sisi100

INSEAD Interview experience(story)

I just finished the two interviews required by the school. Here i'm sharing my story, not just interviews.

Both of the interviewers are super busy and i struggled 3 weeks to finally set up the time slots. Both of them are based in a city about 1.5 hours flight away. I was sopposed to be there on Monday for the appointment at 4pm, but i sat on the plane like a idiot for 3 hours and then off-loaded because the flight was cancelled. The air company said there was something wrong with the engine!!! What a joke!!!! I had to make a hundred phone calls to re-organize the whole thing.

Anyway, the next day my first interviewer, Paul, interviewed me in a 5-star hotel by a stunning beach. Pual graduated from INSEAD in 1995 and was a banker with Barkley(UK) and then joined Mckinsey after INSEAD. Now he is Principal (means senior Partner?) of Mckinsey. Paul is nice and was kind enough to buy me a skinny flat white, which i didn't have chance to touch at all. The interview last approx. 30 minutes and there is not much to say but just standard questions such as Why MBA, why INSEAD and why this career goal. Anyway it's not bad.

I said goodbye and checked in a backpackers' in the city central cause i had another interview scheduled the morning next day. Here comes the drama.

I was in deep sleep at 5am in the lower bed. All of a sudden, it rained!!!! You know what? The British guy living in the upper bed peed!!!!!!!!!! He was drunk and I couldn't wake him up. Jesus Christ!! I rushed into the bathroom to have a shower and had to ask for another room. The receiptionist promised to kick him out, hahaha

OK, let's get back to the interview thing.

Peter, my second interviewer, was with Bain before and after INSEAD (1995 as well, I guess). And now he is a Director in a prestigious PE. His last title in Bain was Partner or something even higher. BTW, the office of that PE is the most luxurious office that i have ever seen (British style with super harbor view). This time the interview went very well (thanks to the British guy). I was asked to tell the story of myself. It last about 45 minutes and I got absolutely positive feedback. Actually, it was so positive that not only he imply to recommend me to INSEAD, but also he promised to write a letter recommending Bain to keep in touch with me, as my career goal after MBA is management consultant as well. Actually, I got the copy of this letter, in which he forward my resume to his former workmates in Bain, when i was killing time in the airport.

Again, there was a thunder storm that kept me in the airport for another 2 hours.

All in all, terrible journeys but good interviews.

By nnm, 28-Feb-2007

sisi100

INSEAD interview experience: two rounds

I applied INSEAD 2007 Sep intake and just finished 2 interviews. Share with the rest as what I can still remember.

The first interview was with a consultant of a management consulting firm. she was quite busy and I was waiting in her office for over 20 minutes since she had a urgent discussion. The alumni was quite kind and friendly and she apologized for making me keep waiting. To me, it is a good chance to get familiar with the environment.

Questions are pretty simple and standard, such as:

tell me something about your education, career and your current work
why MBA and why INSEAD
How do you work with people from different culture and background
what are the social groups you have been involved?
How well have you adapt to the foriegn environment? (i am abroad)
any questions for her
we talked about her job and her own experience in INSEAD, the tough program (8am to 9pm course work) etc. and i also asked for feedback, according to her, my profile is pretty ok, except that I have fewer working experience (3 years), but it should not be a problem because of my achievement within the 3 years.

The 2nd interview was with a IB associate, he was pretty serious and didnt talk much about things outside of MBA. It lasted for 45 minutes (1st one lasted around 1 hour) and he asked fewer questions, such as:

brief introduction of my education and career
why INSEAD?
He placed a lot of weight to dicuss on this topic. It is understandable, INSEAD is kind of special compare to other schools
my career goals
how can I compete with consultants from other firms when 4.1 I apply for INSEAD? 4.2 I graduate from INSEAD and look for consulting jobs?
why you think your personality fit INSEAD?
How can you make people be interested in you? in terms of experience, background and personality
any questions for him? (as i feel the interview is a bit short, so I asked a few questions and try to reflect more about myself during those Q&As)
For these 2 interviews, I felt the personalities of the alumnus are quire different and quite consistant with INSEAD's style: diversity, direct, short and focused. quite different from interviews from the US schools as I expereinced. They are indeed busy and excellent. both of them gave me 3 days to stand by for the interview and they called me in the morning to have the interview in the evening. I would say it is really difficult to prepare and actually no need to prepare anything. Just think about 1 question" Who am I".

