How can I best describe my future career goals?

I think the first thing to do is to prepare for that description and that’s to make sure that you really understand the career. What are the skills that are needed? What is the personality that tends to perform well in this kind of a career or this kind of a job? So first of all, know the career that you’re talking about, and then when you describe that career plan, make sure that you demonstrate some kind of a passion for it as well as some kind of ability to actually achieve in the career. It’s important to be thinking about how you get from where you are now or where you’ve been to actually starting on that career.

So you should have some kind of understanding how can the school help you to achieve that career path? What are you going to do to get there other than come to school and listen to the professors in the classroom? So you should have some kind of a real understanding of where you want to go, how the school can help you, but also what you bring to the table to start with and putting all of that together. I think it’s also a really good idea to have a plan B because we all have ambitions and dreams but sometimes we can’t get there because it’s a very competitive job market out there.

So I think it’s important to show that you are flexible, that you definitely have dreams that you’re reaching, you’re stretching to grow and improve, but at the same time you’re very realistic about what it takes to get there and you understand that you should have more than one goal in mind so that you can take advantage of what opportunities come along to you while you’re in the MBA program. Be open-minded. You’ll learn a lot of things and be exposed to a lot of new ideas when you’re in the program. So be open-minded to that.

How can I prepare for the interview?

The difference between an interview and a paper application is that you get to show your personality, you get to show your ability to communicate, and you have the ability to probe down to ask questions beyond the paper brochure that you’ve got from the program. The interviewers have the opportunity to dig down and probe about aspects of your career or your profile that they’re interested in.

So I think it’s important again to do all the preparation that we mentioned already which is understand the school and the students and the faculty. Be prepared to ask them questions. If you really are curious about some aspect of the school and you want to know how that’s going to help you, be prepared to ask those deep questions. At the same time, be prepared for the interview or to ask you some deep questions. So I think it’s important to reflect upon your career, again not only talking about what you’ve done but why that’s meaningful to you and how it helps prepare you for the future. You really want to show yourself.

As I’ve said before, a boy just trying to over-prepare and say what you think the interviewer is going to be looking and really try to speak about yourself openly, react, listen to what the interviewers are asking you, and give a real answer, show the real you that’s behind all of that stuff that’s on paper. So be natural, relax as much as you can, and just be reflective about where you’ve been and where you’re going. Be open-minded, be curious, and show the real you.

Also, show how you can contribute to the school, not just what they can give to you but how do you fit in to everything the school is doing and what can you do to help your classmates to learn and to contribute to the school as much as they will be contributing to you for the future. So enjoy the process. Don’t over-prepare. Just relax, be yourself, and enjoy the process.

What qualities does a strong candidate possess?

Of course, every school is looking at academic ability, wants to make sure that students can handle the analytic kind of work that goes along with being an MBA. But on top of that it’s really important to realize that MBAs are people who do things. They change the world, they make decisions. So we’re often at CEIBS looking for a student who is proactive, who shows willingness and ability to make decisions but do so in a very mature way. I think for us at CEIBS it’s very important that people be culturally sensitive because we’re working at this interface between China and the world so we pay a lot of attention to that, to international mindset and willingness to operate on a global scale.

Soft skill is also very, very important, ability to communicate, ability to listen as well as speak and lead people, ability to make decisions to be able to analyze a problem and identify what are the key issues there, and from that formulate some kind of a good strategy or some kind of a good solution and put that into action. So we’re looking for indicators of all of these skills when we review our candidate applications and when we interview people.

Statistics compiled by CEIBS MBA