The 5 Toughest MBA Interview Questions

Hey, guys, can you all hear me now? Let me know. Okay, perfect. Awesome. I apologize, guys. I don't know what happened. We've been using this software for years and we've never had trouble. So I really apologize. Thank you all for jumping back in. So we'll restart. We'll go a couple minutes late today because I want to make sure that you guys get the full hour to go through all of these tips and everything that you guys need to know to answer tough interview questions. So to get started. Oh, good. I'm glad. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. I appreciate your patience as well. So to get things started off today, I would love to just hear a little bit more about where you guys are from, and I'd love to hear the best thing that happened to you guys this week. It always makes me happy to hear what's going on around the world and hear all the great things that you guys are doing. So please go ahead and type those in the chat. I do also want to mention that we're going to have about an hour, so we're going to go super fast. I'm going to give you all of the tips that I can. If at any point, you know, you have any questions, type those into the Q and A or the chat and I'll get to those all at the end. And at the very end, we're going to go through how you can get more help to make sure that we can translate all of these lessons to your specific program profile so that you all get into the schools that you're targeting. So my goal for today is to make sure that you feel 100% confident answering tough questions. A lot of times we can think, oh, you know, time that you failed, you know, weakness of yours. And those are definitely tough questions. You know, a lot of our clients look at those and go, oh, how do I answer? How do I make sure that I don't shoot myself in the foot? So we're going to talk about that, but we'll also talk about a couple of other questions that can see seem easy but can be very tricky in the end. So we just want to make sure that you have everything you need to be super confident going into your interviews. A little bit about me. My name is Ellen. Ellen Lawley's Consulting is my firm. We founded it to specifically help our clients understand how to position themselves in a way that really sells them, but also focuses on their uniqueness. So I have a degree in international relations and a master's degree from Miami Ad School in advertising. So that helps a little bit when it comes to pitching. And I also love being outside. I split my time between Texas and Brazil. Unfortunately, I'm not in Brazil for Carnival. I wish I was. But I'll spend the weekend out on the water learning more about how to sail. That's my new hobby, so it all works out. Anyways, so one of the things I want to mention is that, you know, we really hear one of my main priorities is to focus on what makes you unique. You know, you really can't get into a top program by sounding like everyone else or having, you know, just a very vanilla, I guess, pitch about yourself. So it's really important for me to make sure that you guys have everything that you need to succeed to really show them why you belong. So let's just jump right in. Let's get to question one. This is one of those questions that seems easier than it is. So that would be tell me about yourself. Almost every interview will start with this question, except for HBS and except for Wharton. You will have it in some way at WHARTON in your 10 minute interview afterwards. And at HBS, you know, it's a very different ball game. It's similar to kind of a case study method. Rapid questions about your background and thoughts about the market that you're in. But for almost every other school, you will definitely be asked, tell me about yourself. This can also come in the form of, you know, tell you, tell me about you, walk me through your resume, tell me your story, run me through your cv. Those are all just different ways of asking this question. It's really important because this question sets the tone for the rest of the interview. So if you have kind of a weak pitch here or you have a really long answer that loses their attention, that's definitely not something that will set a good tone or a good pace for the rest of your interview. So first impressions matter. And this is your first impression. It's also an opportunity for you to reinforce your passion for the school and make a case that you belong. This is not going to be kind of a direct pitch in that sense. It's not going to be, you know, I want to go to this school and here's why, and I work at this company. It's going to be more subtle. You're showing your values, you're showing your interests, and that starts to show that you have a good fit with the school and that you, when you later on kind of come through and say, that's why I want to go to Chicago Booth want to include in this question, you want to include a couple of different aspects. So we're thinking about your educational history, your career progression, and your extracurricular activities. I'm going to go into each of those just to make sure that you guys know a little bit more about what each one means. So for the educational history, usually we would say start with college. So where did you study? What did you study and why? If you by any chance, you know, have a super different background, you know, maybe you grew up all over the world and, you know, I was born in Tokyo and then I did, you know, high school in Kenya and then, you know, we moved to Belgium. That's interesting. So mention that a little bit. But if it's, oh, you know, I went to high school and graduated and moved on to college, maybe leave that out in the interest of time. So generally we're looking at college. Where did you study, what did you study and why? So I always wanted to, you know, explore problem solving. So I decided to study engineering or, you know, growing up I played a ton of video games. So I just got, you know, I just, I studied computer programming or whatever it might be. So you want to give us a little bit of insight into why you chose your major, especially if you work in an area that's completely different from your major. Now it's interesting for us to look a little bit into why. So we had a client once who worked in marketing, and now she works in the bio. In a biotech company, not in the marketing area at all. So interesting to understand where did the marketing interests come from. You might want to also mention any study abroad that you did at this point. So I had a scholarship to, to study in Spain for a year, or I did research in South Africa on, I don't know, infectious disease or, you know, social change or something like that. It's interesting to mention that. And then of course, you know, if you graduated with honors, that can be interesting to mention at the end, slip that in a little humble brag. But really reinforcing your excellence, that's a great thing to do. Next, we want to go through your career progression. Number one thing that people don't remember here. I've read your CV as an interviewer, at least I'm supposed to. I would say 99% of the interviewers have read your CV. So what we want to do here is not just rehash the cv. You know, I worked here, then I worked there, that I worked here, then I worked there. I know that already. So what we're doing here is giving the back