Interview Experience - Richard Ivey School of Business

Interview Experience -

I had my interview with Karen Conway on 1st November 2011 for admission to the Richard Ivey School of Business, London, Canada. I had submitted my application in the 2nd round. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the interview experience but its very difficult to assess what will happen and in my opinion it's best to let the process take its own sweet time rather than calculating the odds. The process went on for roughly 50 minutes where I had a chance to ask questions towards the end. Here goes the interview experience: -

Karen : (Introduced herself). Tell me something about yourself.
Me: I started talking about my personal and professional life. Within 60 secs, she interrupted and asked me to give her more details about my transition from Infosys Technologies to ZS Associates. I explained that and then followed it up with the remainder of the introduction.

Karen : Explain in detail how your career has progressed at ZS over the years.
Me : 120 secs, standard answer

Karen : What did you learn from your international experience? How did you handle a conflict situation while you were at client site?
Me : Long answer, shared 2 instances with Karen

Karen : What is your involvement with the client while you work from India?
Me : Described my current load and participation in the global delivery model

Karen : Have you done any strategy work till now? Can you share your role and responsibility in brief?
Me : Long answer. Not very well structured.

Karen : Define Leader. Give me one instance where you exhibited leadership qualities.
Me: Talked about 3 attributes of a leader and followed it up with 2 specific examples - professional and personal.

Karen : What do you want to do post your MBA? Give me specifics - company name, profile and location.
Me: Talked about my short term goal and then got into specifics - dream company, profile, etc.

Karen : What is your back-up? If this company doesnt hire you what do you plan to do?
Me - Answered her question by telling her about my back-up option. She asked me if I had a back-up career option.

Karen: In which geography do you want to launch yourself?
Me: Spoke to 1 minute about the positives of Canada. Its a tricky question when you have work experience in the US. The question goes more like why Canada and not US? So I ended the answer by talking about me being flexible as far as geography is concerned.

Karen : You have less experience than the average experience of the Ivey class. How will you cope up and manage to add value?
Me: Talked about what I bring to the class at Ivey even with my background.

Karen : You must have a formal review process to get feedback from your superiors at work. What feedback did you receive in the last cycle?
Me : :D Well this is something I wasn't expecting and talked about my areas of improvement.

Finally, she asked me about the research that had gone in from my end. Website, current students, alumni? She then signaled that she was done asking questions and asked me if I wanted to ask any. I did. She then explained the admission process to me and who will take a final call on my application. Have my fingers crossed now and waiting for Dec 16 :)