Personal Interview can be a deciding factor as part of your admission process.
You have done everything right. Your CAT score (or any other entrance test score) is here yet there’s one last hurdle in the way of you getting into your dream institute. Personal Interviews can be tricky and it is even trickier to prepare for the same. It is essential, however, that you be vocal about yourself, your ideas and what you want to do.
Personal interviews have to be taken seriously for sure but at the same time, try to enjoy the process of conversation. Maintain a level of seriousness with excitement to avoid being monotonous. This balance will definitely work in your favor as an interviewee.
Primary Questions:
- Tell me/us about yourself.
- Why did you choose to do an MBA?
- What would you say are your weaknesses?
- What are your strengths?
- Give us an instance where you faced a challenge and how you overcame it.
The idea is to be confident and assertive while answering during the interview. There need not be any rigidity to the answers as that can kill the spontaneity element in your responses. Practice is the key to succeeding and you can employ different tactics and approaches to your interview preparation. One of them is recording your answers and listening to your voice. You can look for enthusiasm, eye contact, smile and ease of answering in your interview while evaluating.
About your decision to pursue an MBA, mention the rationale behind your choice of stream and go about detailing your background with respect to the scope in the industry for management professionals. It is an almost certain question in an MBA admission personal interview.
Secondary Questions:
The set of questions here may become specific in terms of your application form and you may as well be facing situational questions, for example,
1. How would you deal with an employee who walks in late to work daily?
OR
2. A potential client and one of your vendors walk into the office at the same time? Who would you address first and why?
Such questions need a little bit of thought behind it and you must think on your toes in the interview. Note that there are no right or wrong answers to this one! So be upfront and answer logically without analysing too much. Here, the interviewers are only trying to gauge your approach and thought process which means there is no “correct” response.
Comparative questions from your profile are also quite probable to pop up during this phase. For example, you have mentioned your work experience or city, such questions are likely:
1. Tell us 3 things you would do differently in your previous company.
OR
2. 2 things your previous company did to distinguish itself from market competitors.
It is important to critically analyse all possible questions that can arise from the information provided on your application. This would truly prepare you for certain question types which may have been unimagined otherwise.
Besides the above mentioned interview preparation guideline, you must research the institution thoroughly and do your homework by gathering as much information possible to increase your chances. Remember to add how you would be of value to the institution’s systems, events and course as a student in case there is a window for the same. Prepare to ask relevant questions just in case the interviewers ask if you have any questions at the end. This is a simple measure that you can take to swing the perception slightly in your favor.