My interview was at the office of my interviewer after work. We met at 6.30pm and didn’t get out until just after 9pm (I certainly wasn’t expecting such a long interview, but it seemed to go well). He wasn’t from the same background as me, nor was he in the industry that I want to go into.
I got the impression that he had only briefly skimmed my CV, so we started off by talking through that. Following on from that were fairly typical questions:
- why do you want to do an MBA?
- what is your career vision?
- what is leadership?
- why are you a leader?
- what is your main weakness when managing people?
- tell me about a difficult situation working with people at work and how you managed to resolve it;
- what attributes would you bring to a study group?
He particularly grilled me about why I wanted to study at LBS:
- why LBS?
- which clubs would you join?
- why hadn’t I mentioned the rugby club (I’m from New Zealand)?
- do you think these clubs would be offered at other MBA programmes?
- What sets LBS apart from the other top MBA programmes?
- Have you talked with current LBS students or any LBS alumni?
- What differentiates the LBS alumni from the alumni of other MBA programmes?
My presentation question was along the lines of:
“Last year the GDP rose in Germany by 2.6%; in the rest of the Euro Zone, it grew by less than 1%. This year the Economist expects Germany’s GDP to slow to a growth rate of 2.4%, and the rest of the Euro Zone to grow by 1.2%. Why is Germany’s GDP growth greater than the rest of the Euro Zone’s? Give specific examples. Is Germany’s higher GDP rate down to good luck or strategy and planning.”
I wasn’t expecting a question like this where it required such specific knowledge. But I must have managed okay, as the interviewer said I did a good job. He also mentioned that the topics were different from the first round of interviews. I noticed that some of the other topics that he could have selected from were:
- Julian Assange believes in complete and open transparency or government and organisations. Do you agree with this?
- Something about gender diversity in MBA programmes and whether affirmative action should be taken to increase female presence.
My interviewer had a consulting background and followed up the presentation by asking me what I see as a typical consulting question – “Do humans, on average, have two arms?” I said “No”. And the follow up question was “What up your assumptions behind that answer?” That led to some interesting discussion.
Overall, I would say the first hour was more intense, more interview-like, with questions where he was trying to challenge me. After that, it eased up a bit and became more conversational and I was asking almost as many questions as he was. We went off on tangents on occasion, for example, we spent about 20 minutes discussing the rugby club, and it felt like an equal amount of time discussing his question about whether people have two arms. We discussed his time at LBS and he gave me the opportunity to ask any further questions before the interview concluded.