Good luck to everyone

sisi100

1st and 2nd interviews / Alumni / Off-campus (Published May 13th, 2010)

First Interview: I had interview with a Bain partner in Shanghai. The interview was quite standard. He asked a lot of questions about why INSEAD, why MBA, long term career goal, short term career goal, why go to France, how would colleagues describe you, what is your weakness... What is the cultural difference between China and France… And I have taken some chances to ask back on some of his questions. Time was very short, I hadn’t had chance to ask a lot of questions.

Basically the interviewer is formal. I had won some smiles on his part when talking about his travelling in China. He had given some insights on the private equity market in China.

Second Interview: I interviewed with a Chinese alumni who has 10 years of experience in sales and marketing before joining INSEAD. And he is now an entrepreneur in the energy-saving space. Basically he asked about standard questions, introduction of me, my personal goals and professional goals. How to reach the goals… etc. He questioned about my leadership capabilities because I don’t have a title of manager. He asked about leadership qualities demonstrated in non-leadership positions. Then we talked in Chinese about the current state of China. Why he created the company in energy space. I asked to keep in touch. He said we keep in touch no matter what the result of INSEAD.

sisi100

Round 2 / September 2010 intake / 1st and 2nd interviews / Alumni / Off-campus (Published March 5th, 2010)

I received the interview notification on the final night of the deadline (INSEAD is notorious) for sending out bulk of the notifications on the final day (or night depending on your location, i was in US). The MBA Admissions Coordinator, who was a really nice and thoughtful lady helped me setup the interview. I received contacts of two alumnus both of whom were working / had worked in the field I was interested in (Alternative Energy / Entrepreneurship). Here I must mention that INSEAD alumni is very impressive and very diverse. One of the assigned interviewer did Law from Stanford after completing his MBA from INSEAD and is not a partner in a major law firm. The other is pursioung his passion for environment and pursuing a degree from YALE. I have to reschedule one of the interviews to India, due to a family emergency and the Ad Com was very supportive and helpful in rescheduling the interview to India.

Well without any further ado, I will get into details of the interview. First some helpful tips:

Prepared to be grilled. Unlike other schools INSEAD choses alumni who have deep experience in your chosen area. Thats why they take upto 10 days to find the right alumni. Therefore its important that you do your homework.
Be global and local at the same time. Know the minutest details and be ready to talk about business problems at a global scale.
Relax and be ready for a conversational interview - you get to drive the discussion as much as the interviewer, but do not overreach
Read your application and resume a 100 times. Read all you can about your chosen area of study and be ready to defend why that area of study.
INSEAD alumni are busy ppl. Expect time delays in email response / difficulties in getting time on their calendars.
Now to the questions:

Why MBA? Why second MBA (I already had an MBA from a school in India)
Walk me through your resume? Why did I join my current company? Why US, SIngapore and India?
Why entrepreneurship - do you think INSEAD will make an entrepreneur out of you? (Really grilled me here, because as we all know 10 months donot maketh an entrepreneur - I defended by saying that I need alumni network, mindset and skills in all sorts of areas - that I am more likely to succeed with an MBA from an international school like INSEAD than not doing an MBA)
Detailed questions on energy - alternate enrergy, my proposed venture - its business model, how to raise capital, whats the market segment I am looking at, how much energy, what kind of source for energy (basically my interviewer was totally into it)
Questions about my family? Is my wife ready to move from US to France? (I talked about how we love to travel and have travelled to all over the world and moving to France will be an excellent opportunity. The alumnus also talked about his family, which I thought was nice to break the ice and make me conformable when the interview got a little too hot.)
General conversation about healthcare, India, US, differences (Here I talked about my international experiences - which I think is a big draw for INSEAD)
Any questions (I asked about his career progression after INSEAD, the INSEAD difference what did he gain from INSEAD)
I shamelessly asked for feedback on the interview !!! At first the alumnus was diplomatic and said there is no good or bad interview but he finally said that he was very hopeful for me.
Although I have extracted questions here, I must mention that the entire interview was very conversational. We were sharing opinions about alternate energy, socialing vs capitalism, US vs Europe vs Asia.

The other interview was very casual and lasted for just 5 minutes. The interviewer told as me:

Walk me through the resume
Why INSEAD? (Why not some other school like MIT or Kennedy School if I want to work in Alternate Energy) - I responded by saying that Energy is not a technology but an economic problem.
The interviewer asked about my background - extra curricular.
Within 5 minutes she said that she would definitely recommend me.
So the good cop bad cope theory for INSEAD still holds true in 2010.

Status: Accepted.

sisi100

Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 1st interview / Off-campus (Published July 28th, 2009)

The interview took place in the office. I had sent the interviewer my entire application (it is possible to send just the first 6 pages, but I wasn't able to split the pdf file) to review beforehand. The interview was organised via email and telephone.

