How to crack MBA Interview Questions

MBA/Executive MBA 

Management Education is one of the few educational streams that goes with an ultimate aim of creating Future Leaders, who work on to Lead Large Organisations or Functions or Teams, upon completion of the program.

Naturally, so, lots of rigour goes into the selection process, for new candidate intake by the start of every academic cycle.

MBA Interviews 

MBA Interviews are one of the most important aspects of the selection process followed by Business schools. This is a stage at which the school gets to gauge the Leadership quotient of the aspirant directly.

The term "Leadership Quotient" is as vague as it can get, and could be very confusing to know what becomes a right measure of it! If this is also the situation you are in, then you are not unique.

However, in this blog, i am going to give you a robust framework that you can be used to create compelling proposition & establish that you the exact Leader material that B-Schools are wanting to nurture.

The structure is made of simple, actionable points that can be crafted to any of your specific/unique situations, still being able to make a compelling argument supporting your candidature.

How useful is the framework?

I wish to guarantee on the framework's effectiveness basis my personal track record & turning it into a piece of easy to follow steps, which can be of immense value for your application.

I am one of the pioneering students of an Executive program called ILPSIE (ILPSIE 2012 Brochure), INSEAD LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME FOR SENIOR INDIAN EXECUTIVES. The program is for senior executives who are looking to transition to Leadership roles in their respective organizations and hence especially more rigorous on gauging Leadership potential in an already successful professional!

I have also been one of ILPSIE's interviewers, played a significant role in deciding the candidature of future aspirants of the program. I have conducted several interviews for future ILPSIE batches, and my strike rate of candidate feedback has always been held up by INSEAD, in awarding (or not) admit for particular applicant! Yes, that's 100% strike rate in my recommendations, be it positive or negative!

Why MBA?

Remember what I said about what the Business Schools across the world looks for the as important trait in an MBA grad? A future leader running large organizations is one of the primary roles played by MBAs and Leadership by itself is a gray element as it doesn't carry any concrete deliverable you can think of.

Other areas of management such as Marketing or Finance or Operations are pretty straight forward as they are easily measurable between Initial Goal/Plan and Final Deliverable. Leadership, on the other hand, has a larger influence on an Organisation's success, yet not very easily measurable concretely.

Then how do Business schools get to gauge whether an aspirant has it or not? The answer to this question is determined by a secret sauce formula - "Clarity of Thought" about why a particular applicant wants to do an MBA program in the 1st place.

As you are even just about to start a management career, how could anyone possibly gauge your Leadership potential?

Well, there is a defined correlation between Leadership and Clarity of Thought.

If you break down leadership into independent elements, then they possibly would look like this:

1. Leading Yourself
2. Leading Others
3. Leading Organisation

All the above three elements are parts to a whole equation of being a Successful Leader.

And the 1st step to showcase success is being better at Leading Yourself; that is driving "self" with a clarity of thought. And when it comes to giving an interview for MBA admit, clarity of thought is applied to why you want to do an MBA at all?

What is the Framework?:

For answering the question "Why MBA?" with precise clarity, is quite a simple one to derive, contrary to popular notion.

Yes, if you just apply the below parts of my framework, you can come with a very compelling proposition I promised earlier, that any interviewer would associate straight with Leadership quotient.

Part I: The career past - Draw out the responsibilities held, roles played and significant achievements in your previous career.

Last job? Yes, predominant schools, esp the top ones, value MBA aspirants to carry a minimum of 4 - 5 years of work experience in some organization of repute.

If you don't have one, and being an absolute fresher but still want to go for an MBA, I would have then seriously recommending you not to do so. If you can't relate to what you learn in an MBA, then the holistic learning of an MBA goes substantially missing. And the only way to a comprehensive learning is by having a good corporate exposure, which the actual modules of the program will automatically relate to.

Part II: Future career plans - Take a short term horizon of 3 - 5 years, a period marking post MBA and detail out where do you like to see yourself headed.

Part III: How an MBA program can - chart out by connecting the dots of Part I & II for how MBA/(and the particular B-School that you are applying for) can help you bridge Part I & II.

In the interviews that I carried out, I attach 100% marks/weight-age to anyone who can club the above three sections logically! The reason being, doing an MBA program is not a straight forward choice but comprises of several aspects such as,

A) the cost involved - It costs upwardly of $40000 for a one-year MBA program in a good US school.
B) the opportunity cost if the same time is utilized in gaining some other particular skill or exposure, remember that you don't always learn specific things in an MBA but more of holistic/general stuff about management. Probably that why it's most often being referred to as "General Management".
C) the alternatives for doing a full-time MBA or Executive MBA, we are living in the era of MOOCs where you can master anything by just sitting at home and conducting your regular work simultaneously!
D) The global macroeconomic trends, which could wield uncertainties on job markets by the time you complete the program, etc.,

Now the action points

Follow this very simple & systematic process and see for yourself how the magic (clarity of thought) unfolds in front of you.

Part I - Yes, you got to do some drawing/sketching here! Start imagining the course of river drawn in 2 dimensions over a piece of paper. You will most probably depict a sign wave to narrate its path. The same, if made to represent your past career is then called Career River! Yes, the crests of this river form your previous career highs while the trough forms the lows. Define the high & low points with particular incident or event or recognition or milestone.

Part II - Pick your favorite company or industry and the role you would like to play in that. Take the Crest points as is from Part I; make out a fictional incident by scaling them up to 10X. For example, if your Part I's one of the crests is "Successfully Expanded Distribution to new Markets in India". Then the same could be in Part II as "To create new geographies across Asia"). Don't forget to define the incident using a combination of facts + story.

Part III - Write down on a piece of paper all the +s forming your perspectives, about MBA or specific B-School basis all the research that you have done already, in bullet points.

The fact that you do your research about MBA & Schools is a no-brainer, and hence I wish not to stress on that one!

Now with a minimum of 5 and maximum of 12 points derived, try and stretch those points in a way it connects the crests from Part I & II. Voila, you are self-staring at a convincing argument that you would be projecting shortly in an upcoming interview.

Do let me know how this framework helped you and any other specific help that you might require from me by commenting below. I would be more than happy to help you out with whatever resources & exposure that I have gained personally.

Cheers.