason why you don't have that. And you know, it's something that you're looking forward to in the mba. You're looking forward to learning from others. Same thing. If you have Less leadership experience, growing as a leader, having chances to lead in clubs, you know, learning from people who've had extensive leadership experience and such. If you do have more major weakness, you wrote an optional essay, for example, then this would be a good place to cover that. Maybe your GMAT is low, maybe you have a work gap, maybe you got fired, maybe you didn't do very well academically in college. This is a great place to explain that. Go into a little bit more depth than you got to do in your optional essay. Give them a little bit more context. So I think that, that if you do have that kind of issue, this is a good place to include that. And then the last set of leadership questions, that can be tricky. So these are about ways that your leadership was maybe not effective or issues that you ran into as a leader. And that again, is asking you to admit that you're not perfect and ways that you may be made mistakes and learned from them. So question number one that comes up, Tell me about a time that your leadership was successful and a time that it was unsuccessful. The successful one should be great. You know, here's what I did. Here's the results we got. It was amazing. I'm so proud of it. The unsuccessful can be a little tougher, first of all, because not everybody thinks that they have leadership experience. It's important to remember that leadership and management are not the same thing. So if you've managed people directly, you know, that's obviously a type of leadership. But you can also lead projects, you can also lead initiatives, you can lead cultural changes within the organization. You can also lead outside of work. Maybe you lead a group of 10 people in a diversity initiative, or maybe you're the captain of the volleyball team or something like that. So remember that leadership can also be extracurricular or kind of outside the obvious management management examples. When you mentioned it was unsuccessful, again, it should be your fault. You know, we're working on this project and Covid happened and it got canceled. Well, that's not really unsuccessful leadership experience. That's just kind of, you know, things happen. So make sure that again, you show that it was your fault. What happened? Why was it unsuccessful? And then what did you do about it? How did you adjust? How did you fix it? Or if you couldn't fix it, what did you learn? So again, showing that component of. Of improvement or learning. Tell me about a time that you worked on a team where that lost motivation and how did you reignite their motivation? Again, this is becoming a much more common question. We used to See it more for schools like Berkeley, sometimes Duke, but now we're seeing it for a lot of other schools here. You know, you don't have to say that your team, you were the reason your team lost motivation. So if they say a time that you caused your team to lose motivation. Okay, answer the question. But in this case, it doesn't really apply. But reigniting the team's motivation, this can be a tough one just because people aren't really sure if they've ever done this before. So it doesn't have to be, you know, that everybody wanted to quit and you had to convince them to stay. It can be that they're working really long hours, maybe they're not delivering their best, maybe, you know, a couple of people aren't pulling their own weight. Those kind of things are absolutely relevant to mention here. And again, you can pull from both personal and professional, professional experiences. So maybe this is something that happened in your volunteer work or a sport that you play. As long as you can show your ability to get people back on the right track, you know, inspire them, that's going to show great leadership and that's going to be a great example. Again, let me grab a drink. Tell me about a time that you convinced others to follow a plan that you created or adopt an idea of yours. This is testing your communication skills as a leader and your ability to influence and persuade others. Again, it doesn't have to be. I convinced the company to implement the first, you know, minority hiring program. That would be awesome if you did that, that would be really cool. Use that. But if you don't have anything like that, that's okay. It doesn't have to be this huge project. It can be convincing them to go in a slightly different direction or maybe try a new approach. This can be a great place to show innovation, thinking outside the box, entrepreneurial thinking. And the most important thing is showing what your plan was or what your idea was and how you convinced people to adopt it. So if you just say, I had this idea to apply agile methodology to improve the process, and so I convinced people and we did it, great. But we want to understand how you convince them. So, you know, first I did this, second, I did that, and here's in the end how I was able to convince them to follow the plan. And in the end it was a big success. So always make sure to show us how you did it. Showing us those steps, showing us why you thought those steps were the right ones to take, really is what shows us your leadership. So one of the Other parts of the interview that can be a little bit tricky or sometimes even uncomfortable is at the end where they say, do you have any questions for me? Just like with a job interview, you don't want to say, no thanks, you definitely want to have something here. But you know, you want to avoid questions like why did you decide to go to Kellogg? Or what was your favorite thing about Booth? Or if you had to do it over again, what would you change about your time at mit? You know, when I lived in Brazil, I would always joke that every time I got in an Uber, people would hear my accent and they would ask me the same five questions over and over and over again. It's not that I minded answering those questions, it's just that it was kind of, you know, like, okay, here we go again. And I had kind of the same answers and it wasn't very engaging. So you want to kind of avoid that with interviews as well. A