I received the interview notification on the final night of the deadline (INSEAD is notorious) for sending out bulk of the notifications on the final day (or night depending on your location, i was in US). The MBA Admissions Coordinator, who was a really nice and thoughtful lady helped me setup the interview. I received contacts of two alumnus both of whom were working / had worked in the field I was interested in (Alternative Energy / Entrepreneurship). Here I must mention that INSEAD alumni is very impressive and very diverse. One of the assigned interviewer did Law from Stanford after completing his MBA from INSEAD and is not a partner in a major law firm. The other is pursioung his passion for environment and pursuing a degree from YALE. I have to reschedule one of the interviews to India, due to a family emergency and the Ad Com was very supportive and helpful in rescheduling the interview to India.
Well without any further ado, I will get into details of the interview. First some helpful tips:
- Prepared to be grilled. Unlike other schools INSEAD choses alumni who have deep experience in your chosen area. Thats why they take upto 10 days to find the right alumni. Therefore its important that you do your homework.
- Be global and local at the same time. Know the minutest details and be ready to talk about business problems at a global scale.
- Relax and be ready for a conversational interview – you get to drive the discussion as much as the interviewer, but do not overreach
- Read your application and resume a 100 times. Read all you can about your chosen area of study and be ready to defend why that area of study.
- INSEAD alumni are busy ppl. Expect time delays in email response / difficulties in getting time on their calendars.
Now to the questions:
- Why MBA? Why second MBA (I already had an MBA from a school in India)
- Walk me through your resume? Why did I join my current company? Why US, SIngapore and India?
- Why entrepreneurship – do you think INSEAD will make an entrepreneur out of you? (Really grilled me here, because as we all know 10 months donot maketh an entrepreneur – I defended by saying that I need alumni network, mindset and skills in all sorts of areas – that I am more likely to succeed with an MBA from an international school like INSEAD than not doing an MBA)
- Detailed questions on energy – alternate enrergy, my proposed venture – its business model, how to raise capital, whats the market segment I am looking at, how much energy, what kind of source for energy (basically my interviewer was totally into it)
- Questions about my family? Is my wife ready to move from US to France? (I talked about how we love to travel and have travelled to all over the world and moving to France will be an excellent opportunity. The alumnus also talked about his family, which I thought was nice to break the ice and make me conformable when the interview got a little too hot.)
- General conversation about healthcare, India, US, differences (Here I talked about my international experiences – which I think is a big draw for INSEAD)
- Any questions (I asked about his career progression after INSEAD, the INSEAD difference what did he gain from INSEAD)
- I shamelessly asked for feedback on the interview !!! At first the alumnus was diplomatic and said there is no good or bad interview but he finally said that he was very hopeful for me.
Although I have extracted questions here, I must mention that the entire interview was very conversational. We were sharing opinions about alternate energy, socialing vs capitalism, US vs Europe vs Asia.
The other interview was very casual and lasted for just 5 minutes. The interviewer told as me:
- Walk me through the resume
- Why INSEAD? (Why not some other school like MIT or Kennedy School if I want to work in Alternate Energy) – I responded by saying that Energy is not a technology but an economic problem.
- The interviewer asked about my background – extra curricular.
- Within 5 minutes she said that she would definitely recommend me.
So the good cop bad cope theory for INSEAD still holds true in 2010.
Status: Accepted.
