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Thanks to its proximity to the Tech Coast, the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California (UC), Irvine, offers significant opportunities for students with an eye toward innovative business. Indeed, an emphasis on innovation and business pioneering is built directly into what Merage calls its “innovative curriculum,” supplementing conventional business disciplines with such areas as strategic innovation, information technology, analytic decision making, and collaborative execution. The school recently revamped its curriculum to “create unparalleled learning experiences with a single goal: preparing [the students] to propel [their] career[s] and lead [their] organization to success in our digitally driven world,” as the website describes. The updates include a new concentration in Analytics in Digital Leadership and a STEM designation for the entire program.

In addition, several of Merage’s special course offerings and programs showcase the school’s commitment to putting students in contact with the rapidly shifting face of business. The “EDGE” course, for example, offers the opportunity to gain cutting-edge insight into the relationship between business trends, globalization, and technology. Through the school’s practicum Consulting Projects, students gain hands-on experience with current business practices by working directly with locally based global companies over a ten-week period. Merage students can also participate each year in the university-wide New Venture Competition, whose winners collectively claim up to $100K in funding for their proposed start-up ventures.

At the UC Davis Graduate School of Management—under the same university umbrella but approximately an eight-hour drive from the Merage School of Business—the full-time MBA program focuses on preparing students to become innovative leaders. Leadership is woven into the curriculum in the form of core courses, a ten-week management capstone course, and the Collaborative Leadership Program, which offers first-year students leadership training via workshops, assessment exercises, a mentorship program, a Personal Leadership Development Plan, and the option of applying to the Advanced Collaborative Leadership Program in the second year.

Click here to read Fixing Common Interviewing Mistakes, Part 1: Follow the “Answer First” Model and click here to read Part 2: Be Confident.

Even as many employees return to the workplace, companies continue to engage with job candidates via video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Teams. This technology has made managing interview logistics easier for some firms.

To help you successfully stand out in video interviews (or in networking conversations), we offer these easy-to-follow tips:

• Pay Attention to Your Setting: Find a quiet, private, well-lit area that is free from potential interruptions or distractions. Position your camera so that you have a neutral background.
• Test Your Technology in Advance: Set up and test the software platform prior to the interview start time. Put your phone away; do not let it distract you during the interview.
• Wear Appropriate Attire: Dress as you would for an in-person interview, but consider selecting softer colors rather than bright ones, and avoid busy patterns. If you wear glasses, adjust the lighting in the room to reduce glare from the lenses.
• Pay Attention to Your Body Language: Look at the camera when you are speaking, and avoid the instinct to look directly at your interviewer. Do not use notes during the conversation; a hiring manager can easily tell when you are reading rather than speaking naturally.
• Polish Your Storytelling: Prepare for the standard questions that are typically asked during in-person interviews. Know your value proposition and connect it to the needs of the company and role.
• Practice: You want to demonstrate confident body language and a sense of comfort on camera. Your goal is to make the interviewer feel as though you are in the same room with them. Do a trial run by scheduling a mock video interview with an mbaMission Career Coach or with one of your friends.

This is the bottom line: Prepare and behave exactly the same as you would for an in-person interview. You want to be professional but also let your personality shine through.

You can find more interview preparation guidance in these other career coaching blog posts: Tell Me About Yourself, Avoiding Interviewing Pitfalls, and Answering the Dreaded “Failure” Question.

Click here to read Fixing Common Interviewing Mistakes, Part 1: Follow the “Answer First” Model.

Many MBA students tend to get in their own way when interviewing. Although they prepare structured stories to share with their interviewer, they do not end up telling those stories with confidence or energy. Your word choice, tone, and body language are critical for success in your interview.

A lack of confidence manifests itself in an inability to

• communicate your experiences as relevant for the job,
• build a connection with the interviewer, and
• project authority and credibility.

This makes the interviewer less confident about your ability to do the job. To improve your performance, we encourage you to 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 lacked confidence. Can you identify any similarities or common threads between these two types of situations? Uncovering what makes you feel nervous allows you to find remedies for it. Recognize that different tactics work for different candidates, but 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. Read workplace psychologist Adam Grant’s article about overcoming his fear of public speaking for many useful tips. Listen to upbeat music. Repeat positive mantras.