I would advise researching your interviewer if possible (via sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook etc.) as it is quite rare that no information can be found. Also, it seems as though INSEAD tries to pair you with interviewers from a similar background to your chosen post-MBA path (although it may just be that a high number of consultants attend the school). This interviewer had spent many years working in consulting before moving to industry. I was quite fortunate as his industry and my current profession are tangentially linked so we were able to establish good rapport pretty early in the interview.

The interview itself was quite relaxed, I was very nervous but he put me at ease very quickly. The questions covered the usual suspects (why MBA, why INSEAD, etc.) and there was a fair bit of probing. For example, in a question about your post-MBA goals it's pretty important to be able to highlight why you have those goals, and link them to how INSEAD is going to help you achieve them. The interviewer was very comfortable about probing me for further detail so it's important to be well prepared.

The interviewer's style was very conversational and I was pretty relaxed, which is great, but also potentially a pitfall as you may not be as sharp. Having said that, I felt confident in my preparation and my answers and there was nothing out of left-field. I was reassured by his responses to my answers, which were along the lines of: "yes that makes sense" and "I agree with your logic". The interviewer also asked me where else I had applied (as well as how I had progressed) and I was fortunate enough to be in a position to let him know that I had already been accepted by one school, waitlisted by another and interviewing for 2 others. I think this also helped him decide how valuable I was as an applicant.

Towards the end of the interview, I had the opportunity to ask questions. Questions to the interviewer can be tricky, and I chose to focus on his experience of the school, linking it in with my own research. I was also able to highlight the fact that I was visiting the Singapore campus the week after my interview and I think this was met with favourably.

The interview lasted about 1.5hrs and I left feeling confident that I had performed well (and relatively comfortable that he would recommend me). I sent a follow-up email to thank him for the interview and he responded that he would be happy to answer any further questions. I received the admission decision a couple of weeks later (admitted) and let him know, whereupon he sent me a congratulatory email.

sisi100

Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 2nd interview / Off-campus (Published July 28th, 2009)

This interview took place in a coffee shop towards the end of the day, and was the same day as my first interview. I had deliberately scheduled both interviews as late as possible during the interview period to maximise my preparation time. (I was fortunate that there was an information session for my city during the period so I could use it as a reason to postpone the interviews, as otherwise both interviewers would have been happy to interview me with only a few days notice.)

I felt the first interview went very well and felt confident I would perform in the second interview. My interviewer arrived early (about the same time I did). The first question he asked me was: "Why INSEAD." My response was: "Many reasons…" and he interrupted to ask: "Yeah, like what?". The tone of the interview was much more abrupt and direct than the first interview. Again, this interviewer used to work in consulting (my post-MBA goal). When we discussed my post-MBA goals in detail (incl. geographical region), he floored me by insisting that the companies I was interested in working for had no offices/presence in the regions I wanted to work in. While I knew this to be false (having done my research), I did concede that perhaps I may have been mistaken. However, after my interview, I sent him an email thanking him for his time, as well as pointing out which specific offices existed in my preferred region for work.

This interviewer asked me only a handful of questions - Why INSEAD, which campus and why, describe a time you failed, post-MBA goals. He then asked me to ask him questions, which surprised me because he had asked me so few. I was particularly concerned as he didn't allow me to put forward a lot of the material I had prepared to standard questions and I was worried he was the type to make up his mind in 10min whether I was a good candidate or not. However, I spent 40min probing him with questions (although I could have handled it better in hindsight by linking it with some of my answers).

The interview went for just over an hour. The experience was incredibly draining as I felt he was very combative - the opposite of what I have read about on various forums. I was convinced that I had performed poorly, although after the admission decision (admitted), he gave me feedback that I had managed fine and he was being deliberately difficult. It was also interesting that I felt very confident going into this interview, while he thought I appeared extremely nervous - probably as a result of how aggressive his questioning was. I am very pleased with the result, but believe that he could have come to the same decision without being so aggressive.

sisi100

Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 2nd interview / Off-Campus / Alumni (Published June 29th, 2009)

The interview took place at the alumnus’ office in Paris. We had an appointment in the morning and I arrived slightly ahead of schedule. To arrange this appointment, we had exchanged emails and finally phone calls. The interview started on time.

I had done my research on the WEB and find out that he was a partner at a big consultancy firm, responsible for the practice on energy sector. I therefore had prepared myself intensively, meeting with friends who were working in this sector to polish my knowhow on this topic, since I had mentioned in my application form that I wanted to move to this sector after graduation. Interestingly enough, he didn’t want me to send him my essays, saying this was private information and that he would only look at the profile and CV part. As a result, the interview was very much like a job interview.

