The Harvard Business School (HBS) post-interview reflection is certainly one of the more unique application elements among MBA programs. Since the school has decided to continue requiring the post-interview reflection from candidates 24 hours after their HBS interview, it’s worth spending some time now considering how to approach this piece of the admissions process.
Keep it in perspective
First, it’s worth noting that the HBS post-interview reflection won’t make or break the application for many candidates. It gives HBS one more data point, but it is only a small piece of the puzzle. Your résumé, essays, GMAT, GPA, recommendations, and interview (not to mention the school’s effort to admit a diverse and balanced class) all play a role in whether you end up joining HBS. Unlike the hiring process at a job where the interview is often make-or-break, the admissions process for MBA programs is much more holistic.
That said, the post-interview reflection is a final opportunity to make your case, and it provides plenty of opportunities to hurt or help your application. In a hyper-competitive admissions environment, it’s important to never miss an opportunity to put points on the board.
Most applicants probably won’t do much, if any, prep work for HBS’s post-interview reflection. Fortunately, this is the one part of the application process where not over-preparing can actually help you. After all, the exercise is — as HBS guidance suggests — meant to be a true reflection. It is not a formal essay with a strict writing style, nor a final case study. It isn’t something that should be prepared prior to your interview. However, there are some top tips I’d like to give every candidate.
Before you head off to your interview, write down these words: “My interview did not go as poorly as I think it did.” It sounds silly, I know. But ask almost any current or former HBS student how they thought their interview went after the conversation, and they will likely say they thought they bombed it. I certainly recall feeling like I bungled mine.
For that reason, I think candidates are much better served waiting until the day after their interview to begin their written reflection essay. Take some notes right after you walk out of your interview so you can remember the things you and the admissions committee member discussed, but then sleep on it before you start writing. Even that few hours of distance can help you gain some perspective.
It’s a piece of advice that has likely served many of us well when we’ve drafted an angry email at work, only to hold it in our drafts folder overnight before hitting send. By the time we wake up the next morning, we realize how disconnected we were from the big picture and delete it without sending.
I’m not saying every candidate will be devastated or angry after their interview, but time helps us gain perspective. And ultimately, this is one of the qualities HBS will be looking for in your application. Much as you’ll be expected to understand the key takeaways from a case study discussion in the HBS classroom, the HBS admissions committee wants to see that you’ve understood the key takeaways from your own interview experience.
One way to help do this successfully is to talk to a friend or family member about how the interview went. Relive the experience a bit, and talk through your feelings about your performance. Saying it aloud will help you gain the necessary perspective.
Writing the reflection
When you finally sit down to draft your reflection, there are three main points to bear in mind:
First, make sure you focus on your strengths. Often candidates make the mistake in essays of spending too much time preemptively rebutting what they see as their own weaknesses, clarifying what they believe they didn’t express well in the moment. In doing so, they forget to make the positive argument for why the MBA program should actually admit them.
Ultimately, all candidates have faults. There will be at least one question every candidate blows in each interview. But don’t reflect exclusively on your worst answers. Focus your energy instead on your selling points — the things that set you apart as a candidate.
Second, make sure you make the reflection relevant to the discussion you and your admissions committee member had. This will help demonstrate to the admissions committee that you didn’t pre-draft the reflection (this is a small but important point — pre-packaged responses will look bad!). Additionally, it will demonstrate you paid attention to the interview and are capable of summarizing the important points, as any business person would be responsible for doing after a meeting.
For example, I’ve described in the past my own interview experience. At one point, the admissions committee member asked me to “recommend something, anything” to her. I told her about a documentary I had seen recently called One Peace at a Time. It would have been appropriate for me to send her a quick link to the film’s website as part of my post-interview reflection. In fact, perhaps it would have been quite helpful, as I later found out that the admissions committee member went and watched the documentary based on my recommendation. Tidbits like that will help make sure your post-interview reflection is relevant and helpful for the admissions committee member that interviewed you.
While it’s important to have a few specific details like that included, in general you should keep the points high-level and relatively brief. Your reflection doesn’t have a formal word count, but HBS will be looking for candidates to demonstrate good judgment and strong communication skills. If you can’t convey the key ideas in a few short paragraphs and a clear conclusion, then you aren’t doing your best to demonstrate your strength as an MBA candidate and what you’ll contribute as a student. One of my favorite quotes, which I’ve mentioned before on this blog, summarizes the idea nicely: “I apologize for writing such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
Last but not least, it’s worth having someone else review your post-interview reflection before you send it in. If you take our advice and sleep on the interview before writing your reflection, this will require pretty quick turnaround. It’s great if you can find a colleague, friend, or family member to do this. Outside assistance will help catch typos and grammatical errors, yes, but it will also serve as a check on your judgment and thought process. It will help make sure you are keeping the interview experience in perspective.
Conclusion
This part of the interview process provides a unique opportunity to strengthen your candidacy, and we hope these tips help you use it well. Take a look at our ranking of the best MBA admissions consultants if you’re looking for help with this or any other part of the process.