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Inseadsh, that is really an insightful essay about your interview experience! As for me, although the interview only happened 5 weeks ago, it's like a century ago now and I could hardly remember all the details. :-) I only had one interview too, which kind of made me nervous early March. I did want to make my interview an "informal chat" rather than a "formal interview", since that would make me easier to express the "real me" and mitigate the potential nerves. And actually, my interviewer is a very easy-going young European lady, with consulting and entrepreneur experience on the belt and living in Shanghai nowadays. Almost all the questions were the standardized one -- Strength & Weakness; Long-term career goal; Why INSEAD; Most Important Accomplishments; Biggest Challenges in professional life; Hobbies etc. Since I updated her the highlights of my current professional/personal life in previous emails, we began the conversation with some small talks, which made the atmosphere very pleasant! We just let the conversation flow -- she was led by her curiosity to unfold my stories and my motivations/characters behind that; I tried to make my previous stories and takeaways interrelated with my current professional development, or echoed with my career ambitions and personalities. And our conversation was a great one which lasted for more than 100 minutes...
I kept asking myself in terms of what should I accomplish through the interview before and through the process. Here's the three things I summarized -- show a highly motivated, easy-going, open-minded personality; prove yourself as a charismatic leader with a lot of team skills; tell your accomplishments and international experiences.
And how to prepare the interview and create a pleasant atmosphere? Here's also my thinking... (I think interview is critical, not only enable you to get into the Bschool, but also to find you a decent job after school) - Make background introduction in previous emails and use small talks before the formal interview. Try to create a good atmosphere.
- Clear points and strong logics. Use short answer followed by 2-4 key points, and made a summery after the story. SMART+L is the always useful esp. when you are nervous. Try to imagine if you're only given 1 minute, what would you say? 3 minutes? 10 minutes?
- Interrelate your points to enhance each other. Establish multi-tiers of your characters, and show your growing trails. And try to steer the conversation by yourself, and express all the critical points of yourself esp. when the interviewer didn't ask the questions that led to your very critical answers.
- Stories, stories, stories. The more the better, and prepare interesting stories with some details and impressive takeaways. Don't use the same examples again and again. And utilize your chance to show as many YOU as possible in both professional and personal arenas.
- Interact with your interviewer. Remember your Key Points, not every sentence. Never avoid improvisation and sense of humor :-)
- And at last, be the real YOU!
My delivering the application PDF form was a very frustrated one. I couldn't upload the form one hour before the deadline (shame on me, always a last minute dasher) and then I threw several letters to the IT supporter and sent the adcom my file through email attachment, and everything. Of course, nobody replied me then, since that was the mid-night of Friday, Fonty time. I was really mad at myself and thought that I had to pay my bills to my laziness again. And the next Tue or Wed, IT people replied finally and asked me to pay my application fees and so on... I'm really grateful that I was saved by the IT supporter and finally got a ticket to INSEAD! And good luck to you all! :-)
[此贴子已经被作者于2007-3-28 6:46:01编辑过] | 
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发表于 2007-3-27 21:48:00
