Original published by http://nomad-insead.blogspot.com/
I met with my first interviewer on Friday morning, July 27th, at his office:
He straight away asked me to talk about myself which I did for about 10 minutes starting with my childhood in Morocco. You may want to have a story line figured out before you go for your interviews (not a speech or else you may come out as fake).
Everyone has his own style but my story was pretty personal and didn’t have any business buzz words. I was frank about couple of things that could have been negative but in this case they were very positive as he agreed with some of my point of views.
He then asked me why INSEAD and I told him my reasons. He asked me if I applied to other schools and I told him that I would consider applying to the top US schools if I don’t get into INSEAD.
After 15 minutes, he smiled and told me that he is going to recommend me and we talked for another 45 minutes.
I asked him couple of questions about INSEAD, what he liked and what he didn’t.
In a nut shell, INSEAD was pivotal to his career because that is where he met his first business partner. They went straight after graduation to Silicon Valley, started and sold a fiber optic business to a large fiber optic company in the late 90s. He then moved back to Toronto and started his present business.
As far as the content of the program, the financial courses and tools he learned were extremely handy as it helped him run his business with everything from valuations to forecasting.
He said that the pace is pretty intense and that because of the short duration of the program, he learned the basics of everything but didn’t have much time to master some subjects.
It was a very relaxed and friendly interview, he was very nice, gave me his card, wished me the best, and insisted that I keep in touch with him.
One thing I won’t forget is this: He said that INSEAD and the people he met at INSEAD showed and proved to him that you do NOT need to have much money and have much experience to start and successfully run a business.
If I can go and graduate from INSEAD with this realization, one year and all the money spent doing it would definitely be worth it!
I am meeting with my second interviewer next week and will post my interview report then.
Good luck to everyone,
Youssef.
