Interview took place in October 2008. He was on a tight schedule to complete the interview in one hour. This was a restriction the school had imposed. He also made lots of notes, which he said he needed to write up and send back to the school. He took the questions (or at least some instructions) out of an envelope, which made me wonder whether the school had prescribed some things to him.
- Walk me through your resume: focus on transitions and why you changed roles.
- Questions specific to me
- What did you learn from that (particular experience)?
- Your current job involves working / influencing several departments. How do you manage to do that when people must have their own silos?
- Why an MBA?
- Why Kellogg?
- Have you considered doing the 1Y program?
- What legacy did you leave at your undergraduate university?
- Tell me about a leadership experience you have had.
- Tell me about another one.
- When have you had a challenging interaction and how did you handle it?
- What are your two main strengths?
- What are your two main weaknesses?
- If time and money were not an issue, what would you do?
- What three words would you use to describe yourself?
- Besides what you have mentioned in your essays, What do you do outside of work?
- How will you enhance the diversity of the Kellogg class?
- Now, we have 10-15 mins left. What questions do you have for me? –> this question seemed to be to more about gauging my level of interest in the school.
He seemed to have some stereotypes for types of Kellogg students: “consulting crowd”, “hard core private equity folk”… I could not help but feel that he was trying to peg me into one of these holes.
