You’ve reached the next step in your MBA success story.

Thanks to your strong MBA CV, compelling essays, competitive test scores and impressive professional achievements, what comes next is one of the most meaningful and exciting opportunities yet. 

What comes next, of course, is the MBA interview, a critical step for the business school to assess your fit and qualification for their program. For you, it’s an opportunity to tell your story, provide greater context to your application and gain additional insights about the program.

This is your chance to make an impression.

However, not everyone who makes it to interview ends up earning a spot at their top choice program. That is because the MBA interview is full of numerous opportunities to either shine or flop, and each of these moments plays a critical role in determining the impression you give the admissions committee or alumni interviewer. 

 

1. MBA consultants can help you position your answers effectively

When answering uncomfortable questions, there’s a technique you can use to overcome objections or concerns: positioning, your way to truthfully portray a situation.

Imagine two answers when a candidate is asked about why they’re re-applying to Harvard:

“Last year, I was rejected by Harvard because they thought I didn’t have leadership experience and they had concerns about my GMAT because it was pretty low. So, I’m re-applying this year and hoping to get in!”

Or, try this approach:

“Last year, I had the opportunity to apply to HBS, however, the committee gave me valuable feedback, preferring more leadership experience and a higher GMAT score. Taking this to heart, I enrolled in two GMAT courses, studying during nights and weekends. At Goldman Sachs, I founded a diversity club that I now lead and, after speaking with my director about my leadership path, I’ve mentored two interns who were hired as Analysts last week. I am grateful because Harvard’s feedback allowed me to reapply this year with more leadership experience and a 750 GMAT score.”

Not only is the first answer somewhat dismissive of Harvard’s evaluation, it’s also quite negative. It doesn’t show any effort put forth in addressing Harvard’s concerns from last year.

The second answer is positive and embraces the feedback as a vehicle for growth. The candidate uses their answer as a platform to show just how much they’ve accomplished since last year.

Importantly, the candidate was 100% truthful and honest in their answer.

No matter the question you’re answering, consider how it sounds from the perspective of the interviewer. Does it paint you as a proactive, positive professional who has accomplished much—and is on their way to accomplishing even more—while remaining authentic?

Ask yourself: what does the interviewer’s question reveal about their motivation or curiosity?

This can sometimes be difficult to figure out on your own, however. For that reason, bringing in an MBA consultant to assist you in determining how to position your answers can be a key step in translating the information from your personal brand and application form to winning interview answers.

Our interview prep and practice service focuses on helping you determine what to highlight in your interview depending on the program while using appropriate, impact-driven language without being artificial, or worse, robotic. 

This is the approach we have used to help applicants from countless industries on 6 continents position their unique stories to achieve an offer from their top choice programs. Let us put our extensive know-how and personalized approach to work for the success of your MBA application. 

 

2. MBA consultants can help you use storytelling to enrich your answers 

If you want to answer MBA interview questions successfully, it comes down to a vital tactic: storytelling.

While you might think of storytelling as something reserved for kids at bedtime, science has shown that storytelling is a powerful mechanism for creating understanding, empathy and impact. 

With storytelling in mind, take a look at how these answers differ when an MBA candidate was asked about their greatest success:

“I had my greatest success last June while working on a turnaround for a pharmaceutical company in Argentina where the company might’ve closed. Instead, we saved them $20M and nobody lost their job. I was an associate working with four people but I was given the lead role, which was impressive for an associate. It was important to help this company because it would have devastated the local community, so it’s my biggest success yet.”

It does tell what happened, right? But let’s try storytelling instead:

“When our team joined the project, our client’s 4,000 employees were nervously waiting to find out whether the company would close that week—or the next week. We were tasked with cutting expenses while retaining as many employees as possible, so I proposed using lean methodology to identify savings opportunities, leading us to renegotiate credit terms and moving non-essential employees to contract roles. Since then, the company has grown by 4% and, on the day of the company’s celebratory picnic, I was invited to eat alongside the company’s employees and their families, cementing this experience as my greatest success yet.”

Do you see the difference? 

The first answer tells us what happened and even provides detail, but the second answer makes us feel the weight of the situation. We understand the task at hand. We grasp the action taking place and, ultimately, we see the result.

