Interview was conducted at a local dealership while alumni interviewer was getting his car repaired. Whole thing took about 60 minutes. The alum seemed a little gruff at first, but he opened up as we talked more, especially when I got him to start talking about his own experiences. Tone was really informal, perhaps the most informal interview I’ve ever done.
Intro Questions:
- “Why Stanford?” I asked if he also meant why MBA in general, and he said “Yeah, let’s start with that.”
- “What do you want to do?” I told him I wanted to eventually start my own company, and he asked “So why do you want to start your own company?”
- “How do you think a Stanford education will help you start a company?”
Behavioral Questions:
- “Describe a time when you lead a team and convinced someone to accept your ideas.” He followed up with “Did anyone recognize your efforts?”
- “Describe a situation when, while leading a team, you failed. How did you react? He followed up with “What did you learn from this?”
- Asked if I had any questions for him.
We spent almost half an hour talking about various things, like his experiences at GSB and the story of how he applied. We also talked about my chosen industry and economic issues with China. He spent quite awhile talking about how awesome Silicon Valley was and how Stanford was really plugged into that scene.
Also, he was very candid about the interview process, saying that it was more his job to keep out unqualified people. He said he thought I was good fit for Stanford and my reasons for getting an MBA were good, so I think it went pretty well.
