You Don’t Need A High GPA To Get Into A Top MBA

Interview Tips You Haven’t Heard Before

You’ve graduated with an MBA. You’ve put in the work. Now, you’re ready to take on the next step of your career. But first, you need to ace that job interview.

Carmine Gallo, a contributor at Forbes who writes about leadership communication to grow sales and build brands, recently discussed a few interview tips for MBA grads.

DON’T FALL BACK ON YOUR RESUME 

Almost every interview experience will start out with “tell us a bit about yourself.”

Gallo says this isn’t an invitation to walk through your resume.

While your resume acts as a source of credibility, it’s best to focus on conveying emotion when telling your story. So, how do you do that?

“Have one or two stories in your pocket that highlight the value you can add,” Gallo writes. “They can be stories of how you overcame an especially vexing problem or how you motivated a team to do more than they thought possible.”

In a blog post for Vault, a career advice blog, Kenton Kivestu says distilling your experiences is crucial when telling your story.

“The goal is to highlight experiences with a high signal to noise ratio,” Kivestu writes. “This means that you want to cut out the fluff and filler and make sure you hit the key points you want the interviewer to remember about you.”

Each experience you describe, should answer three main questions, according to Kivestu.

1) Why did you pursue it?

2) What key skills and lessons came out of it?

3) How did it influence your next steps?

KNOW THE CEO

Gallo suggests every applicant to extensively research the CEO of the company they’re applying to. And not just a basic overview, know everything — from the CEO’s most recent blog post to their views on certain topics.

“If you’re a job candidate and you don’t know what the CEO says about taxes and trade, you’re losing an opportunity to stand out from the others — many of whom may not have read the CEO’s recent reports,” Gallo writes.

STICK TO THREES

When it comes to answering questions, Gallo suggests applicants to stick to the rule of three.

Rather than dragging a story on and on, sticking to the rule of three can make for a more effective and lasting impression.

“Simply put, the human mind is only capable of recalling three to five main points in short term (working) memory,” Gallo writes. “Don’t overwhelm your listener with a list of twenty-eight messages. Keep it to three. Give a recruiter three reasons to hire you, three ways your skill will help the company make money, three highlights from your resume.”

Sources: Forbes, Vault