Interview: Questions you must be ready to answer

[Kairos Educates]

Hi All,

Hope you are on way to crack the dream admit !

We are KairosEducates. At KairosEducates, we are committed to help B-School aspirants with a streamlined 3 stage process -

1. Application Stage - It is critical to have well-written application essays , Statement of Purpose , Resume , Review of Letters of Recommendation. We help you with creation of all these important artifacts.

2. Interview Stage - Interviews at B-Schools are multi-stage including personal interviews, case based interviews, presentation rounds, group discussions and so on. We help candidates to be well prepared for this stage as well.

3. Pre-departure support - Once you crack your dream admit, you may have queries pertaining to the new location of education. We help you in solving peculiar queries you may have.

This thread will be devoted towards helping candidates answer some of the most common interview questions. Trust this helps!

 

For more assistance, please visit our website:

http://kairoseducates.com/course/mba-counseling-services/

Edited February 27, 2014 by Kairos Educates

[Kairos Educates]

Question: Can you tell me about your work experience and while doing so focus on the failures you had along your career till date ?

Solution: This question looks similar to the basic version of "Tell me about yourself" however seeks your focus only on the failures in your profile. There can be two ways to answer this question -


1. Longer Version : Start telling the interviewer about your profile by taking him through each of the area. After talking about your primary responsibilities in each role, tell him about an incident where you failed. Moreover, when you talk about something that did not go well, support it immediately with a statement that shows the steps you took to recover from that incident.


2. Shorter version : Start talking to the interviewer about your profile and focus only on the failures / things that did not go well. Do not talk about the primary responsibilities for that particular job role. Like the longer version, support the thing that did not go well with steps you took to recover from that situation.


Remember : When you talk about a negative aspect of your profile ( eg: your weakness , a thing that did not go well etc.,) support it immediately with steps you took to make the situation better. Your interviewer wishes to know how capable you are in handling conflict situations at work. 

Some other variations of the same questions:

1. Focus on your strenghts / weaknesses and how they affected your career till date.

2. Focus on leadership you exhibited.

3. Focus on how you handled various conflicts.

 

Question : Explain to me something as if I was a 7 year old

Solution : This question will be asked in an interview only when the interview has picked up good speed. So, you are busy answering every question correctly, and once the tone has been set, your interviewer can try to put you off-guard. Explaining something to a 7 year old takes special effort. Here's how you should approach this question :

1. Your interviewer is trying to test how quickly you can switch context from one to another and yet not be thrown off the gear.

2. This question is similar to being asked " Explain to me as if I were a layman " . So, when asked, you should pick a topic which is of common/general interest. (Example : Democracy is widely understood. Cricket / Baseball as a game is also widely understood)

3. Once you have chosen a topic, start explaining the concept as if your interviewer is a complete lay man on the topic. ( Example : I am going to tell you what democracy is all about. When I was a kid, I used to go out with my parents for occassional family dinners. In the city where I lived, there were multiple dinner places. While I loved to go to Hotel A, my sister loved to go in to Hotel B. My parents had their choices too. So to decide where to go, my father always asked us where we would like to go. If most of the members voted for A, our dinner used to be at that hotel. This is called democracy)


Classic Mistakes :

1. Participants "ass-u-me" certain details. Remember, a layman knows nothing about a topic. You need to explain even the most obvious basics.

2. Participants get too technical in answering such questions

Some other variations :

1. Explain to me something, as if I was a complete layman to the topic

2. Explain to me the 4 P's of Marketing, as if I do not know what Marketing is all about