First of all thank you to everyone who submitted his or her report. It was a really great help for preparation.
My interview was at the apartment of an alumnus, as it was also his home-office. As I am female applicant and he a guy, it is not quite true that you get a female interviewer as well. But for me it didn´t matter anyway. The alumnus was a very friendly and communicative conversation partner. The whole interview was extremely relaxed and lasted for approximately 3 hours – but more because he also talked a lot about his experiences and we really had a good chat.
Questions:
1) Why MBA? Why now?
2) Why career change? What did you/did you not like about your old job?
3) What do you like about your new job? What don´t you like?
4) Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
5) Where do you see your company? What makes your company unique? What is your marketing strategy?
6) How does a regular day at work look alike?
7) How do you handle tough job situations? How do you relax?
8) What would friends and colleagues say about you?
9) What was your biggest achievement? What was your failure?
10) Strengths/Weaknesses?
11) What plans do you have after your MBA? What backup plans do you have?
12) In 40 years – what would you like people to say about you as a business woman?
13) Is there anything else – apart from the said or written things – you want us to know (I didn´t expect that question – so I didn´t have anything in mind – of course, afterwards, I remembered some good things, I would have liked to add. So think of something!)
14) What did you like about your international experiences (in my case USA)? What did you not like?
15) Have you ever had tough situations while working with people from other cultures? How do you handle that?
16) He asked some questions about the “leadership/team” – Essay? In my specific case it was something he had heard of – so he was interested in the whole situation. How came you were suddenly in a leading role? How did you handle that?
Then we had the imromptu interview: Topic he had chosen: Should there be corporate taxes?
I had 5 minutes to prepare and 2-5 minutes to present. It was up to me if I wanted to sit or not. I sat, but did everything else like in a formal presentation, including greeting, introduction, giving a short overview and directly my point of view, elaborating then on my three reasons – including a “personal experience” and finishing with a conclusion.
I didn´t get any feedback afterwards. I am pretty sure that my content was not that superb, but I guess, it was way more important to be structured, talk clearly, make a point and elaborate on that.
After that it was time for my questions. I had written down my questions beforehand in a notebook which I used during that time (I can totally recommand that). I asked him a lot about his personal experiences, about the impact the MBA had on his personal and professional life, etc.
My advice to you: don´t be too nervous. It´s about being YOU! They want to check if you are the person you introduced in your essays. If so, you have nothing to worry. Just be yourself and authentic! Be interested in your interview partner. It is a very good chance to talk to an alumnus and learn something new.
I read the posts in this forum, made some sheets with all the questions and wrote down bullet points to every question. Also I listened to BBC radio a lot for English practice and read the economist and the news to be up to date. For the impromptu question I thought which structure would work for me and tried to do a presentation on a current topic one or two times.
All in all, everything was really nice and comfortable. I asked my interview partner for feedback afterwards and he said that he would recommend me for the program.
Wish you all the best and hope to see you on campus soon!