kind of the backstory of your cv. So I started at this company in this kind of role and I chose this company for this reason. Maybe a highlight or two, not a full blown star story. So we don't want to say, you know, first this, then that, you know, say. I've worked on a lot of different projects. One of the ones I like the most was an oil and gas project in Peru. I also worked on many other projects ranging across, you know, multiple different industries. If you're a consultant, for example, if you made any switches, let us know. Why, why did you switch here? Why did you switch there? What was the motivation behind that? I think you guys are probably noticing a theme that motivations are key here, but mention always the motivation to move on as a positive. So instead of saying I didn't like my boss or I didn't like the culture, say something like, I was looking for a culture that was more global or that was more inclusive or a workplace that had a little bit more diversity. So always focus on the upside of why you left and not the downside of the company that you left. Super important there. Once you get to the end of your career progression, if you have time and this will be different for everybody, you might go into your extracurricular activities. You know, the ideal length here is about three minutes. If it's a minute, you know, we don't really learn anything about you that we didn't know before. So it's a little bit of a wasted opportunity. If it's five, six, seven minutes, I guarantee you they're not paying attention anymore. They're thinking about their shopping list and they have to pick up their kids after work. So definitely, you know, shorten that up to keep their attention if you find yourself. So, okay, I can get to three minutes talking about my career progression only. That's okay. Stop there. If you say, okay, I have two minutes, I still have a little bit of time. You can share a little bit about what you like to do outside of work. So a lot of people here just kind of talk a little bit about their hobbies, so. Oh, you know, I like to watch Netflix Place as well to show how you get involved, how you contribute to your communities. And it's another way to show excellence and a good fit for the school. School. So if you do any volunteer work, this is a good place to mention it. If you do any projects at work that are not directly tied to what you're paid for. So for example, you change the recruiting process to focus on traditionally non targeted schools, or you created an LGBTQ affinity group, or you organized, you know, the first diversity fair or something like that within your company. This still counts. So even though it happened at work, it's still an extracurricular activity because you're not paid for it. It's not one of your job description or responsibilities. So always make sure to include that. Of course, if you have an interesting hobby or even just a hobby that you want to mention, that's a great way to include it here. So, you know, for example, I just took up sailing and I've been learning for the last couple of months and I absolutely love it. Or I have my level one sommelier certificate and in my free time I love to study and try different lines. You know, you don't have to just think about extracurricular involvements from volunteering and those types of activities, but you definitely want to make sure that those are there. So don't, don't miss out. If you can't fit it into the three minutes. The chance that you'd have a follow up question. So what do you do outside of work? Pretty high. So you can answer it there. If you don't get it, then you can find a way to work in, you know, maybe some of the highlights from your volunteer experiences in other answers. So, oh, tell me about an achievement that you're proud of. I haven't really covered my volunteer aspect. Let me do it there. Or is there anything else you wanted us to know about you? You know, you really haven't mentioned anything that's a good place to include it. So definitely you want to make sure that those come in somehow, but they might be here, they might be a little later, depending on how you use your link there and how long it's going to take you to go through your pitch. So I hope we're all good. If you guys have any questions so far, make sure to send those in so we can get those all covered at the end. So our next question also kind of seems innocuous at first, but is really, really important. We have so many applications to look at, right? Some schools get, you know, upwards of 10,000 or, you know, Wharton gets almost 8,000 applications for just a couple hundred spots. So if we're thinking about that, you know, how am I going to go through 10,000 applications? Of course there's kind of a triage process that happens before you're called to interview. But even with interview, you know, there's still a lot of people that go onto that phase and everyone's Qualified. Right. Good GMAT scores or a good reason for a low GMAT score. Great professional achievement, strong essay, good letters. You know, you don't get to the interview phase by accident. It's very selective. However, we still have more people than we need, so how are we going to narrow them down? So, for example, we work with a lot of people from McKinsey. So we all went to the same university. You know, we work at McKinsey, we've done specific projects and, you know, maybe we maybe in certain cases had, you know, a letter of recommendation in common or something like that, or the same GMAT score. How are we going to choose between those people? And it comes down to contribution. So it's not just what you bring in terms of your experience, your profile, your stats. It's also what you can share. How can people learn from you? How will you enrich the community? So this is almost in a way answering, why should we take you and not someone else? So this is a question that really allows you to sell your profile and that to show how you're going to be a strong contributor and why they should take you versus someone else. So when they say, how are you going to contribute to Kellogg, for example, or any school, of course, there's a couple of different things to keep in mind. Number one, there are two ways to contribute. You can contribute with your experience and you can contribute with getting involved in the community. So let's start with your experience. A lot of times people run into the trap here of just recapping their background. So, oh, you know, Paul, how can you contribute to the Stanford community? Oh, you know, I've worked in a lot of different industries. I started in finance, then I moved to consumer good, and now I'm in healthcare or something like that. Cool. I actually already knew that about you. You know, you introduced yourself, I read your cv. So I mean, yes, your background would contribute in some way, but everyone could say the same thing. Oh, you know, I have, I've worked in these industries or I've worked, I've done this, this and that. So that doesn't really answer the question. However, that doesn't mean that your background is not valuable. Work with a lot of people from McKinsey. So we all went to the same university, you know, we work at McKinsey, we've done specific projects and, you know, maybe we maybe in certain cases had, you know, a letter of recommendation in common or something like that, or the same GMAT