McMaster Degroote MBA Frequently Asked Interview Questions

Professional experience-related questions

1. Tell me something about yourself, or Walk me through your resume.
2. What are your short-term and long-term goals?
3. Why MBA? or Why now? or Why an MBA at this stage of your career?
4. Why ISB?
5. What is your Plan B? in case your primary goal does not happen?

Personal qualities-related questions

1. What are your key strengths? Can you give some examples, please?
2. What are your key weaknesses? Can you give some examples, please?
3. How can you add value to the Class? or Why should we take you?
4. Any reasons why we should not select you?
5. Interests and Hobbies related questions – why do you do it, what have you achieved/learned?

Frequently Asked Situational & Behavioral Questions

1. What is your leadership style? Can you give an example of a project you led?
2. What would you describe are your greatest achievement to date?
3. Give me an example of a time you failed.
4. Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict. How did you handle that?
5. Give me an example of a time when you did not meet a client’s expectations. What happened, and how did you attempt to rectify the situation?

The last one – Do you have any questions for us?

1. Can you please tell me how international exchange students and schools are assigned?
2. How club leadership is selected?
3. Any other questions you may have in regards to the program.

   McMaster MBA Interview Questions – 1

   “After applying, you get an automated email 2 days later to do the KIRA video interview.

   My questions were

   1) What are your career aspirations with an MBA and how can Degroote help.

   2) Tell us a time about your proudest achievement and what was the impact.

   3) Tell us a time where you had to do a group presentation, what did you do, what was the outcome, what did you learn, and how would you do it differently next time

   4) How do you prioritize? I forgot my written question. Two weeks after the KIRA, I got no response so I followed up. The next day, they invited me for the co-op interview.

   Before the co-op interview, they would call students to give them coaching lessons on how to prepare for the questions. After my coaching session, I sent a thank you letter but didn’t hear back so I thought that was odd. Honestly, I was expecting a courtesy reply such as “Good luck” or “Call me any time before your meeting” since one of the current students mentioned during the webinar that he went back and forth with the recruiter many times before the actual interview. My interviewer was polite but was not conversational and seemed unauthentic.

   Every answer I gave, whether good or bad, she would end with generic thank you so I couldn’t gauge how well I was doing. I would purposely leave a sub-question unanswered to test if she would follow up as normal interviewers do but she just kept writing and moved on. So in my experience, it felt rushed and she wasn’t listening. The questions I got were:

   1) why do you want to do an MBA and what makes you a suitable candidate.

   2) Tell me about a time where you demonstrated leadership skills to solve a problem

   3) Tell me about a time where you worked really hard but still did not get the results you wanted

   4) How do you get to know your new teammates to ensure a smooth collaboration?

   5) What kind of co-op jobs and full-time jobs are you targeting? What have you done so far to ensure that you will get those jobs?

   6) Ethics question, if you have already accepted a mediocre job offer but then your dream job offer comes along, what would you do?

   7) Name some companies in the industry you are targeting, which one would you prefer and why

   8) Tell me about a time where you used innovation to solve a problem. For the ethics question, I am not sure if they are testing if you would answer truthfully, as in yes I would take the dream job because these kinds of situations happen all the time in real life, or they want to hear you lie and say you would turn down your dream job.”

   McMaster MBA Interview Questions – 2

   “Hi, I just wanted to share my experience for the benefit of future applicants. I applied to the Co-op program and received an admit. The application itself was very comprehensive. There were 5 written questions.

   After the application was submitted I got the Kira interview request in 3 days. The kira interview was quite challenging. There were 4 speaking questions (two for 2 mins and two for 1 min) and 1 written question (8 mins).

   The theme was basically professional life. The questions revolved around topics such as challenges, leadership, Why MBA, etc. I gave the Kira interview in the end of December and had to endure an excruciating waiting period because of the long holiday season.

   I finally got an email in the second week of Jan with an invitation to a skype interview at a fixed time. I was asked to attend a webinar before the interview, which I found extremely helpful. I recommend everyone attend this. The interviewer was very polite. She kept is very conversational and I tried to be humorous to keep things breezy. The questions were all behavioral in nature and they expect you to use examples from your professional life to answer them. I was in the end asked a ‘situational question’, which was basically asked to judge my sense of ethics. 3 hours post the interview, I got the decision by email.

   A note to all interviewers: The interview is conducted by the careers team. So don’t worry about being grilled about your academics. They simply want to see if you will be marketable enough in the Co-op interview stages.”

   McMaster MBA Interview Questions – 3

   3 days after submitting the application, I got a mail which asked me to appear for a KIRA interview. One has to appear in the KIRA interview within 5 days from receiving such mail. From what i read about KIRA interviews of various universities, i got an impression that it would be basic and easy. But I found the KIRA to be tricky.

   There were 4 video questions, in which you got about 30 seconds time to prepare for the answer and almost 90 seconds to record your response. After such 4 video questions, there was a timed essay where you get 8 minutes to write an essay on the question you get. Yes, its true that all the questions were as such basic and very much answerable, but for me the tricky part was that there were too many sub questions within a question. So answering all the parts in those 90 seconds, i.e. starting the answer, summarising it, concretising it and ending it in the given timeframe is a tough task.

   Basically you got to show that you have the skills to analyse and touch upon all the aspects which they ask in the question. For instance, one question was like “Tell us about a recent time when you made a presentation. Was it a group or solo? What steps did you make to prepare and do the presentation. What was the outcome. If you look back, do you feel you could have done anything differently”. Now as such question is not hard, but in 1 question they have asked further sub questions and the question will disappear after the prep time. So you got to keep in mind what all he asked and you need to touch on all the aspects.

   My KIRA was assessed within 5 days, consequent to which I got call for final interview.

   The Skype interview time slot and date was designated by them and you could mail them if you want to change. They send a link to webinar which you can watch before you appear for the interview. It consists of information on the whole course structure.

   The skype interview was friendly. It consisted of lots of behavioural and situational questions. Some questions could focus on the coop aspect. Try to keep it like a friendly conversation and not an interview. Be calm. Be yourself. Be humorous. I had my interview on 5th, at 7pm IST and I got final admit at 1am, within 6 hours. Please let me know if I could be of any more help.”

   McMaster MBA Interview Questions – 4

   Hi,

   The initial questions will revolve around your work experience (run through your CV), educational background and then lean towards why MBA and why Degroote?
   You need to prepare for these question because you would want to finish every answer in not more than 2-3 minutes. The interviewer also feels good when he/she knows that you have come with good preparation. Then after this, there will be some behavioral and situational questions, which basically mean that they will put you in a situation and will expect you to come up with a solution.
   Don’t be worried, just remember your stories and how you want to portray your personality in front of the interviewer.

   Note: The interviewer will be writing notes during the interview. So don’t get distracted by that and don’t feel that they are not listening to you. Be confident and stick to your original stories.

   All the best!

   McMaster MBA Interview Questions – 5

   Hi, just got my acceptance to the Degroote program with 2k Scholarship. App details:

   720 GMAT, 3.2 GPA, 2 ish years work experience in Customer Service, domestic applicant. They seem to have changed things, the video interview comes first then there’s a really short in person interview, like 20 -25 minutes. No “walk me through your resume,” just 5 quick behavioural questions and I was out of there like that. I think the interview itself didn’t make a lot of difference in the acceptance, it was more just the rest of the application, particularly the GMAT score that wowed them.