I just had an alumni interview as part of Round 2 for the class of 2008. We met at a local coffee shop and stuck to a half-hour session as is requested by the HBS adcom (according to my interviewer). The questions were pretty straight-forward / expected. The interview was friendly and I felt it was easier than other school interviews (like Stanford) because of fewer behavioral questions out of “left field.” Then again, perhaps that depends on your interviewer. The alum had read my application (except references), whereas this was not the case at my other interviews (Stanford/Wharton/Kellogg). Here are the HBS questions:
- What are your responsibilities @ your current job? How many supervised? How has your role changed with your promotion?
- Discuss a current challenge at your firm.
- Why did you choose to work at this company?
- Why did you switch industries?
- Why do you want to do X as your chosen profession?
- What do you want to do after graduation / what do you want to do after that? Why MBA to get there?
- If you couldn’t do your chosen profession, what else would you do?
- Describe a time you failed and how you rebounded.
- Describe something from your college or work experience that you would have handled differently.
That’s it – we finished these in 25 minutes and I posed a few questions for the next 5-10 minutes, but the alum said at the beginning that asking questions was not necessary. No specific questions on why now / why HBS, but I tried to weave this in my responses. Let’s see what happens.