score. How are we going to choose between those people? And it Comes down to contribution. So it's not just what you bring in terms of your experience, your profile, your stats, it's also what you can share. How can people learn from you? How will you enrich the community? So this is almost in a way answering why should we take you and not someone else? So this is a question that really allows you to sell your profile and that to show how you're going to be a strong contributor and why they should take you versus someone else. So when they say how are you going to contribute to Kellogg for example, or any school, of course, there's a couple of different things to keep in mind. Number one, there are two ways to contribute. You can contribute with your experience and you can contribute with getting involved in the community. So let's start with your experience. A lot of times people run into the trap here of just recapping their background. So, oh, you know, Paul, how can you contribute to the Stanford community? Oh, you know, I've worked in a lot of different industries. I started in finance, then I moved to consumer goods and now I'm in healthcare or something like that. Cool. I actually already knew that about you. You know, you introduced yourself, I read your cv. So I mean, yes, your background would contribute in some way, but everyone could say the same thing. Oh, you know, I have, I've worked in these industries or I've worked, I've done this, this and that. So that doesn't really answer the question. However, that doesn't mean that your background is not valuable. So when you're thinking about your background and what you can share, you want to think about why should anybody care? And I know that this requires a lot of self awareness to look at ourselves from this angle about why should anyone care about what I've done? But think about it like this. Oh, you know, I've worked in all these industries or you know, I, in my job in private equity, I've had a lot of experience with negotiations. You know, I negotiated this deal that turned into, you know, a really successful IPO or something like that. But it was very difficult because there were stakeholders from around the world and it was a tough, a tough deal. So looking at the community, you know, I've talked to a lot of friends and a lot of current students. Yeah, learning how to negotiate better. That's going to be interesting to me. Or you know, I have a really deep, a really deep background in advanced analytics that I've applied to education in many cases. And so on one hand I think it's important to share what I know about advanced analytics. It's shaping a lot of different industries. So helping my classmates understand more about that is something I look forward to. And second, how to apply data to social impact causes is something else that I think would be interesting. I know a lot of the class is interested in social impact, but might not understand how to translate their technical skills to those kind of applications. So, as you can see, that's a much stronger answer because you're applying it for me. You're showing me what it would look like. What are they going to get out of it? That's what you always want to do. Hit that point. And along that line, make sure you're adding value. So if you say, oh, you know, I've worked in consulting and I know that there's a consulting club, so I would do that, okay, you know, that's cool. It's good to show that you can, you can match your background to something in the community. But we don't really see how you're adding value. So make sure you're specific about why your classmates would care. And within that, that answer also showed very deliberately how you would add value to the class. So that's way number one. Way number two is through classes or sorry, through clubs, initiative, these types of things. So here, what I would say is usually choose maybe 3, 2 to 4 would be kind of ideal. You don't want to go on and on and on again. Remember, TikTok has taken over our lives. We don't even have the attention span to watch a whole TikTok video anymore. So keep them engaged. So two to four clubs is usually ideal. Something that has to do with your background or your area would be interesting. You know, if you want to start a company, maybe the entrepreneurship club makes sense. If you want to go into, you know, advanced analytics or machine learning or continue in that area. You know, maybe a coding, advanced analytics and machine learning club would be interesting. So that is definitely something to think about. How can you match your background? Again, don't just say, oh, I want to go into entrepreneurship, so I'm going to join the entrepreneurship club. Mention, what do you think you're going to, of course, get out of it, but what are you going to bring to the club? So, you know, I'm really passionate about this, or I'd really love to help organize this conference, or I think I saw that there's this challenge and I would love to get involved in that challenge, put together a group or, you know, for example, someone I worked with recently has a lot of Connections in the private equity and venture capital world. So, you know, mentioning, oh, you know, I have connections, a lot of connections with people from, you know, X, Y and Z. And I would love to bring them to the private equity and venture capital group to talk, especially with, you know, looking at potential investments in emerging markets. I think a lot of people could be interested in that. So that's a great way, again, to show how you're going to add value to the club, whether that's organizing something, taking a leadership role in something, or even just bringing your view. Of course, again, your view with how everyone else could benefit from that. That's awesome. Doesn't mean that you just have to stick purely to clubs. You know, there might be initiatives like 100k challenge or, you know, at Kellogg, they have Quest. Maybe you want to be the leader of Quest. Something like that can be interesting as well. And then finally, I would choose something that's a little bit on the lighter side. You know, you're a real person with real interests, and we want to kind of get to know you again a little bit more beyond just the professional CV and all of your achievements, which of course are very important. But maybe, again, you want to learn how to ski, join the ski club, or maybe you're, you know, a very accomplished chef in your free time and you want to join the food club or organize dinners for your classmates. So I would always end this with something fun. The caveat being, you know, if your contributions are very serious, you know, maybe about racial inequality or injustices, you know, then it's not very appropriate to say, oh, and I also love to play volleyball. So, you know, in that case, use your best judgment. But in general, it's great to have something that shows us what you like to do and who you are behind the scenes. So again, if there's any questions so far, shoot them to me in the chat and then we'll move on to one of the questions that people dread. So this one everyone knows is tough from the outset. So tell me about a time that you failed. I always find with candidates, and we always kind of joke about this, that, you know, you didn't get a Booth interview or a Stanford interview because you failed a lot in life. You've