Some of the interview questions are listed below (this part in English): - Walk me through your resume - Why an MBA - Why now - Why INSEAD

This lasted for about half an hour and then it was my turn to ask questions. This second part was conducted in French. As for interview 1, I had come with my printed list of questions and this was a good basis for further discussion. We discussed about various topics such as life at INSEAD, his job, the energy sector and this was the opportunity to use what I had learnt: I could pitch the Stern report about climate change, the Mc Kinsey report about energy productivity and some other points.

Overall the interview lasted for about 1,5 hours and at the end, I decided to wrap-up as I had the feeling it could last even longer but I didn’t want to take too much of his time. It seemed for him the right time to break as well as he told me that, as I might have felt, he would recommend me.

As for interview 1, I shared the decision with him and he also replied quickly with very kind words.

sisi100

Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 1st interview / Off-Campus / Alumni (Published June 29th, 2009)

The interview took place in a Parisian “Café” with an alumnus. The date and place were agreed via email exchanges. Both of us were right on time and we sat at a quiet table. She apparently had read my complete application form, including my essays, which I had decided to send to her. Indeed, I was convinced my essays were strong and since she was willing to have them (although you are not obliged as per INSEAD’s intructions) this could only help strengthen her perception of the quality of my application. The interview, from beginning to end, was conducted in French. It was a quite formal interview and I at least managed to order her a coffee.

Some of the interview questions are listed below. What I can remember is that most of the questions were rather personal and we almost didn’t cover my career or current job. - Speak about yourself, what has been your life so far? - Why an MBA now, - Why INSEAD, - In your essays, you mention you’re passionate about everything you do, describe some of those passions and what drives you - You mentioned an interest for the Energy sector and your motivation to tackle climate change. What do you do in your day to day life to address climate change? Are you engaged in any not-for-profit organisation? - You work in the cellular telecommunication systems. How, as a father, are you dealing with the health hazards coming from radio emissions? - You are a musician; tell me about you and music. How long have you attended lessons, what level have you reached? Do you still play?

This lasted for about an hour. Then she told me she had covered all her questions and was open to answer any of my questions. I had prepared and printed a fair list of questions, since I wanted to demonstrate my motivation to join this MBA and to show I had done my homework. I could engage discussion on some of the famous faculty members such as Chan Kim. I could also speak about business or political leaders that had come on the campus. We spent some time on the accommodation aspects where she described me all the possible options and strategies for INSEAD students in Fontainebleau. I felt this part was more informal and we were both more relaxed. I was much more at ease than during the first part during which I had to answer many unexpected questions for which I had no prepared answers.

But she seemed pleased and at the end she concluded she would support my application 100%. The interview had last for about 2 hours.

Later, when I shared with her the news that I was admitted, she sent a very nice email, saying she was really happy for me. I found the message really sincere.

sisi100

Round 1 / January 2010 Intake / 2nd Interview/ Off-Campus / Alumni / First shared by OutOfMyJeans (Published June 16th, 2009)

My 2nd interview was 2 days after my first one, which was incidentally on a Wednesday. This didn’t really leave me with too much time to ruminate over my bizarre 1st interview. I decided not to prepare for this one and instead go in with a relaxed attitude.

The 2nd interview was at a coffee joint at 10 AM. I had taken a half-day leave from office that day. My interviewer this time was the Marketing Director of a well-known technology company.

He arrived in a t-shirt and jeans (this is why I said suits are overkill) and his demeanor in general was extremely easy-going. For lack of a better word, I’m going to call his approach soothing. He was extremely well-spoken, polite and immediately put me at ease. We started off with my background and he asked questions whenever appropriate and had some very nice comments about my varied non-professional experience. We then spoke about my professional experience and my reasons for changing jobs and the kind of responsibilities I handle.

He then had some situational questions for me. I list them here for everyone’s consumption:

When you’re in a gathering, what attracts your attention first?
What makes you extremely angry/ passionate?
What is your style of negotiation?
How do you deal with a person who’s determined not to listen to you even though he/ she knows you are right?
How do you deal with a boss who is not as smart as you?
Additionally, he also had the usual INSEAD questions of why now, why MBA and why INSEAD. He was particularly pleased with me when I told him that one of my biggest motivations in joining INSEAD was to actually experience different viewpoints because I believe that different cultures breed different thought processes.

We spoke for nearly an hour-and-half and then he concluded the interview.

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