Many MBA students are preparing for job interviews right now, and we at mbaMission are noticing a number of common (yet easily correctable) mistakes our clients tend to make when responding to interview questions. In this post, we will address two in particular and give you strategies for correcting them.
Mistake #1: Taking too long to get to the main point of your story. This is problematic because you run the risk that your interviewer will stop paying attention and miss hearing how great you are and how you could help their organization.
To address this issue, we recommend implementing an “answer first” approach, which we illustrate with the following “before” and “after” sample answers to the very common prompt “Tell me about yourself.”
Before: I am a first-year MBA student at School X, majoring in strategic management. I grew up in the Bay Area and went to college at School Y. After college, I joined Company Z’s leadership rotational program and served across the marketing, operations, and finance functions of the organization. After two and a half years and a promotion, I left Company Z to join a start-up, where I did project management and helped scale the company from ten to 200 employees…
Revision Tips: Start by offering a kind of headline or road map for your answer. So, before you begin describing specific experiences, summarize them according to a theme, such as common elements they share or attributes that are relevant for the job you are interviewing for. Make sure that by the end of your answer, the interviewer can understand the connection between your experiences and your target role. You need to prove to them that you are qualified for the job.
After: I am really excited to be here today, interviewing for a consulting position with Firm X. Throughout my personal and professional life, I have sought out opportunities that would help me develop my analytical problem-solving skills and build strong leadership and client engagement capabilities. After attending College Y, I joined Company Z’s leadership rotational program to apply the business acumen I had developed as an undergraduate economics major. In my two and a half years at the company—during which I completed rotations across three different functions—I have frequently collected and analyzed datasets encompassing more than 20K records to form hypotheses and propose potential solutions to senior leadership…
The following is another example of using the “answer first” approach, this time in response to the prompt “Tell me about a time when you convinced someone to adopt a different way of thinking.”
Before: I would like to share a time when I disagreed with the senior management of Company X about the company’s marketing strategy. The challenges I faced were…
Revision Tips: Hook the interviewer from the start. Use words from the interviewer’s question in your response. Provide context (e.g., what was at stake, why your task was so important) and numbers to help the interviewer understand that persuading senior management was a true challenge and that your actions were significant to the organization.
After: I would like to share a time when I convinced the senior director of innovation at Company X, James, to shift from a traditional marketing strategy to a social media–based one. Prior to this change, the company was facing its fourth month in a row of declining revenue, but this new approach led to an eight-times increase in visibility for the firm’s innovation initiatives and three new client contracts worth more than $2M in revenue. In doing this, the challenges I faced were…
With both of these sample prompts, we recommend limiting your answer to two minutes. No matter how awesome your full story is, the interviewer wants to see how you curate your experiences and can communicate in a concise narrative. If the interviewer wants to know more, they can always ask you follow-up questions.
Mistake #2: Not telling your story in a compelling way. Although many MBA students prepare structured stories to share with their interviewer, they do not always present those stories in an engaging manner. Your word choice, tone, and body language are critical for success in your interview. A lack of confidence will manifest on your part in an inability to project authority and credibility—and concern on the part of the interviewer that you are not qualified for the job.
To improve your performance, try these strategies: reflect, research, and take action.
Reflect: Ask yourself, “What is the root cause of my lack of confidence?” Recall situations in which you felt confident and ones in which you did not. Can you identify any similarities or common threads between the two types of situations? Uncovering what makes you feel nervous or apprehensive will help you find remedies for it. Recognize that different tactics work for different candidates. In the end, be kind to yourself, and believe in your abilities.
Tip: Practice reframing exercises; remind yourself that you are the expert on you. For some useful tips, read this article by Wharton professor and workplace psychologist Adam Grant about overcoming his fear of public speaking and this blog post by Jodi Glickman on improving your executive presence.
Research: Analyze the target job description, and talk with employees at the firm to determine the most important competencies for the role. Identify details in each of your stories that correspond with those competencies.
Tip: “Sell” your accomplishments to your interviewer by quantifying your impact. Give measurable data points, such as the year-over-year amount change or percentage improvement, or qualitative specifics, such as completing the number-one priority for senior leadership on time and on budget or launching the company’s first-of-its-kind internal dashboard, to show how you contributed to your previous employer and/or transformed outcomes. This kind of information helps the interviewer better understand your value.
Take Action: Prepare talking points for your interview. Identify the three key ideas you want to communicate about yourself and the three reasons you are passionate about the role and company you are interviewing for.
Tip: Practice interviewing (aloud!). Find friends or—even better—people who do not know you well to conduct a mock interview with you. Record and review your practice sessions so you can learn from the moments when you appear most (and least) confident.