gotten there because things have generally gone well for you. You've done well in your life and career so far. So one of the things that we want to think about here is that you want to kind of hit the sweet spot. So you want to use a Goldilocks example that doesn't make you look bad. So for example, a couple of years ago I worked with and when he was an intern, you know, he was starting to talk to press. That was part of his job. He'd never really done that before. So he gave out classified information about the ipo, got into a ton of trouble. You know, legal was on his case. He luckily didn't get fired, but it was a big issue. That's very self aware and awesome to, you know, own up to your mistakes, but we don't want to use that. It does not make you look good. You know, you're violating in some cases, legal but also ethical issue, ethical principles. So avoid things like that that are just too much. Even though you know, you'll talk about how you're self aware and all of that, you can't really overcome dropping a bomb when it comes to a failure. So choose an example that you know is not too hot, not too cold. On the other hand, don't choose something that is, that shows no self awareness. So this is something else that people use a lot. So for example, external factors that led to a failed project, you know, Covid came in and you guys had to drop this project because you had to focus all your resources on, you know, a crisis you were facing. Totally understandable. And yeah, your project failed, but it's not your fault. You really had nothing to do with it. Of course, you know, these were things that were out of your, out of your hands. So that doesn't show me any self awareness as an interviewer. That shows me that you don't, you're not able to kind of take the blame or show me something that was your fault, you're feel more comfortable maybe putting that on others or you know, putting it on external factors that also goes with a team. If your team failed and it wasn't really your fault or you didn't contribute in some way to that failure, not a good example. So you know, if your deal didn't work because you know, maybe your team was not organized and as part of that you forgot to submit some of the documents or your documents had errors or something like that, okay, that's your fault and we can understand what happened there. So always, you know, you want something that's not too hot, not too cold, but that also shows your self awareness. That's what we're testing there. How self aware are you and things that you want to keep in mind when choosing an example like this. You want to choose the right example. So like we just talked about, choose something that's not too extreme. On the other hand, you know, you want to use the STAR methodology. So if you think about the STAR methodology, you know, you want to choose something that goes situation, task, action, result. So don't say something like, oh yeah, you know, I made some mistakes and my team lost this deal. Okay, you know, that's fine. But where we really see you shine and where we really see how you are self aware and navigate difficult situations is through the STAR method. So situation, task, action, result. I won't go through that. You guys have probably seen it in your essays by now, but you want to set up, okay, here's the challenge. Here's what was going on. We always need context, but not too much context. The context you present should be directly related to the failure that you that you're going to present. So here's the context. Here's what I did, here's how I messed up. This is what went wrong. And then here's what happened afterwards. Here's how I either fixed it or, you know, didn't fix it. Of course, what happened with the overall situation. And then here is how I went ahead and you know, what I learned from it. That's the most important thing. I always kind of say for these examples, you want a double R? So what happened in the end with the project or the deal or something like that? But also what did you learn? What was the result for you as a person? Again, this is a really good way to show self awareness. I failed, but it taught me something important and here's what it taught me. So that's something that's really good to keep in mind with these examples. So I hope you guys are keeping up. So far I know that I talk really fast. My mom is a New Yorker, so. So let's move on to the next part. So this is also a question that can seem easy, but that can also seem hard depending on your workplace, sometimes describing a time that you had to deal with a difficult superior or team member. Again, we're kind of trying to test how do you handle conflict. So within the context of the mba, most of the things that you're going to do are group based, group projects, group presentations, study groups. Really the only thing you're going to do on your own are your exams. So we need people who are collaborative and work well in teams. However, you know, when you bring together 400 or 800 people from different backgrounds, different industries, different cultures, conflict happens. Right? It's just, it's nobody's fault. But it's a natural part of the process. So what we need are people who manage conflict well. So that's what we're testing here. We're not necessarily looking for the perfect example with your boss. So when we're looking at this kind of example, you can choose either a team member or a superior. There is no preference. Different industries, different cultures, conflict happens, right? It's just, it's nobody's fault, but it's a natural part of the process. So what we need are people who manage conflict well. So that's what we're testing here. We're not necessarily looking for the perfect example with your boss. So when we're looking for one or the other, you're not going to get more points for one or the other. Again, we're looking at how you manage conflict. So if you haven't had a conflict with your superior, choose one with a team member and vice versa. So when you're answering this question, you want to include specific context. Here is why we had a miscommunication or some sort of difficulty that's really, really critical. I can't really understand how you solved a problem if I don't know what the problem was. So for example, you know, I was working directly on this project and my, you know, the partner on the case was working more hands off. And I realized that the solution that we were working towards was not going to be successful for X, Y and Z reasons. So I went to my, to the partner and I presented this information to him and he shut it down and said, nope, just stick with the way that we're going. We don't want to do that. But you know, I really felt that this was the right way to go. So I. And that's where you get into the second part. Here's how I communicated, here's how I fixed or worked through the situation. So I went back to the drawing board and realized that if I brought more data or maybe I brought some anecdotes or some client information that that would really help paint the picture for why I felt this was the right recommendation. So I went back to the drawing board and presented this information to him and in the end, you know, he saw the value and we decided to switch the way we did the project. Again, that kind of double R is important. This taught me that when you're dealing with difficult situations, it