HBS Shanghai Hub Interview with Palson 03/05/2007 9:00am—9:40am: Overall impression: It was so conversational....much easier than I expected...I got so relaxed that during the interview I totally forgot this is an HBS INTERVIEW so I ran into my bad habit to ramble on topics...I think this is the only thing i did wrong...very wrong... Palson is nice, all the way keep smiling, encouraging with her friendly eyes to let me continue and continue and continue...(my godness....我最受不了温柔一刀了...)...so i continued and continued and continued...hahahaha.... The good thing is that I clearly passed on my passion --- which is exactly the real me---over to her...although she didn't ask me any leadership questions, my answers (maybe childish dreams) depicted my role as a pioneer in anything i am gonna to handle... I arrived 5 mins ahead of time...she was still preparing...so asked me to wait outside for some mins...there was no sign anywhere indicating how you could find the interview place...(bad management, or just a small test to the interviewee???) Then I was called in, she started by applogizing to get me there during holiday...(i was confused...holiday???) Then she continued to talk about the fireworks she saw last night. Thus I realized she was talking about the lantern festival, so i talked about how we celebrate it in China as the last day of Lunar New Year...blah blah....so the interview started in a very conversational way... Later, she talked about the interview process...she would write a report to include in my application package, then the adcom will decide my "fate" based on overall view of the package...
1. Tell me something about yourself, your education, work .... I thought I had all the education info, extra-curricular, and work in my essays and resume...why i need to bother to repeat it again??? So i took a different angle to talk about the same thing....education, why that school and major, how i chose my self-learning, extra...what i learnt...For work, i focused on why i chose that company, how I transfer to another function, what's the responsibility change after promotion...so almost all new info I hvn't mentioned in any paper applications....i think she's interested...so she asked no question, no follow up, but kept me going for at least 5 min.....(ah...how gossip i am...first time to find out this quality...) 2. What is a working day in office like....typical day....----i did this one the worst....coz previously i saw this question somewhere and wanted to prepare, yet i did nothing....so rambled a lot...try to summarize my day, but it's hard. 3. What do u think are the challenges for u to achieve ur goal?---actually i prepared this one well before hand, but...on spot my mind circuit broke...and i came up with something new~!!! To explain this "new" challenge, I hv to use lots of explanation and example...which made me again ramble a bit... 4. What makes u sucessful? 5. What makes u unique? 6. What challenge you may face in HBS?
7. What's ur weakness / How u improved it? 8. What' the most constructive comment you got from ur mentor? how do u think? 9. What may be a misconception of u for people who first meet u? 10. Why u need an MBA? 11. What motivates u? 12. How did u reasearch about this interview? 13. What question u expected me to ask? 14. Do u hv any question for me? ----i immediately said "NO"....haha..i just thought i had rambled enough....
I thought about this interview these days. I think I hv recalled most of the questions. Not sure whether i forgot something.
The ending part was the most interesting....She said with a big smile..." So that's it! We've done!" I appeared surprised and said," wow...it's much relaxed than i expected..." She said,"So how did u think it will be??" I replied," You know there is one quote i believe in "Luck favors the prepared mind!" --So i was actually prepared to take whatever tough ur question is..." She smiled and said she believed in the same thing...then she said she should put on a sign outside.... I said," Do you want me to help? I can arrange it for you with the hotel." She declined...but I think she liked my pro-activeness...
The whole interview is somehow weird for me....coz nothing about leadership, team work, failure....nothing about my essays, nothing about extra-curricular activies that I put a tons of them on my package...no tough follow up...no "give me an example" follow up... She took very few notes...Don't know .....weird.... | 
