University of Washington – Foster School of Business
Full-time MBA program – Video Interview Questions
Foster conducts video interviews online. These interviews are not live, and can be recorded at your convenience.
Before the interview:
- Infrastructure: Make sure your equipment works – mic, camera, speakers, Internet.
- Rehearse: Rehearse into the camera and then watch the recording to improve. Spend 2-3 recordings just rehearsing and reviewing.
- Dress: Dress neatly. Light formals are ok.
- Clarity: Ensure there is no background noise: visual or aural. Try to find a quiet, well-lit place, with a flat, light-coloured background.
- Height: Ensure the aperture of the camera is at eye-height for you. If it’s not, then adjust the height. Also zoom in enough so that there aren’t lots of distracting objects in the background.
- Lighting: Ensure your face is properly lit. If you have to, then use a table lamp in addition to the room lighting.
- Relax: Relax – you will come across better if you are relaxed.
- Smile: Don’t need to have a plastic smile pasted on throughout. But do smile from time to time appropriately.
- Time: Use your 30 sec thinking/prep time well to structure your thoughts. Practice timing yourself. Get a good sense (by practising sample questions below) of what 90 seconds feel like.
- Scope: In your thinking time, identify 2 (max 3) items you want to talk about. What kills most people in general questions is that they try to be exhaustive and talk about lots of things.
- No fillers: Think for a few seconds before you reply and then minimize pauses that we tend to fill with “ums” and “uhs.”
Some commonly asked questions are:
- Describe a significant leadership experience.
- Describe a significant cross-cultural experience.
- What is the most important thing you learned in college.
- Tell me about your typical day at work.
- What do you enjoy most about your job? What do you find the most frustrating?
- What are the key challenges faced by your industry?
- What would u do if you have one more hour in the day?
- Talk about a time you experienced stress and what you did to manage it.
- Who is your role model and why?
- What leadership ability do you appreciate in your current direct supervisor and what ability do you wish they would improve on?
- Tell us about the last time you led a project. What was the outcome?
- Describe a time when your work was criticized.
- Tell us about an important piece of advice you have received and how it has helped you.
- Tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult colleague.
- What is your ideal work environment?
- What project did you take on without being asked to?
- Tell us about an experience when you faced a boring project? How did you motivate yourself and your team to work on it?
- What is the biggest challenge when working with a team?
- What was your biggest achievement outside of work?
- Tell us one thing you didn’t mention in your resume.
- What 3 adjectives would you use to describe yourself and why?
- If you could start a new venture to solve a major problem what would you choose and why?
- What is a step you’ve taken in the last year to advance your career?
- Why are some aspects of the Foster school that appeal to you?
- What three things do you want to learn at Foster?
- What are three strengths that you bring to the Foster school?
We can help with your interview prep. Contact us:
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