can be a good idea to bring data because then it becomes less of a personal issue and a personal conflict and becomes a more objective or, you know, data based view. So that's just one of obviously many different examples that you could use. It could also be a harsher conflict. You know, you get into an argument with someone or, you know, someone treated you poorly or you faced harassment or something like that. You know, those obviously can work as well. Make sure if you do those, you show, you know, here's what happened, here's how I handled the situation, how I communicated with that person, and here's what happened in the end. And here's, of course, what I learned. In general, we choose examples that have a happy ending. You know, we worked it out. We were able to, to come to some kind of compromise or consensus. However, of course, life's not perfect. And if you have an example where, you know, you didn't, you didn't work it out, that could be included. You just need to be really careful to really talk about what you learned, why you couldn't work it out, how that shaped your view of teamwork or, you know, of interacting with senior leaders. But I would say, you know, that is almost like level hard for interviews. So if possible, it's, it's a good idea to give yourself an example where something worked out. You're going to just make things easier on yourself. However, if you're feeling confident with that example and you have a lot of different things, you know, you can present that in a way that you can really pitch it for the kind of positive side of things and make you, of course, look good. That's the number one objective here. Go for it. But in general, it can be tough. Last one. Do you have any questions for me? This can also be very tricky. I think everyone on this webinar knows that the answer to that is not no. Right? You got great jobs, you're in amazing industries. So you've been through tough interviews. And you know that at any interview, when they say, do you have questions? For me, the answer is always yes. MBA interviews are obviously no different. We want to break these down, though, into two different kind categories. We want to think about questions that you're going to ask an alumni or student and a question that you're going to ask the admissions committee. Obviously, you know, in some cases there could be overlap, but most of the time it's better to have questions that go through something that would be interesting or relevant to that particular person. So some things that we don't want to do, we don't want to ask irrelevant questions or that are unlikely to have a known answer. Like, let me try to think of an example. We've been through so many in the last couple of Days. But, you know, thinking about, okay, let's say I'm somebody, I'm an alumni or alumnus, and I went to the healthcare track and you asked me, okay, so what kind of resources do you have for people who want to go into venture capital? I don't know, you know, I'm in healthcare or what's the entrepreneurship center like? And I, you know, did consulting. I probably won't know the answer to that question or, you know, how many you ask an alumni or how many people from the 30 or 80 nations represented were from this particular country. They're just, they're not going to know that. So you need to ask a question that's relevant. You also want to show, avoid questions that show your unfamiliarity with the program or the interviewer. You're not always going to know a lot about your interviewer going in, but most of the time you'll have their name. You know, you can look them up on LinkedIn or you're going to know that they're an admissions director at the school. So usually you have, you know, the basics. You want to make sure that you tailor questions, again, to their specific backgrounds. So don't ask things they wouldn't know. But also you don't want to ask things that are easily found online or kind of obvious. So, oh, you know, what kind of classes do you guys have on entrepreneurship? You know, it's on our website. Or what kind of scholarships do you have available? That can seem like a good question. But again, most of those scholarships are online. So kind of if we add a scholarship question, putting a positive twist on that. You know, I went through your website and I noticed that you have a lot of different scholarships and fellowships, but I noticed that only one was available to my profile and was this, I'm curious, are there any other fellowships or scholarships that you know about that might not be, you know, directly with the financial aid department that I might be able to look into? The answer, again might be no, but it's framed in a way that shows that you did your research. And an admissions person, for example, would probably know the answer to this. An alumni wouldn't. So don't ask anything like that. And you don't want to weaken your application or your accomplishments anyway in any way. So, you know, let's say that you're interviewing with an alum. They usually, it's a blind interview. They only have access to your cv. You. So if your GMAT score is not on your cv, they won't know about it. Maybe it's a Little low. So you don't want to bring up at the very end, oh, you know, I have a really low GMAT score. So, you know, what do you think my chances are of getting in? Or, you know, what can I do maybe to improve that? You're bringing up an issue that they didn't know about. Another one, like for the admissions committee. Oh, I'm planning to quit my job soon because I want to travel before the mba, you know, how does the admissions committee see that? Well, as inconsistent with everything that you've said so far and is somewhat problematic. So don't bring issues into your, into your application here. The other thing I would add here too is avoid insincerity. If you really don't care about the answer, don't ask the question. We can always tell like, well, why would you ask that? So avoid that. You also want to avoid cliches. So kind of going over to good questions. So good questions will not allow for yes or no answers. They'll be more open ended. So instead of saying, did you join any clubs? Yep. That's kind of like, okay, awkward. Now, I noticed that you transitioned from consulting to finance when I checked out your LinkedIn page. Did you join the finance club and did that play any role in your decision to switch industries? Much better. Yeah, of course, you know, here's how it happened and here's what I did. So that's a really good way to, to kind of build that engagement and ask a good question that's relevant. If you don't want to transition into finance though, don't ask that question. Why would you care? It's just a little bit weird. You want to also show thought, research and preparation. So you don't want to say, oh, why did you decide to work at mit or why did you decide to go to Kellogg? There's nothing wrong with that answer or with that question, but it's just, I mean, they've answered it so many different times. It doesn't really show a lot of, you know, thought or preparation or diligent preparation I guess is the word again for the interview. So you want to make sure to avoid things like that, those just like very generic, cliche questions. You should also seek information that isn't otherwise easy to find. Again, what's the average GMAT score? Is my GMAT score high