Two Tips on how to Succeed in an Interview for the HEC Paris MBA
There are a lot of reasons I’m proud of HEC. One of these reasons is the requirement that alumni interview prospective students. When I applied to HEC, the interviews convinced me that I had made the right decision: The alumni were so passionate about HEC that I could feel it in everything they said. I try to live up to that, so I take every opportunity to interview prospective students. I’ve come up with two things that I test for that make the difference between a great recommendation and a poor recommendation.
1: Make me want to work with you.
Consultants like to talk about the Airport Test. In interviews, they ask: “Would I want to be stuck in an airport with this person?” I ask something related: “Would I want this person in my study group at 2 AM?”
Everything at HEC is collaborative. From clubs to St. Cyr to MBAT, you will never accomplish anything without doing so in a team. The first half of the curriculum, you will be put into groups you didn’t choose to tackle exams, essays, and financial models. Your success will depend on a group of people you meet the day you arrive on campus. Your group will be diverse in culture, language, and background. These are the perfect elements to allow you to stretch your abilities and to put out better work than you thought you could do. They are also the perfect elements to explode into the fiercest arguments you have ever had in your life.
When it’s 2 AM, and the assignment is due in five hours, would I trust you to find a way to contribute to the team?
You can show me this by talking about leadership, and how you’ve learned to work with diverse people over your career. Tell me stories about how you convince people to do things without hierarchy (trust me, nobody in your group thinks you’re special). Tell me lessons you learned from conflict. Did you ever fail so spectacularly that your colleague doesn’t speak to you anymore? Fantastic, that’s a great story to tell about how you won’t make the same mistakes when your group is depending on you.
2: Make me want to meet you.
Once you leave HEC, for the rest of your life, you will represent me and everyone else in the community. Every person you work with will remember the HEC name and use it to judge the next person they meet who attended HEC. I want to know that when you leave Paris with your diploma, you are going to make me proud.
The HEC MBA alumni community is global. I organize regular events for alumni around the world, and each time, I meet new people who inspire me. What inspires me about them isn’t their titles or their companies, but their passions and how well they can sell them. What unites all these people, from the consultants to the marketing directors to the entrepreneurs is their ability to give a coherent vision of who they are and where they are going.
If I were to meet you in four years, would you inspire me?
The MBA is a short period on the path of your career, but it’s a life-changing period. It’s a powerful transformation, but is it the right one for you? You can show me this by selling your vision on what you want to do with this transformation. Make sure your vision is feasible (You won’t be a consultant in Paris if you’ve never spoken a word of French). Explain to me what the MBA is going to do for you. What do you want to learn? Who do you want to meet? Who are you going to be in two years, four years, ten years, because of HEC?
3: Bonus Tip! Know HEC’s Culture.
I’m going to test you to see if you understand something about HEC. For example, be able to talk about HEC’s emphasis on leadership, or about what you will do to contribute to student life. If it’s clear to me that you haven’t researched HEC beyond looking at its rankings, you’ve failed.
