My ESADE MBA Admission Interview

Many people have contacted me regarding the Admissions process and my interview. Therefore I decided that it would be easier to just post the information to everybody.

My interview was conducted during the Open Day on the ESADE Campus on January 31st, 2009. After a general roundtable discussion with Mary Granger and around 5-6 other candidates I was fetched by my interviewer Xenia Jarque shortly after.

At first I had to work on a case study about Starbucks. The founder was made CEO again and was coming to Europe. I had to recommend him what to do with Starbucks in Europe to improve the operations and increase the turnover. I had to draw a Powerpoint Presentation on a piece of paper on what I would recommend him.

The case study was followed by the interview about my resume and in particular my application essays. We had a discussion about post-MBA plans, asperations, motivations, etc. Then we discussed some scenarios and I was asked how I would react:

• What will I bring to ESADE?
• How I would behave in a team when they are cultural differences among two team members?
• If my team member is not working to his potential, what would I do?
• What would I do if I observed another guest at a conference taking my bag and walking away with it?
• Which all other institutes I have applied for and why?

Considering that my interview was almost a year ago the questions might not be the exact questions but that is what I remember. Your questions would most likely be similar but probably not the same and therefore  should only serve as a guideline. I hope that this helps you a little in your preparation and best of luck with your applications.

My Roland Berger Interview Insider!

In the wake of the ESADE Career Week many companies have been on campus and some even took the opportunity to conduct interviews while here. As mentioned earlier I had applied to Roland Berger and in fact I had my interview on Monday. Yesterday I got my rejection letter therefore I am finally able to publicly share my experience of the interview with you.

The two interviews took one hour each and were conducted by the two consultants, Javier C. and Alexander P. First of all I would like to provide you with the questions that i was being asked so that you can get a feel how the interviews went and how you would react under the pressure.

Interview 1 (Javier C.):
Q1) What is the wholesale and retail price of a Seat Ibiza bumper and why?
Q2) What to do you suggest the construction companies and industries in Southern Spain to do now during the construction slump

Interview 2 (Alexander P.):
Q3) Give me 10 ways to find out the height of a skyscraper
Q4) What are the different company valuation techniques? What percentage of the entire value will the terminal value for the discounted cashflow method be?
Q5) What is the value chain of an insurance company? What are the cost factors and how can you improve the margin? How is it possible that insurance companies can make a profit if 100% of the cost are equivalent to 100% of the revenue?
Q6) What is the market value for electical shavers in Germany?

In addition of course I had the normal questions like, what are the take-aways from ESADE, what were difficult team situations that you had lead, etc.

One of my main questions to each consultant was why they had particularly picked me for the interview and the answers from the consultants was very interesting: they didn’t know! That makes it very difficult because only the lady from the HR knew, and she told me later, during the networking session that it was for my last job in consumer goods. Hence it has nothing to do with the telecommunication-, media- and emerging markets background, which I had figured out as a similarity from the interviewees profiles.

Generally I think that it was a great experience. Feel free to share your interview experience with me.

The final recommendation I can give: Prepare and expect the unexpected! (don’t tell the interviews that you researched them ;)