My interview was consistent with the other reports published here. Was matched with an alum with a similar educational background. Same city, different industry.
Overall, I would describe the interview as friendly but probing, with heavy back-and-forth Q&A. I was probed about specific contextual details about each of my stories as well as specific actions that I took, and how protagonists in my stories reacted. I didn’t feel like any of the questions were out to “stump” me, so to speak. As long as you know your stories well the probing really shouldn’t be an issue.
The interview progressed as follows:
1. Interviewer introduction
2. Tell me about yourself, how did you become interested in [X industry]?
———> Follow-up: What years were you in [X location]?
3. Tell me about your greatest accomplishment
———> Follow-up: Isn’t [contextual detail in my story] actually [alternate interpretation of the context from the interviewer’s personal knowledge]?
———> Follow-up: How did you think about that decision-making process in [accomplishment]?
———> Follow-up: Why did you pursue [accomplishment]? What opportunity did you see?
———> Follow-up: Who were the various participants in [accomplishment]? What did they want out of it?
4. Tell me about a time you went above and beyond
———> Follow-up: How closely were you working with [protagonist]?
———> Follow-up: Tell me more about the role of the [protagonist]?
———> Follow-up: Tell me more about [additional personal details about the protagonist]?
———> Follow-up: Was it challenging to influence the [protagonist]? Why?
5. Tell me about a time you were blocked from achieving your goals
———> Follow-up: Tell me more about [solution you tried to implement], how did it work from a technical perspective?
6. Why MBA?
———> No follow-ups
7. Why GSB?
———> No follow-ups
The above lasted roughly 45 minutes. It was then my turn to ask questions for the remaining 15 minutes.