lot of people that will interview you do this on a regular basis, especially if it's the admissions committee. So trying to avoid like those cliche answers is going to be a really good thing to do. So good questions for interviewers allow for open ended answers. You don't want. Yes or no, like, did you like your time at Kellogg? Yes. Did you apply to other schools? No. Those kind of things are just not going to be very interesting and not generate conversation. You also want to show thought, research and preparation. So you want to look into the school a little bit, look into the person a little bit. People are always worried, like, oh, if I look at their LinkedIn, are they going to think I stalk them? No. In today's world, I think if you don't look at someone's LinkedIn, it shows the lack of preparation or kind of almost lack of respect. Like you didn't even check my background before. So you definitely want to do research into the school or into the person as much as possible because it's just kind of expected and you want to use the questions to seek information that isn't otherwise easy to find. So, oh, what's the average GMAT score like? Come on. Or do you guys have a cycling club? A quick Google can tell you that information. So you want to avoid those kind of things. Again, that kind of show, you didn't prepare that. You weren't very familiar, thoughtful. So you want to avoid questions that are irrelevant or have an easily known answer. So if you see that I majored in healthcare, but you're a tech guy who's into programming, you couldn't care less about healthcare, which is fine. And then you ask me, oh, what are the best healthcare classes you took at Duke? Why do you care? Why do you want that information? You know, it's kind of weird. So ask questions that are relevant to your profile and relevant to your interests. Also, you don't want to show any unfamiliarity with your program or with your interviewer. That's just kind of basic, you know, don't ask questions that are like, what? No, that's. That's not me. Or that's not relevant. That, again, is awkward. And you don't want to add anything that weakens your application or, you know, downplays your accomplishments. So a lot of times people will be like, oh, you know, I don't have any leadership experience. And. But they do have leadership experience. I'm not very good at this. But you are good at it. You just want to improve. So really try to frame your questions as things you want to use to improve or ways you want to use the experience to grow or to meet people. Don't use these to kind of trash what you've already done. So just be careful with that. So here's a couple sample questions that you could use as jumping off points or as examples for types of questions. That would be awesome. So, for example, these are a couple questions that we've developed over the last few months while people are preparing for their interviews. So, one, how does your MBA help women leaders grow outside of the women in Business club? So this was a woman who had been very involved in women's initiatives, created a hiring process at her company just for women, was the only tech leader in her company that was a woman. So something that she's very passionate about. But. But she noticed that the only thing that the school said when they were talking about women's empowerment and women leadership was the Women in Business club. And she's like, I'd love to know what else you're doing. Super relevant, super interesting. For her profile, what's on the horizon to add additional courses or resources on esg. Sorry, Oops. And sustainability. So that's something that. If you have an ESG background or you work with sustainability, that. That's awesome. If you really have never mentioned anything about that before, don't use this question. But you could change this to your area of expertise or your area of interest. Again, if you've done research and you see a bunch of stuff, you know, don't ask this question. But it could be interesting for somebody from the admissions committee to ask any you know, plans that they have to update in these areas. For an alum or a current student, I noticed that you're also that you moved from, let's say, consulting to tech. What aspects of the MIT MBA program are most helpful for you to make this transition? Don't say, what classes did you take because especially if they're an older graduate, those classes might not be available anymore. But if you are also planning to make a similar kind of transition, it could be really interesting to understand what helped, maybe what they would have done if they could do it over again or you know, what kind of things they wish they focused on in addition to what they did. Focus on number four. As I mentioned, I'm passionate about X, but I noticed there isn't a club for it. How do I start one? An alumni might not know the answer to this. Admissions definitely will. A current student might. So you can, you know, kind of pick and choose if you want to ask that for every audience. But that could be helpful. Again, showing initiative and leadership. And what do you wish you'd done differently during your mba? This can be a good question, especially if you don't know a lot about the person going into it. Sometimes you don't get their LinkedIn. You know, in the case of Wharton's interview, you don't know anything about the person who's interviewing you after the group interview. So a question like this can be good because it works for anyone. Admissions not as much, but any alumni or student this could work for. So really try to customize your questions to your interviewer. The other thing too is, you know, think of these as ways to open doors. You want to ask a question and then ideally, you know, ask some follow up questions. The conversation's flowing, you guys are just chatting, it feels very natural. And then the interview, you know, we're out of time. Sorry about that. You know, you don't always have that connection with your interviewer, but you want to try to see if you can open the door into conversation and then kind of go from there. But it's good to have, you know, three or four questions ready just in case they're a little bit drier personality or you don't