enough to get in or what kind of scholarships do you guys have that just, it doesn't make you look good. You didn't do your minimum research, so avoid those. So what should I ask? Let's go through a couple of sample questions that you might want to ask. So let's start with maybe alumni. Sometimes that can seem a little easier. So like I mentioned, I noticed that you also moved from X to Y, from, you know, consulting to venture capital. Considering that that's what I want to do as well, what aspects of the, you know, Kellogg MBA program were most helpful for this transition? Oh yeah, you joined this club and that club. And then you can ask great follow up questions and you guys really clicked and the interviewer will have a really positive view of you at the end of the interview. Another one, as I mentioned, you know, I'm really passionate about, maybe it's martial arts or maybe I'm really passionate about coding or advanced analytics, but I noticed there's not a club about it, is there? Did you go through the process of starting a club? What would that be like? That question could also work for the admissions committee. You can ask them a little bit more about how you specifically start a club because that information, of course, is not available on the website. And then, you know, you could also ask, you know, looking back at your mba, what do you, or what was, you know, the things that you did in the first 90 days or something that set you up for success? I know that there's a lot of things to choose from, a lot of clubs and interesting classes and you're already thinking about recruitment. So looking at all of that, you know, what did you do in the first 90 days that set you up for success? Later on you could ask a question like, oh, what do you wish you did done differently? Or what was missing from the program in general, I would avoid those as like a direct question. I don't know, I like to focus on the positive. I think that that's always a more interesting experience for me. And you don't have to necessarily avoid those kind of questions, but you can ask them as follow up questions. Oh, you know, the first 90 days I did this and that and this and that. Ah, interesting. Are there any pitfalls that you would ask me to or that you would advise me to watch out for or. Okay, awesome. You know, you had this great experience at mit. You know, then you can maybe ask, you know, if there was one thing though, that you could change, what would that maybe be? So definitely that's something that you can think about. In general though, avoid personal questions for alumni. Did you bring a partner? Did you bring kids? Something like, did you get the job that you wanted to get? If you didn't, nobody wants to talk about that or did you not get into other schools or where did you apply? Those are questions that generally I would avoid. They're just really encouraging, comfortable, and you don't want to ask those kind of things. So those are just some examples of questions you can ask your interviewer. We have a list on our website. You can check that out later. And then thinking a little bit about questions you can ask the admissions committee. Again, you know, I want to join, I want to start a club. What's that like? That can be good. Only mention it again if it's sincere. Do you actually want to start a club? Are you actually interested in that? Second, maybe, you know, how does, I don't know, the Berkeley Haas MBA help women leaders grow outside of the women in business club? So a lot of times, you know, when we look at, you know, female leaders or support for the LGBTQ community or the black community, how do we help them grow beyond just this affinity group and this one club? That can be an interesting question. Again, if you're not a woman, if you're not, you know, in that population, maybe avoid it unless you really have a good reason for asking. And then, for example, you know, maybe you're interested in CSG or, sorry, ESG and sustainability. So maybe something like, you know, I've noticed that, you know, for example, I don't know, Duke has added a lot of courses on ESG and sustainability. This is not necessarily true. Just an example. And I'm curious if there's any other resources or additional courses that are plan for the next couple years that I might be able to take advantage of. Showing that you already know what's going on, you're already knowledgeable and you're curious about what things might be on the horizon. When thinking about these questions for the admissions committee, check out their LinkedIn, check out their Instagram, check out their YouTube, their websites. There a lot of times outside of the website, they're posting more action, like more updated information. So instead of having just kind of the basic, you know, website copy that, maybe it was written two years ago. Who knows, maybe you have access to up to date information, like, oh, I noticed you guys just launched this. That's so cool. What's that going to be like? So that's something else. My last tip here would be, I know it's really shaped all of our lives in the last two years, but unless you have a compelling reason, avoid Covid. You know, are you guys going to go back to class? Is there going to be online classes? You know, how is Covid continuing to affect the school. You know, maybe a year ago, those were even a little more, those were interesting questions because things were still really in flux at this point. Everyone knows we're doing the best we can. It's hard to say, it's hard to predict. So I would avoid questions. So as I mentioned to you guys, I'm going to present now a little bit of ways that you can solve these problems. So maybe you're looking at these questions and you're not really sure how to actually get to the point where you can present your profile in a compelling way. So when we work with interview prep, we really break this down into three different steps. And I think that these three steps are great places to start and a great process to follow. You know, we tested it with thousands of people all over the world and it's worked super well. So the first thing you want to look at is foundational prep. So these are things like, why mba? Why now? Tell me about yourself. How will you contribute questions for me, a lot of these things that serve as a strong anchor for a good interview. I always tell people, if you have a great leadership example or you have this perfect example of when you failed and how you overcame it and you're so self aware now, that's awesome. But if you can't tell me why you need an mba, the interview did not go well. We've got to have the basics in place. You've got to build a strong foundation for anything that we do. Second, we want to look at behavioral prep. So these are things like, tell me about a time you failed. Tell me about your biggest win. Tell me about a time that you worked with diversity and inclusion. That's a big question at Berkeley and recently Duke and of course other, other schools as well. So for behavioral prep, customize that to each of your schools. So Kellogg is not going to ask the same questions that London Business School are going to ask. London has a case study and you know, they ask more about your global view and kind of your values. And you know, Kellogg asked more about kind of teamwork and communication. Of course, conflict is a part of