This storytelling approach, the STAR method, is a simple, foolproof tool that you can employ when answering interview questions.

It looks like this:

• Situation: What scenario did you encounter? This builds the context for your story.
• Task: What was your goal or instruction? This helps prove your success later.
• Action: How did you address the task through your actions? This shows how you handled the situation.
• Result: What happened in the end? This shows your success, especially when you use stats or short anecdotes (like the $20M in savings or company picnic).

Notice one other detail: the more powerful story is told chronologically or in the order it happened. It’s important to tell the story as it happened to prevent revealing the result too early or leaving the reader unclear about the narrative.

However, turning each story into an appropriate narrative requires considering issues like consistency with your personal brand, hitting the perfect balance between concision and detail, and filtering information to ensure all aspects of your story “point” in the right direction. 

Though some questions are definitely tougher than others, translating each of your experiences into a polished story for your interviews can be challenging. That’s why our interview preparation services are designed to provide you with the one-on-one training you need to build the winning database of stories for your MBA interview. 

With our uniquely personalized approach, we both coach you during the answer development process and put your skills to the test during rigorous mock interviews. Throughout it all, you can rest assured you’ll receive personalized feedback to turn your best moments into stories that connect with the admissions committee and better sell your profile. 

 

3. MBA consultants can help you practice 

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of helping a client, Felipe, put the finishing touches on his MBA admissions essays. A stellar candidate in all regards, those essays secured him interviews at an impressive set of elite programs: Harvard, Wharton, Booth, Columbia, Kellogg. In short, all the schools on his list called him to interview! 

Felipe was overjoyed when he called me with the news but was surprised that the first words out of my mouth (after “Congratulations!” of course) were, “Well it sounds like we have a lot of practicing ahead of us.”

Though Felipe knew the statistics — at most elite MBAs, only around 50% of candidates called to interview are actually admitted — he felt he’d already overcome the toughest hurdle and could relax a bit. “I’m really good with people,” he said, “so I’m just going to go in there and be myself.” 

In the end, Felipe got 5 dings and ended up having to reapply the following year. 

Practice is incredibly important. Especially when it comes to public speaking and highly-competitive selective processes. 

That’s why, even though he’s considered one of the greatest public speakers alive today, Barack Obama always diligently practiced his speeches in advance.  

Having a natural gift for public speaking or an outstanding profile simply isn’t enough. You must be prepared to ace your interview from start to finish, avoiding errors, pivoting gracefully, and acing every moment of your interview. 

Though you might not be practicing, your competitors are. After all, the only difference between Usain Bolt winning gold in the 100m men’s sprint at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Richard Thompson’s silver medal performance was 2 milliseconds. 

When you’re competing at such an elite level (and top MBA programs are about as elite as it gets), practice is the only way to get the edge you need. 

Working with highly-trained professionals, like our team of interview experts, can also be an excellent step to include in your interview process. 

• Maybe you don’t know where to start preparing.  
• Maybe you ramble on and lose your focus while answering. 
• Maybe you’re concerned about making errors, discussing your strengths, or addressing weaknesses.
• Maybe you’ve downloaded interview guides or have spent hours reading interview report forums—but still have questions and doubts. 

Our interview prep and practice service focuses on helping you determine what to highlight in your interview depending on the program while using appropriate, impact-driven language without being artificial, or worse, robotic. We also help you choose (and perfect) culturally appropriate examples based on the schools you’re interviewing for. 

As our former client Pritik, who was admitted to Booth with a 90% scholarship, said, “I am extremely thankful to Ellin Lolis for helping me develop my interview skills. She started out with helping me refine my story, and understand the best way to communicate my unique perspective to the admissions committee. Ellin is really good at laser focusing on your strengths and weaknesses, and helping you develop a strong narrative around your core message. I saved a ton of time in developing my actual story, and could focus on having a more natural interview. By being rigorous in the preparation phase, I could come across more conversational, while still communicating why I was a strong candidate. Thanks to Ellin I was accepted to all the schools I applied to.”

Don’t undersell your success. Get in touch with us so we can help you best show that you belong in your preferred MBA program.