Stop messing up your interviews

The Interview season is soon reaching its term, allowing us to look back on what our students struggled most with and how they improved rapidly to ace their interviews. Here are our takeaways:

1) Know the interview style you will be facing

Not all interviews are created equal. Some interviews such as INSEAD & LBS are much more conversational whereas others are much more formal. Both present different challenges. For informal interviews, authenticity is key, but you should be wary of not acting too laid back either. For more formal interviews such as HEC or ESSEC, the trap is to come off too polished with overheard formalised answers; the key is how you use narrative elements in your answers, to make them more easy-flowing, backed by concrete examples to make your answers more genuine.

2) First Impressions are Crucial

What we often spend the most time working on with our students is their introduction. A jury wants to be seduced by your life story and needs to want to help you in your endeavour. They do NOT want a list of what you did academically, your age and birth location. Think of it like the opening lines of an engaging novel. If you don’t want to keep reading beyond the first paragraph, it’s going to be a long interview for your jury.

A successful story is one that:

Ties in an engaging fashion your life experiences, aspirations, motivations, life lessons, what you want to do and why you want to do it, and why it is self-evident the school you are applying to is the best/only place where you can achieve your goals.

Ex: I was fortunate enough to attend an international high school which opened me up to understanding other’s points of view from an early age and having a multi-cultural approach. My passion for understanding how the world worked led me to pursue a highly specified program in economics at x to pursue research at the state level; the experience instilled me with a strong sense of curiosity, discipline, & ability to work on complex issues at length. During my classes, I was fascinated by the financial side of economics, and became intimately convinced of the transformational power of private initiatives over public research, leading me to a selective program in finance at x, where I got to learn about x with a small tight-knit cohort of like-minded people. I also had the opportunity to intern at x, a fascinating learning experience where I was shadowing 2 young co-founders, assisting them in x, which gave me a rare level of insight and exposure at such a junior level. The intimate access I had with these co-founders convinced me entrepreneurship was my calling ; I am passionate about tackling x, for x reason, and I think x program is the perfect place to do so.

3) It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

Of course what you say is important, but it’s more about how you defend and illustrate your perspective. There tend to be few absolutely right/wrong answers (obviously you should stray away from sensitive topics such as religion or politics), but a question such as “Would you rather be a leader or a follower?” is more a test of your depth of thought as an individual, than a binary answer.

Ex: There are situations where it can be ideal to be a follower, to learn by osmosis from others, in different cultures/environments, from more senior professionals, which in turn make you a better leader; of course sometimes situations call for immediate initiative and leadership, but a great leader is first and foremost a great listener who will take into account others opinions to extract the best ideas for a group.

4) Structure your answers

Your answers should always be structured in a clear way, with at least 1 or 2 clear and interesting arguments, backed by relevant examples from your experiences.

For questions related to work situations (how would you react if x, what did you do when this happened to you in the past?), use STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result), to clearly contextualize and address how you intervened to resolve the situation.

5) Non Verbal Communication is just as important as what you say

Students tend to get carried away in what they say and forget they are also displaying their communication skills in an interview. Try to smile from time to time, don’t hesitate to introduce a bit of humour whenever possible in some of your answers or micro-interactions, use hand gestures, stand straight, in a clear well-light background.

6) Ending questions

Ending questions matter. They showcase your abilities as a curious, well researched, and personable individual. 3 questions max at the end, with ideally 1 emerging from the conversation/backgrounds, 1 tied to the program, and 1 tied to personal experiences from the jury.

➡️ You can find the full list of questions we’ve assembled from 200+ interviews & much more below:

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Thanks for reading !

Thomas from MIM Prep