Smart Practice: Adapting Your Best Stories to Multiple Interview Questions (Part II)

In Part I of this series, we asked you to think about how to adapt one sample story to three distinct MBA interview questions. In Part II, we’re going to show you how to use almost exactly the same story to answer three different questions, just by tailoring the conclusion.

The three distinct MBA interview questions at hand are:

Question 1: Can You Tell Me About a Time You Demonstrated Leadership? Question 2: Can You Tell Me About a Time You Overcame a Challenge?           Question 3: Please Tell Me About a Time You Worked Well on a Team, and What You Learned.

Our sample answer without the conclusion was:

“Sure, that’s a really interesting question, Mr. Interviewer.
 The biggest challenge I’ve overcome was the time that I started a nonprofit in college to collect used musical instruments to donate to a needy school with gifted musical students and not enough musical instruments. I drove all over Taipei to collect the used musical instruments. I established a not for profit organization to make the donation legally, and also worked with my schoolmates to put on a charity concert where we raised enough money to buy a brand new Tuba – the most expensive musical instrument. This experience helped me to realize how valuable and rewarding it is to help people less fortunate than myself, and that I can be successful in leading my peers to have a positive impact on society.”

Sample Conclusion Question One: Leadership

This was a critical leadership experience and I learned a great deal about myself in the process. One important thing I learned was how to best interact with a team while trying to motivate them to do something they were not being paid to do. I realized that I prefer positive reinforcement to negative reinforcement, and prefer to include people in a team environment to motivate them to help each other rather than to demand they complete tasks. I believe that I can develop this positive style of leadership at your MBA program when I take _______ course on leadership, and intend to pay it forward by using my leadership skills to make an impact in more community activities during my MBA studies.

Sample Conclusion Question Two: Challenge

What surprised me is that the biggest challenge I faced in this entire experience had nothing to do with motivating people as a leader, or finding resources. The biggest challenge for me was in finding the inspiration and idea in the first place, and once I had that everything else naturally fell into place. I know that by attending your MBA program I’m pursuing the strongest passion I’ve ever had in my life. I truly believe that my life will fall into place after graduation, with some careful planning, just like my musical not for profit fell into place after I found the inspiration to start it.

Sample Conclusion Question Three: Teamwork

Achieving success in this project was truly a team effort. During the course of organizing the charity concert with my peers we met many times to discuss different ideas and how they could be effectively implemented to have the maximum impact on donations. I learned that people from backgrounds different than my own had unique insights to contribute that really helped us reach our goal, and that I enjoy the collaborative teamwork process a great deal. In fact, since then I have gone out of my way to volunteer for group projects at work because I feel that I’m not only helping the company meet its goals, but educating myself about how to interact with and learn from other people in the long run.

Conclusion

Notice how all three of these answers fit neatly into place at the end of our sample story? They build off of each other, and many of the conclusions continue to touch upon multiple points from the questions (leadership, teamwork, overcoming a challenge). Although your story will different, the principle behind these questions is similar.

When you practice for your interview, keep in mind that you will want to try to use your best stories. Thus, find a way to make your best stories fit multiple questions. Like these stories above, you'll find that many stories have elements of teamwork, leadership, overcoming challenges, etc., and that you can make slight adjustments to the stories to directly address the question. 

I hope this was helpful for those of you preparing for MBA interviews. If you have any additional questions about preparing for your MBA interviews, feel free to reach out to me, David, at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.