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Dear all
I have long thought to write an essay on how to prepare CEIBS’s interview, presenting to the candidates CEIBS the so-called “individual experience”, since all emails addressed to me and inquired about CEIBS MBA program have almost exclusively mentioned the common issue: the preparation for CEIBS interview. However, my stressful workload recently retarded my plan and I felt quite guilty for my inability to help some CDers out as I had promised, in particular, those who are applying for CEIBS.
Eventually, I managed to create time!
Talking about interview, wether the MBA interviews or job interviews, we have to make one point particularly clear that interview is by no means a show in which you could pretend to be someone else as we saw in some soap operas, catering to or fooling with your audiences, the interviewers in this case. Interview, in contrast, is a reciprocal communication between two groups of people who are willing to share the interest in common and therefore converge to pursuit the same course. As such, it is quite imperative for you to figure out why you wish to attend this interview. This is, apparently, something very analogous to what you have detailed in your essay: Why MBA? Why CEIBS MBA? Certainly, it is a cliché. Yet can anyone of us avoid talking about it?
The points on the CEIBS’s interview that I shall emphasis here are listed as below:
1: dressing
It has been easily understood that we, adults in age of more than 20 or 30, should have had a sound understanding of the significance of dressing in this occasion. Unfortunately, some of candidates, I venture, still ignore it. In the round of interview I took, there were totally 7 people, 5 men, 2 women, and among them only three men and one woman dressed formally. In stark contrast, all interviewers and observers have formal dresses. Please kindly remember that, although appearance is not something on which we should be judged, neat and modest dressing, on the other hand, indeed demonstrates our quality to be leadership. So, please do not take your opportunity slightly!
For male applicants, suits and tie are basic requirement.
For female applicants, professional dressing is preferable. In addition, do not wear sex-explicit or -provocating dress, nor many make-ups, particularly no strong perfume.
For both of them, a notebook and a pen are needed.
2: eyes-contact and sincere smile
Be sure that you have an amiable smile to anyone talked with you and you encounter in the entire duration of interview, and exchange what you are thinking via eye-contact with your interviewers and team members. By eye-contact, in fact, you can readily collect the feedbacks from others and therefore adjust the speed of your talking, emphasis or revise what you have talked. Do not glance aimlessly when talking with others. Furthermore, gestures accompanied with and in accordance with your speeches would also vivify your remarks and animate the verbal conversation with others.
3: do not be dull and try to be energetic and argumentative
Some interviewees always misrepresent interview as stress, embarrassment or torture. They thereby tend to respond passively to the questions of their interviewers, acting as prisoners interrogated. However, it is not always the case. A more feasible alternative strategy could be adopted in the MBA interview in which you function proactively and dynamically. Taking initiative to formulate questions for your interviewers occasionally, rather than merely replying the questions, is not bad idea to shed your embarrassment and encourage yourself. Yet to do so is not easy for some friends, in particular, for those who have never been interviewed. As such, you are expected to practice more in advance.
Furthermore, do not take it for granted that all you can do in such interview is to succumb to your interviewers just on account of their statuses as professors. Arguments have consistently been considered an approach to sparkle yourself, especially, in the group discussion. Meanwhile, convincing arguments with interviewers would normally construed as an evidence that you are not someone easily conformed to the authority or the majority, but rather a man of principle, if you could managed the time, the occasion and the gauge of your arguments.
4: telling the truth
Undoubtedly, there will be two tougher questions or about in the interview that dumfound, or sometimes enrage, the interviewee. Consequently, it will, more often than not, take the interviewee more than 30 seconds or more to formulate answers. In the case, my advice is to take no attempt to conceal what you are thinking from your interviewers or evade entirely their questions because they are quite good at handling with such young guys as us who want to play tricks. Telling the truth is the best strategy, whereas fashioning a fabrication the worst.
The four points aforesaid are the general principles for interview. With regard to CEIBS’s interview particularly, several additional tips shall be highlighted here subsequently:
1: the face-to-face interview
The is the first phase of CEIBS interview aiming at testing your spoken English, your logistical thoughts, your ability to adapt yourself to stress, your ability to formulate impromptu, your ability to “show off” yourself, and the list goes on.
In a short span of 30 minutes could such activities be encompassed as 1> questioning you 2> replying your question 3> free talk. The occurrence of the last event, namely free talk, evidently signals the good impression which you have given to your interviewers and the curiosity your interviewers proceed to probe more about you, since it is exceedingly hard to imagine that an interviewer would waste his or her time to have a free talk with a candidate who has already been ruled out from his or her list. Therefore, the last one is the target that every candidate ought to take efforts to reach.
