I Sucked...
Recently, I had an interview with Wharton West. The Executive Wharton MBA program suggests that everyone applying should go through the an interview. The good part of this process is that you don't even have to apply formally and could go ahead a schedule an interview - which is exactly what I did.
The interview started off on a fairly positive note for the first couple of minutes and then it turned south. Usually, I have never really problems with interviews..But this time it was different. Since this is an executive MBA program, Wharton requires a formal endorsement from the employer. In my company, the policy for education support is as follows- once you get admitted, you submit a proposal, and a committee will grant the money and time, only time or time and partial money.
As I tried to explain this to my interviewer, somehow the interviewer got the impression that my company was "not" wholeheartedly supporting my MBA endeavors. I personally do not think it is true because my manager is very straightforward person and would not have cared to write even one recommendation letter if she did not fully support my endeavors.
In any case, I learnt some important lessons.
- Starting a interview on a bad note means that you have to explicitly and conciously try and put a more positive spin on the rest of the interview
- I did a stupid thing by bringing up the topic of layoffs. Although I was not the one to be laid off, I felt pretty bad that about 90% of my team was affected and I phrased that as a challenge in building and working with teams.
- Not to enter the interview with any preconceived ideas. I read the accepted.com interviews and based on my interview with Duke, I felt that typical behavioral questions would be asked during the interview. But instead, I ended up on answering how my MBA pursuits matched with my organizations objectives.
When I left the room, I did not get a good feeling about the interview. My answers were not crisp and I did not feel that the interviewer got to see why I would be a valuable attain to their program.
Moral of the story.. I sucked ..but I learned and on the positive note, this was not the Haas interview, which is really my dream school.
The interview started off on a fairly positive note for the first couple of minutes and then it turned south. Usually, I have never really problems with interviews..But this time it was different. Since this is an executive MBA program, Wharton requires a formal endorsement from the employer. In my company, the policy for education support is as follows- once you get admitted, you submit a proposal, and a committee will grant the money and time, only time or time and partial money.
As I tried to explain this to my interviewer, somehow the interviewer got the impression that my company was "not" wholeheartedly supporting my MBA endeavors. I personally do not think it is true because my manager is very straightforward person and would not have cared to write even one recommendation letter if she did not fully support my endeavors.
In any case, I learnt some important lessons.
- Starting a interview on a bad note means that you have to explicitly and conciously try and put a more positive spin on the rest of the interview
- I did a stupid thing by bringing up the topic of layoffs. Although I was not the one to be laid off, I felt pretty bad that about 90% of my team was affected and I phrased that as a challenge in building and working with teams.
- Not to enter the interview with any preconceived ideas. I read the accepted.com interviews and based on my interview with Duke, I felt that typical behavioral questions would be asked during the interview. But instead, I ended up on answering how my MBA pursuits matched with my organizations objectives.
When I left the room, I did not get a good feeling about the interview. My answers were not crisp and I did not feel that the interviewer got to see why I would be a valuable attain to their program.
Moral of the story.. I sucked ..but I learned and on the positive note, this was not the Haas interview, which is really my dream school.
posted by FooBarMe at
10:18 AM
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