Research: Analyze the target job description and talk with current employees at the firm to identify the most important competencies for the role. Identify details in each of your stories that correspond with those competencies, and focus on numbers that can prove the scope, complexity, and impact of your work.

Tip: Sell your accomplishments. You are expected to highlight specifics about how you helped your previous employers or transformed outcomes for an organization; this information helps the interviewer understand your value.

Take Action: Prepare talking points for your interview. Identify the three or four key ideas you want to communicate about yourself and the three or four reasons you are passionate about the role and company you are interviewing for. Aim to connect with the interviewer, not impress them. Take back some power—you need to like the interviewer (and their company/the target role) just as much as they need to like you!

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, looking to learn from the moments when you appear most (or least) confident.

Finally, remember that the firm selected you for an interview, so the interviewer is eager to hear how you can help the organization.

To learn other strategies for improving your interview performance, schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation with an mbaMission Career Coach.

What the GMAT Really Tests

With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense.

The GMAT is not a math test. Nor is it a grammar test. Sure, you have to know something (well, a lot of things!) about these topics to get a good score, but this exam is really testing your executive reasoning skills.

The term might be unfamiliar, but you already have—and use—these skills every day. Consider the following:

You arrive at work in the morning and think about all the things you could do that day. You cannot get it all done, so which things will have to wait until this afternoon or tomorrow or next week? Which one thing should you start working on first?

You have a choice between working on Project X or Project Y. Project Y will result in about 5% more revenue to the company, but Project Y will also take 50% longer. Which do you do?

None of those decisions are easy ones (and many would likely require more information than I gave in the little scenario). This complex decision making is exactly what a good executive needs to be able to do well—and this is what the test writers and business schools actually care about.

How does that help me take the test?

Great decision makers have both expertise and experience: they have thought about how to make various kinds of decisions, and they have actually practiced and refined these decision-making processes. While the clock is ticking, they do not hesitate to make a decision and move forward, knowing that they are going to be leaving some opportunities behind.

If you know how the GMAT works and you know what kinds of trade-offs to think about when deciding how to spend your time, then you can learn how to make the best decisions to maximize your score.

Okay, how does the GMAT work?

Glad you asked. I talk to students nearly every day who tell me that they just cannot give up on a question, or they figure that, if they “know” they can get something right, they might as well take the time to get it right, even when that means running out of time later on.

(Note: I put “know” in question marks there because… well, you do not really know. In fact, the longer we spend, the more likely we are to get stuff wrong.)

So here is what you need to do: you need to grow up.

I am not saying, “Oh, grow up!” in a harsh way. I am saying that you need to graduate from school. The way that we were trained to do things in school is often not the way things work in the real world. You already know this—you learned it when you got out into the working world.

In school, you are supposed to do what the professors assign. At work, you are supposed to think for yourself.

So get yourself out of school. Graduate to the real world. Approach the GMAT as a test of your business ability and decision-making skills.

Graduation day

If you can graduate to the business mindset, you will have a much better shot at hitting your goal score. If you stick with the “school” mindset, then you are almost certainly not going to get the score you want.

So first, keep reminding yourself that the GMAT is a decision-making test, not an academic test. React accordingly.

Next, the two articles “In It to Win It” and “But I Studied This—I Should Know How to Do It!” will also help you make this mental switch.

Follow those up by educating yourself on the subject of time management. Great businesspeople know how to manage their time and make trade-off decisions; great GMAT test takers have this same skill.

Finally, remember that your ability to get better hinges on your ability to analyze your own thought processes and the test questions themselves. Your goal is not academic. Your goal is to learn how to think.

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we profile George Geis from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

George Geis has been voted Outstanding Teacher of the Year five times while at UCLA Anderson, most recently in 2012. In the past, Geis has served as the associate dean and faculty director of the Anderson Executive MBA program as well as faculty director of the school’s Mergers and Acquisitions Executive Program. Geis has also maintained a mergers and acquisitions blog and a biotech corporate development blog.

One alumnus described Geis to mbaMission as an experienced investor and a funny and credible guy. The graduate added that he had very much enjoyed the guest speakers Geis brought to class, as well as the strategic analysis of the board game industry, covered in a case discussion about the game Trivial Pursuit.

For more information about the UCLA Anderson School of Management and 16 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.