My ISB Interview Experience - I

I had attended 2 interviews with ISB and would like to share my experience with you. My purpose of sharing my experience is that I would like to tell everyone about the mistakes I did and I want to make people aware of the kind of questions asked by ISB.

In India, mostly people with 2-3 years of work experience do not have a clear idea why they want to pursue an MBA. The most common reason is to move out of the rat race of IT. So the approach followed in ISB is more mature than that required by the much reputed IIMs.

I applied to ISB for the 2005-06 session for the first time with a score of 710. I spent around 15-20 days on my application which I must say is a very less time for a first timer. I had close to 2 years of work experience at that time without having many opportunities to display me leadership capabilities at the workplace.

Also sharing the essay topics during that period:
1. Evaluate your application and provide a critical assessment of it. Outline factors that might differentiate you from others from a similar background. (600 words)
2. Discuss an ethical dilemma that you experienced first hand, and how you resolved it. (400 words)
3. It is said that successful leaders learn as much from their failures as they do from their successes. Discuss a situation in which you failed and what you learnt. (400 words)
4. ISB places a lot of emphasis on teamwork. Tell us about your experiences in working as a part of a team. Your essay should talk about the difficulties that you faced and how you overcame them. (200 words)
5. How do you define leadership? Take the example of a leader you admire (living or deceased), and indicate the traits you like. (200 words)
6. Post ISB where do you think you would like to be professionally. (200 words)

I would like to share with everyone my assessment of these essay topics as to what to cover in which essay and how. But I'll probably share it for my next post.

Let's move on with the interview:

There were 3 people in the panel, and really I do not remember any of them... it's more than 2 years.

The questions asked were (not necessarily in order):
1. Tell us something about your family and things you want to discuss in the next 20 mins.
2. Why mba?
3. A few questions about my work like what all responsibilities do I have, how do I manage the project, what are my contributions.
4. Did you come across any difficulties/setbacks?
5. Why IT Consulting (I had written about IT consulting as my goal when I know nothing about it MISTAKE 1)
6. What position/companies would you like to work in post isb? (Gave them the names of some IT Consulting companies and described the profile associated).. No one looked convinced with this.
7. Why have you Madan Mohan Malviya as your ideal leader, I thought everybody forgot him? (I had mentioned him because I am from BHU, so thought it would have an effect ;)). I told all crap and was screwed in my own eyes. MISTAKE 2 - no homework
8. Any questions? (I asked them a few)

Finally I came out with the usual feeling - confused.

Tips -
- Do your homework well. Know what you are writing on your essays. Interview is only to see how you talk. They should know you by your essays and it should be genuine.
- Define your goal and should be well-related with your past experience. Be precise about Why MBA?
- Highlight your responsibilities well in the essays and do mention your accomplishments related to them.

So finally I waited for the result and then didn't make it. I asked for feedback and was told that my experience is less for an MBA at this point of time of my career. A clear indication that I appeared immature.