teamwork, so they ask about that too. So you definitely want to look into those. For each, almost every school that you might be applying to, we have a list on our website you can just Google or go to our blog and just search it and find out. We have a long list of questions. So definitely look into those and think about how you'd answer, what story would you bring? Sometimes it's good to have A backup, too, just in case. I've put this story down for 10 different questions. Maybe it's good to have a backup. You don't want to use the same story over and over and over again. And then finally, I usually suggest do mock interviews. Whether that's with an expert expert who can give you great feedback, or a friend who maybe has gone through the process before. It's important to vocalize your answers. So one of the things that I see people making in terms of a mistake is they do their bullet points and they think they're ready. And then we do a mock interview. And it's not always great. Having good bullet points and speaking well, telling a good story, making it engaging, making sure it's complete, making sure it's the right length. These are all tricky things to do, and they're all skills that can be built, but they need to be practiced. So if you haven't spoken your answers out loud, if you haven't gone through some kind of simulation of the interview, please do that. It's one of the most important things for success. But just jumping right into a simulation or right into a mock without ever having thought about your answers is also not going to be very interesting. It's like taking the GMAT without studying. I mean, you might get a good score, but probably not. You need to do some preparation. So we have an interview prep package that we are offering to you guys. There is an offer that I will put up for you guys right now in case you'd like to gain more interview expertise and more practice. We always go through these three phases. They're very customizable. You know, for example, I have people that do multiple sessions on the behavioral prep. They're just not quite getting it. They need a little bit more help. Maybe they do a few more mocks. Maybe they do fewer more mocks, less mocks. So that's something that's really customizable. But the first thing we always work on is how can we present your story to each program based on their values and fit. So just because you did a Booth interview does not mean you're ready for your Berkeley interview. Even though you might use the same stories, you might need to position them differently. You know, what Booth looks for and what Berkeley looks for. For not necessarily the same thing, as you guys have probably noted. I'm leaving out Wharton and Harvard on this because they have a totally different format. So that's why I'm not talking about those two. So we really want to make sure that those answers are customized. To each school to show you have a great fit. We want to prepare answers to even the toughest questions. So anything they throw at you, you're ready. We also want to make sure that you have tailored feedback so you can overcome your weaknesses and have an amazing interview. You walk out and you say you, yeah, I nailed it. I did my best and I'm really proud of what I've done in my interview process. So that's super important because, you know, there's a lot of systems that you can go through or question lists that you can read, but you know, how one person is going to answer those questions and how another person is going to answer those questions are completely different. So it's really important that you have individualized feedback for your particular story. So just as a thank you to all of you guys who have attended our webinar, today, we're doing a 20% off of our interview services. That includes VIP packages, which are 100% with me, versus a mix of me and my team who are interview experts from around the world. You know, former interviewers from the schools, heads of hr, interview coaches. So that does include VIP prep with me if you all would like to work with me directly. And that will be just through the end of the week, this week. So if you'd like would be interested, there's the link on the side. And now we will move more into the question and answer section. So we have a couple of questions going on here. If you guys want to add any more, go ahead. So we talked a little bit about how the process would work. One school prep is three hours. Do we ask for school applications and understand your profile before the foundation starts? Yes. So we always ask you to send your application, your cv, any concerns that you have, and then we send you back preparation guides. So here's what you need to do. You need to send those to me before your interview together with your application so I can read through everything, look at how you're thinking about framing your answers so that during the session we can really make sure that you are prepared to tell your story. So that in the foundation will be very directly related to, you know, CV and telling things like that. But in the more behavioral section, that's going to also be a separate step. You know, here's the guide, here's what you need to do to fill out. Send that to me to look over. And then in the session, let's go through and build and brainstorm those answers to make sure that they're perfect. The mock interview, of course, is Usually blind. So if that's not with me, if it was with our team, they would just have your cv. That can be super valuable, too, because they don't know you, you don't know them. We're interviewing tons of other people this week. How did it go? So that can also be a good thing. In that case, they just have your cv. Sonya asked a question about. Tell me about a time that you failed. I can't understand how to strike a balance to reach the sweet spot. So I'm actually going to answer your other question really quickly, and I'm going to pull up an example while I do that so I can give you something really precise. How do you tackle questions that you didn't prepare for? So let's move on to that briefly while I look up those answers. So for the question of, you know, what can you do that? If you didn't prepare for an answer, first thing I would say is take a deep breath. You know, you don't have to jump right into it and say immediately, you know, here's an example. And then at the end, you're like, oh, man, I really shouldn't have said that first thing. Take a beat. It's totally fine to say, you know, I need another. I need a minute. Do you mind if I take a minute to think? So that's something. That's definitely not a problem. The other thing is think about what you do have. So if you have something along the lines of, you know, it's about a risk, but there was also a challenge aspect. So if I get a question about a challenge I faced, maybe I can use my risk example and just tweak the intro, tweak the conclusion, make the lesson a little bit more related to challenge. And there we go. Or, you know, a time that you had to innovate and a time that you had to think outside the box. That could also be a great example for a time that you had to convince someone to do something. Something. So you thought outside the box. Probably you had some pushback, right? You had to present it to senior leadership, you had to pitch it to the board, you had to pitch it to your team or the client. So