Supplies needed

• note cards

• a mirror

• a timer set for 30 minutes (typical interview length)

• a voice recorder (smart phone, computer, IC recorder: anything that will record your voice for playback and review)

2. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

What are your three greatest strengths and three greatest weaknesses?

How does each strength / weakness affect your work?

How might each strength / weakness impact your performance at our school / program / organization? 

Sample answer 

4. TEAMWORK ROLE

What role do you usually play in teams?

6. FAILURE (behavioral question)

Tell me about a time when you failed. What did you learn from the experience?

Sample answer 

8. WHY THIS SCHOOL / THIS PROGRAM / THIS ORGANIZATION / THIS COMPANY? 

Why do you want to attend (this school)? (e.g. Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, LBS, INSEAD, etc.) 

11. Q and A

Do you have any questions for me?

(Vince hints: Be sure to customize questions depending on interviewer's status, i.e. current student, recent graduate, senior alumni member, staff member who attended the program, staff member hired from outside the school community)

C. Assemble the cards in random order (different every time)

D. Start the timer as you begin speaking

E. Ask and answer each question

F. Maintain eye contact (with yourself) as you talk (try not to look at your cards)

G. Ask yourself "why" and "how" whenever appropriate to simulate an interviewer's follow-up questions

H. Make each answer as direct and concise as possible (no more than two minutes per answer, hopefully less)

I. Listen to your answers in between self-study practice sessions to ensure continuous quality improvement

J. REPEAT STEPS EVERY MORNING AND EVERY NIGHT UNTIL YOUR ACTUAL INTERVIEW

• Shuffle your question cards every time you practice

• Keep opening questions ("tell me about yourself" or "walk me through your resume") at the top of your stack and closing questions ("what else?" and Q&A) at the bottom 

• For all other questions, make sure to change the order every time

  • Reason 1: be prepared - you can never know in what order your interviewer will decide to ask her questions (interviewing is more art than science)

    • If you expect questions to follow a certain logical order, you might be surprised and unprepared if the interviewer follows her own logic and asks the questions in a different order than you expected 

  • Reason 2: master your material - we build long-term memory through repetition in random order