If there is something that can beat my happiness of going to a Ladies Night at my favorite club on a weekday , it is definitely an email from my Dream School inviting me for an interview . (Yeyyyyy !!!!!) I was so happy since I had put so much effort behind my Oxford’s application . And the dream then felt a step closer .
But having said that , an interview invite is obviously great but can never guarantee an admit . So I decided to work my ass off to crack the interview . All in all I am an above average speaker and confidence is not that much of an issue with me . But in some of my previous interviews I had been extremely lazy to prepare and went completely blank . So I had faced a few rejections lately which even motivated me more to devote days and nights practicing for my Said’s interview .
Now , a few of my friends advised me to take up mock interview packages with some consultants . I actually gave that a thought and started shortlisting a few of them . But during this process I started discovering so much about self preparation of an MBA interview that I decided to skip the consultant and do it on my own .
I came across this beautiful article by Adam Markus on interview preparation . Adam Markus interview Strategy
I really love the way he advises to make a tabular chart of all the prospective questions, your examples against each and the keywords with them .
I made one for myself and trust me it was such a great help . 
I can’t thank Adam Markus enough for this really cool idea . I made close to 20 keywords against which I identified the situations that I wanted to highlight in the interview from my work experience . And trust me this method is not boring at all , I took out a print out of this entire worksheet and stuck it on my clipboard at home .
So this was actually the first time I was preparing for an interview this much , and to my surprise this was becoming a great confidence booster . Then I asked my husband to take 2 mock interviews and we decided to be very formal in them ( I know its so funny to behave like an interviewee with your husband when it usually happens the other way round 😀 😛 ) Any ways , I gave these and my husband acted way too formal and made it so much like a stress interview . But , i think it was good that he did so , since I became prepared for all kinds of situations .
I spent 7 days ( actually 7 nights ) on practicing this strategy. The results were stupendous . I was damn confident to face anybody and answer any question . Last 2 days I bought my formals and kept my mind a bit calm (actually had 2 glasses of wine a day before the interview and watched a Rom Com before sleeping 😀 ) .
So all in all I took help from no one and spent not a single penny in the entire preparation . So if you have got a call and preparing for any of the interviews . Just keep calm and follow this strategy ! I am sure you will win !
P.S : I shall post my interview day experience in the next post .
Views expressed are personal to the author . Comment below if you opted for this or any other self preparation strategy ! Reach me on ojasvisoni100@gmail.com
~MBA Miss
MBAmiss 