an example about innovating could also work really well for sometime. You had to convince a person, maybe you prepared something for a conflict. And I asked specifically for a communication challenge. Well, many conflicts are based in communication, so you could probably slightly adapt your answer to that in order to make sure. Sure that you have a really strong answer to that. So that's something that Those are some things that you could definitely use there and some things that you could kind of adapt. If you honestly get totally, totally, totally stumped, you know, that's okay. It's better to say you don't know than just to try to kind of fake something. So that's definitely, you know, I would say that's an important tip, is to just have the self awareness to say that you didn't really know. But on the other hand, if you really can't think of a example, you can also talk about a hypothetical because again, what we're trying to do is to think a little bit more about how, what are they trying to measure here? So they're trying to look into how do you handle these kind of situations? How self aware are you? So for example, tell me about a time that you faced an ethical issue at work. Maybe that's never happened. Yeah, maybe I saw somebody take a pen home. But you know, that's not a good example. So something like, you know, fortunately that's never happened to me. But if I did face an ethical example or an ethical issue, here's how I would handle it. That way we're still able to see a little bit more about your values, how you act, how you navigate certain situations. And that can be really, really helpful for us to know. So first of all, try to pivot what you've got. Second of all, think about hypotheticals. Third, maybe ask for some time to think. And fourth, it's okay to say you don't know or you don't have an example for that. You know, of course that's our last case or like our kind of worst case scenario, but it's better than completely making something up. So, going back to your question about a failure. So I've got an example ready. I'm just going to read it out so you can hear. So here we go. A few months ago, I was working on an important turnaround project with one of our firm's largest clients. Given the complexity of my work stream, I needed to work with client employees from six different departments to create the turnaround strategy. It was my first time leading such a complex project, and I started out by trying to be a very inclusive leader, listening to everyone's opinions and fully debating all ideas. A few weeks later, however, I still hadn't made any progress in developing the strategy. And my manager approached me and let me know I was critically behind schedule and that my lack of progress had the potential to derail the entire project had frustrated him and had made him lose faith in me. Concerned about my failure to deliver so far, I discussed my tactics with him and came to understand that my inclusive approach was actually hurting more than it was was helping with that feedback in mind, the next day I changed my approach and was more assertive, focusing on key stakeholders while limiting discussions to relevant points. With this approach, I was able to gather what I needed while also delivering a great strategy on time. This failure taught me that leaders sometimes need to make tough decisions and must set clear goals and boundaries for group discussions. So that's kind of a lighter example of a failure. You know, we have a couple of others that I can send over if that would be helpful. But that's kind of the right thing. You know, it's not like, oh, you know, I was a little behind. But my boss lost faith in me and he said I essentially needed to get with the program or I was going to be in big trouble. And then that he pivoted. He learned from it, asked for feedback and was able to deliver something successful and as a bonus, learn something important about being an effective leader. So those are the kind of examples that you want to structure? Vikram asked. I have an interview scheduled in the first week of March. I am pretty confident about cracking the interview, but I want to know whether it's a deal breaker for the whole application process or not. This is a great question. So if I have is my interview the make or break? It's, you know, okay, they looked at my profile and they've looked at my application and either I'm going to get a yes or a no based on how the interview goes. In most cases, you know, it is a very important part of your process. It usually weighs about as much as a GMASS score or, you know, your essays and letter of recommendations. So it is a sizable chunk. But it's not an ab like you get to this point and you either go to, you know, the fail bucket or the pass bucket just based on the interview. They're going to use the interview and re look at your profile from a holistic standpoint. So it's very important. However, in certain cases it can be make or break. There's two that really come to mind. One, you're not prepared. You don't have answers to your questions. You can't say why McCombs. You can't really justify why you won an MBA. Number two, you have a problematic interview. Maybe you do something that seems unethical, maybe you're very rude or, you know, you won't make eye contact with the recommender because it seems like you don't even want to be there. Those are rare. I mean, you guys are all nice guys and I'm sure that that would never happen to you. But if something like that did happen, that would definitely be a red flag that would put you in the no bin. So you want to make sure of course that you're prepared, that you're friendly and that you show them, you know, that you're excited to be there and then you know they'll take that information back, look at everyone's interview reports, how they're trying to compose the class, your GMAT score, a lot of different factors and decide if they're going to make an offer, put you on a wait list or unfortunately give you a no. So I hope that answers your question a little bit better. But of course, you know, I do think that practice makes perfect. If you haven't verbalized your questions yet, it is really good to go through and get feedback on that. Just make sure that you're really ready to go in and seal the deal. Awesome. Well, I think that's all the time that we have for questions today. I hope that this was helpful for you guys. I hope it gave you the tools that you need to succeed in your interviews. Whether those are happening right now or you're super planning ahead and getting a job jump start or maybe around three applicant. I hope those are really helpful. I will let you guys know that on our website we do have a lot of those question lists so make sure to check those out. And of course, you know my team and I are always here to make sure that you're able to translate all of this to your profile. That you're able to make sure that you feel super confident and shine in your interview and turn this interview into an admissions offer. So Vikram, good luck early next week, hopefully that does turn into offer at McCombs for you. We will be sending a recording of the of the webinar. It'll be on our YouTube channel. So we'll mention that in a follow up email. And I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and for those of you about to have a long weekend, have a great holiday.