My interview with HBS was pretty relaxed and conversational. If I remember correctly, we started and ended the interview precisely on time, and it ran exactly 30 minutes. Most of the interview questions were straightforward and concerned my essays or job experience, I don’t recall any behavioral questions. The interviewer quizzed me for about 25 minutes and then I had time to ask just one question, which was about the level of competitiveness and intensity at HBS. I’ve heard, and my interview was pretty consistent with this, that the primary purpose of the HBS interview is to function as a jerk detector. Essentially, the school had a bad reputation as a competitive, back-stabbing, unpleasant environment, and implementing interviews for every admitted candidate meant that they could filter out some of the jerks that were undetectable in essays.
My advice for interviewees is to be relaxed and conversational and focus on communicating a message that is consistent with the application that got you to that point. Good luck!