The key for this phase of interview is to begin your conversation with repeating, prioritizationally, concisely and very articulately, the main ideas written on your resume and essay. Why? Because your interviewers perhaps had no sufficient time to read your material submitted ahead of this meeting or they had actually done so, but unfortunately they forgot some particulars, which could be critical for your admission. Let me cite here a quotation extracted from a well-know website, www.pongoresume.com, to underpin that point: resumes are rarely read. They are designed to be scanned by the recruiters. Resumes are scanned in about 10 seconds per resume.
However, you are not supposed to repeat them completely. Be short as possibly as you can as long as you can make the main points understandable.
Another key is the speed of speak. Do not take it for granted neither that the faster you speak; the better. The speed of your speak must subject to one condition that you can convey, unambiguously and precisely, what you wish to communicate. In other words, any effort to feature the fluency of your language at the price of loss in the clarity of your communication would definitely be counterproductive.
2: group discussion
This phase mainly examines, not your language any more, but rather your ability to cooperate with your team members, your analytic skills, your perspective on some relevant issues regarding real business, and the like. So, please, dear friends, do not be obsessed by your spoken English. Actually, you are not required to discus in English except the presentation in the end.
Below are itemized some tips for this phase I render for reference only:
1: listening
Everybody knows that perfectly, whereas few practice that perfectly. It is typically assumed that one would be outstanding more easily by speaking than by listening. Why? Because MBA education is misapprehended in such a way that we believe MBA breed only leaders and leaders are defined as those born to speak but rather to listen. This is not the case, however. MBA education is also initiated to cradle good collaborators. In reality, we can easily realize that, for some certain projects, we need great players more desperately than we need good leaders.
Listening, however, does not necessarily mean sitting motionlessly and watching indifferently. A genuine listener always takes notes and exchanges feedbacks by employing gestures and eyes-contact and occasionally by interposing dissents.
2: being argumentative
Without argumentations, how can we call it a “group discussion”?
However, to argue is not to play devil’s advocating, nor to distinguish your with ridiculous and absurd opinions.
3: the chronological order of your speech
This is also quite important. Strategically predetermining the sequence of your speech could spare you the quandary of being ill-prepared, therefore redoubling your possibility of being admitted.
Some friends inquired me about the appropriate moment of making statement and I typically replied them “case by case”.
Yes, it is true. The optimal time to speak for different candidates varies tremendously. For those who are extroverted and specialized in a certain filed closely linked to the case you are analyzing at that moment, my suggestion are simply these: be brave and speak as early as you can, for the earlier your voice your viewpoints, the more opportunities you would have to itemize the valuable viewpoints that you could otherwise have no chance at all to itemize if you delayed. In contract, for those who are pretty introverted and have no idea about the case in question, say, for those who were previously in the public service sectors and had no business exposure, my advice is: do not be panic-stricken, calm down yourself and speak later. Let me put it another way. Firstly, listen to others very carefully, and, meanwhile, write down as many relevant particulars as possible when listening. Secondly, reorganize those details you have jotted down and figure out wether some added points, if any, omitted by your peers in their previous statements could serve as resources you could draw on. If there are, good. Your salvage is at hand. If there are not, all right, withdraw instantly your attention from your contemplation, come back to what you have jotted down and take efforts to paraphrase those points previously stated by your peers, namely, restate them in your words. Does this sound like “plagiary”? No at all, do not burden yourself when doing so. Remember that, in the GMAT Essay Writing Training Program held by laceName>NewlaceName> laceName>OrientallaceName> laceType>SchoollaceType>, when guys asked what if we just could not write a 400-words essay, even with my ability to the best? Remember what our tutors said? PARAPHRASING the points appeared in the context. This is only salvage to which you are advised to resort, provided that you really run out of time at that stressful occasion.
However, do not got me wrong please. By referring to paraphrase, I am not suggesting that repeating those points robotically and blindly. Simply duplicating without revision what you and, notably, the observers sitting besides have heard would definitely discredits yourself and dulls the audience.
Furthermore, do not necessarily conform to the majority when you genuinely have a brilliant insight which holds water. In this case, you could express your dissent in a subtler way. Remember that peculiar but penetrating insights from the minority always add more weights.
GOOD LUCK, GUYS
Kindest regards
CEIBS_MBA 2005
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发表于 2005-3-28 19:08:00
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