Resumes have been dropped, applications submitted, and a lucky few are being invited to interview in the next few weeks and months. Your school career office and fellow students are great resources for preparing for interview season, but here at RelishMBA we wanted to pass along a few pieces of advice and resources we’ve gathered from talking to recruiters (it’s our job) and going through the process ourselves:
- Know what you’re talking about: The biggest complaint year after year from interviewers and recruiters is that students and recent grads haven’t studied up enough on their firm or the trends in their industry. If you haven’t attended a company briefing, spend some time on Google or LinkedIn or RelishMBA to make sure you’re ready to answer basic company or industry questions. Check out this Bloomberg article for a longer list of simple mistakes to avoid in your MBA interview process.
- Get ready for the standard questions: Despite the urban legends, you will probably not get asked how many golf balls could fit in a school bus, but there are plenty of standard interview questions you can prep for. Read up on this (exhaustive) list of 101 interview questions from Vault.com – and then take a look at their list of top 50 internships for 2015, including RelishMBA featured company Evercore at #1!
- Practice, practice, practice for case interviews: SYs are a huge resource for those of you headed to interviews with consulting firms and other employers who use case interviews. Like any skill, the best thing you can do here is get reps by going through the process as many times as possible. You can also visit thisgreat interview prep page at featured RelishMBA employer Bain & Company.
- Chill out: You won’t do yourself any favors by walking into an interview stressed or trying to present yourself as someone you’re not. Most of the time you’ll be interviewing with potential future coworkers, and it goes without saying that most folks don’t want to work with new hires who are anxious or sweaty or disingenuous. You’re going to have plenty of options as a student at a top MBA program, so just relax.
- Have a back-up plan: Speaking of other options, it’s a good idea to keep in mind the firms – mostly tech firms, but plenty of others as well – that recruit MBAs in the spring timeline. More and more top MBAs are going to work for start-ups as well, which tend to have later timelines or just-in-time recruiting. RelishMBA happens to be a great place to find other opportunities, and we’re continuing to add new company pages all the way through summer of 2016.