connect as much and they just kind of answer your questions in a short way. You might have a couple ready. And then the last mistake is people don't really prepare much. Just by attending the webinar today, you guys are already showing that you're people who are very caring about, very careful about your preparation. So that's good. But a Little bit about our process. And this is, these are steps that I would recommend that everybody who is, who's about to do an interview take. First of all, looking at foundation prep. So like we said, why mba, why Stanford? Really translating your brand into the interview. Behavioral prep is also really important. So tell me about a time you failed. How would you, or what's a weakness of yours? How did you handle a conflict with a superior? What's a weak point in your application? Making sure that you have really strong answers built out to those, each of those questions. And if you don't know those questions, you can go on our site, just Google, you know, pass interview, Duke Interview, Ross interview, and a list of sample questions. Questions will come up. And then I also think mock interviews are really, really important. It's great to write bullet points, it's great to prep your answers. But when you're speaking out loud, when people are asking you follow up questions or maybe asking you questions that you hadn't thought about before, it's a very different experience. So don't just do all of your work on paper. Make sure that you do practices, you know, that can be with professionals like ourselves. We have a great team of interviews, experts who give a lot of feedback at the end, really challenge you and test you. But that can also be with friends, you know, students or alumni from the program that you know. Just make sure that you're verbalizing those answers because if you're not, it just, it's not, it's not going to be as good in the interview as you wish it was later. And so in our interview, specifically prep, we really learned how to present each story based on each program's values, help you develop perfect answers to gain confidence and clarity, and of course, how to answer difficult questions that you're not preparing. You know, we also always record the sessions, give you extensive written notes so you can use those to prepare later. And along those lines, I just wanted to let you guys know that we do have a special offer for everyone who has joined us on the webinar today. And I do promise we'll get to those questions in just a second, but we're offering 20% off of all interview prep services through the end of the week, including VIP packages. The VIP packages are packages where all of your interview prep from start to finish are with me, Ellen. And then our basic packages are a mix of me and my team, who are also amazing experts in the field as well. So we've copied a link you guys should be able to see in the webinar if you're interested, check that out through Sunday. Oops. And then my question slide disappeared. So I guess now we'll get to the question and answer part. So I'll start taking those from the top. So let's see. Luis asked, does the interview structure change when it is the second time that you obtain one? A reapplicant? That's going to depend a little bit on the process, Luis. Like if you interviewed the first time with the admissions committee and you're interviewing a second time with the admissions committee, you know they're going to ask you questions like. Like how have you improved since last year? I see that you're a re applicant. You know, they might ask you some different types of questions because of your re applicant status. It's not going to be completely different. You know, they're still going to ask you about your goals. Why do you want to go to our program? How have you improved since last year? If you're interviewing with an alum, there's a very good chance that they won't know that you're a re applicant just because they're mostly blind. Interviews where they only have access to your cv. So unless you tell them you're a reapplicant, they won't know. Again, depending on your profile, it could be good to mention that or not. Depends a little bit on the person. But in that case, it probably won't influence it much again because you'll be with a completely different person than it was last time. So I wouldn't say that it would change too much. Melanie asked, should you share more about your personal story when you introduce yourself? I think it should be a mix of personal and professional. So you want to bring something in that's not just, you know, I studied here, I worked here, and here I am today. A personal angle would be good, but just personal is not ideal either because ultimately it is business school. It is to advance your career. So we do need that career information. So I would say a good mix. The majority of it focused on professional life. But your personal story can definitely play a role for each person. That's going to be a little different. We definitely do have people where the personal story is very relevant to their application. Their goals are completely based on it. So that would be a bigger part of your answer. But in general, I'd say you want to balance those from Nabila or Nabia. I'm not sure I have eight years of work experience. Is it okay if I just mentioned the current work that I'm in The last five years. Instead of going through the first three years of work after college, I would briefly mention your work after college those first three years because if I've read your cv, which all interviewers are supposed to do, I'll know that you had that job experience. So I would just maybe mention something like, you know, my first job out of college, I went into finance. It was a great experience, but I really felt that I was more suited to a career in tech. So after three years I moved to tech and then go into more of that. I wouldn't totally skip it, however, if in those three years you had six different jobs. Well, if not, maybe three different jobs, you can say, you know, right after college I was trying out a lot of different things, trying to figure out the industry. So I went, you know, to consulting for a bit. I went to finance for a bit and in finance I had two different roles. And then I decided to move to tech and that's where I've been since. Or I was an entrepreneur for a couple years and then worked in a family business and now I'm in a bank. You know, that's okay. I. I wouldn't totally leave it out, but that way you can focus more of your time on your current work experience. And is it okay to mention the specific names of people I connected with? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. A lot of times people say, oh, you know, I connected with a bunch of people. And it's really easy to say that. Did you really? We don't know. So it's good to mention like, oh, you know, my. One of my really good friends, Henry, he's a student at Columbia and he was telling me about his experience with the finance club and how he helped organize this conference. You know, that's perfect for. With what I want to do as well. I'd love to be, you know, in the group that leads it next year for these reasons. Or, you know, my mentor, Paul, he is a, I don't know, Ut McCombs graduate and he's the main reason that, that got me thinking about applying for these reasons. So I do think it's a good idea to name specific people, specific conferences that you attended and such. Henry asked how long is ideal for interview prep? So I would say no less than two weeks. Just because especially if you're starting from the beginning, you're doing your foundational prep, you're doing your school specific prep and your mocks. Two weeks is kind of the ideal time to have a weekend, have some time to really think about feedback, incorporate feedback. Work on your answers a little bit, bit more. If you realize there's a gap, maybe talk to somebody or try to address it. Can it be done in a couple of days? Yes, but I would say two to three weeks is better. If you're working on multiple schools, it's kind of ideal to do your foundation prep at the beginning because a lot of those answers aren't going to change or change very slightly. And then if possible, like, okay, I have a client right now. She has a Kellogg interview, Cornell tech interview. She's an executive client. And so we scheduled one interview for this week and one interview for next week. So this week's Pella week, next week's Cornell week. That way she can totally focus and keep everything in one spot. So that's where I would say generally, that should be kind of what you'd look at. Priscilla asked, is it okay to say I'm a procrastinator? Yeah, that could be okay. It all depends on the framing. So, you know, I tend to find that I procrastinate a little bit because. So that leads me sometime to issues like this and that. However I'm working on it, I'm creating better schedules for myself or I, you know, have decided to start with the little tasks for the first hour of my day and then knock out the bigger ones because I feel more warmed up or, you know, I'm asking for the support that I need because previously I was just trying to take on too much and it overwhelmed me. So I would procrastinate because I took on too many tasks. So give us context. Why do you procrastinate? What kind of issues does it cause and what are you doing to work on it? That could be an answer to. That would work. When providing answers to interviews, Serena asked, are interviewers mainly looking for answers to work experience? I have two and a half years of work experience. It depends. I would say you want to have a mix. So you're obviously, your work experience is really important and you want to make sure that your best work stories show up. So that project that you worked on that you're really proud of, that initiative that you created, that promotion that you got, that award that you won, you want to make sure that those are included. However, you don't want to be using the same answers over and over and over again, the same stories. And I think it's nice to have things from your professional or your personal life or your extracurricular activities. It just brings another level of depth to the interview. It shows another side of your personality. So, you know, we had a client who interviewed for Harvard and Stanford last round and she had done so much cool extracurricular activities. She also had a great career. She was a very successful consultant, really killing it. So we had some cool consulting stories. But then we also talked about her, you know, sitting on a nonprofit board, how she reshaped their five year plan and helped them develop a financial strategy. You know, we talked more about her work where she went to Kenya and helped deliver an engineering project for like a water project there to use her engineering degree. So there are a lot of interesting things that. Oh wow, that's really cool. You know that she's a great consultant, got this finance mind, but she's also done a lot of other stuff too. So I would say make sure your best professional experiences show up, but then also pepper in some other experiences to show that you have a very diverse and rounded out profile. Nabila, how long should tell me about yourself but job experiences be I would say no more than three minutes, no less than one. Somewhere between two and three minutes for me is the sweet spot. Some people will go a little longer. We had a client this year who was admitted to Duke and haas, who He's 44 years old, so that was a little bit longer. We've also had clients who, you know, they have just finished their second year at McKinsey. They're, you know, doing their third year when they applied. They'll have three years of experience when they, when they start the MBA. You know, we don't have as much, so that's can sometimes be a little shorter, but I'd say between two and three months minutes. So that brings us to the end of the webinar today. Thank you guys for being such an active audience asking so many questions. If there's anything that we didn't get to today, you know, let us know. And of course, you know, if you'd like to have some help with your interview, get in touch with us. Even if you just want to do a one hour mock, you know, we think that that can be really, really helpful to make sure that you've really got your answers down. So have it, have a great rest of your week and good luck with your interviews.