The INSEAD alumni interview: what they ask and how to prepare

If you're here, congratulations. Your essays and your recommendations did their job, and INSEAD wants to talk to you. Most applications never get this far.

INSEAD interviews differently from most schools. You get two separate interviews, both with alumni, usually in the country you live in. Here's what mine were like, what the interviewers are really judging, and how I'd prepare.

How the INSEAD interviews work

• Two interviews. Only INSEAD and HEC Paris give you two. Everywhere else it's one.
• Both with alumni, not admissions staff. They're assigned based on the country you're in or the industry you work in, so they can judge what you're telling them.
• They work from your CV and essays, not your full file.
• You get their name. INSEAD tells you who's going to interview you. Use that.

What mine were like

My two. Both were INSEAD alumni in Tokyo, where I was living, and both ran about forty to forty-five minutes. One worked in tech, my industry, and the other in consulting, where my essays said I wanted to go. Both asked why an MBA now and how it would help my career. After that they split. The tech one dug into what I'd built and why I'd gone into tech at all. The consulting one wanted to know why consulting, what I thought it would give me, and what was really motivating the move. Same application, two different readers, and each one pulled on the thread they were qualified to judge.

I don't remember my exact questions, and honestly that's the point: they weren't tricky. It was a back-and-forth about my background. What I do, why INSEAD, why this decision now, and what I plan to do afterwards.

If your stories are clear, the questions are the easy part. Prepare for the interviewer you've been given, not for a generic one.

What they're really asking

When it's an alumnus, there are really three questions in their head, and they're all about fit.

• Is this someone I can see going to school with?
• Would I have enjoyed being at INSEAD with this person?
• Will they contribute to the school positively?

That's often literally what the school asks them for feedback on afterwards. Think about those three before you think about anything else.

"Can I see this person as my classmate" isn't the same as "is this person impressive". It's more like: would I want to be in a study group with them at two in the morning the night before a deadline. That's why the hobbies question matters, and why being able to laugh at your own failure matters.

The candidate who lists achievements for forty minutes loses to the one who asks the interviewer a real question about their own year.

They'll dig, so prepare three questions deep

Interviews are harder than essays in one specific way: the interviewer digs. They'll pick one of your stories and ask what happened next, why you did that, what the other person said.

The follow-ups on one story. Interviewer: "Tell me about replacing your own system." Then: "Who made the decision, you or your manager?" Then: "How did your team react?" Then: "What would you have done if the company had said no?" If you've only rehearsed the essay version, the third question finishes you.

For every story, prepare the three questions a sceptic would ask: why you, what went wrong, and what you'd do differently.

And know each story well enough to tell it in thirty seconds or in three minutes. The interviewer decides which one they've got time for.

Have your pitch ready

You have to make a first impression quickly, sometimes over a camera. Have your elevator pitch ready: who you are, what you've done, where you're going, in under a minute.

My pitch, more or less. "I'm an AI engineer at a dating-app company in Tokyo. I started a company at university, taught myself to code, moved to Japan on my own, and for the last few years I've been building systems that screen millions of images a day and leading engineers in three countries. Outside of work I volunteer on a helpline. I want to move from building the technology to deciding where it gets used, first in consulting on public-sector work in Asia, and eventually in a business of my own."

Every clause in that is a door into one of my stories, and the interviewer picks which one to open.

Research your interviewer

When you get the name, spend an hour on it.

1. Read their LinkedIn properly. Where they worked before the MBA, what they did after, where they are now. Look for what they'll understand instantly about your story, and what you'll need to explain.
2. Find the overlap. Same industry, same country, same career switch. One genuine point of connection turns an interrogation into a conversation. Don't force it, though.
3. Ask your network if anyone knows them. Send a two-line message to the alumni you've already spoken to.

That last step isn't a theory. Before my INSEAD interview I'd reached out to a lot of alumni, including an ex-INSEADer in Singapore working at McKinsey, because that's what I wanted to do at the time. It turned out my interviewer was a friend of hers.

I've no idea how much it counted. But I walked in with a warm introduction instead of as a stranger, and I wouldn't have had it if I'd done my research from the website alone.

The two-line message. "Hi Mei, quick one. My INSEAD interview is next Thursday with [name], who I think was in the class after you. Do you know them at all, and is there anything I should know about how they interview?" Send it to everyone you spoke to at that school. Most of them will say no. It only takes one yes.

Do at least five mock interviews

1. Friends first, for fluency. They won't ask hard questions, but they'll tell you when you ramble.
2. Then someone who interviews for a living. A colleague who hires, a friend in consulting.
3. Then INSEAD alumni. They know what the real one feels like, and many of them have interviewed candidates themselves. Lead with your interview date, because a date gets people moving.

After each mock, ask two blunt questions: which answer would've made you doubt me as a classmate, and which story didn't land. Fix those first.

The first two mocks are for finding the weak stories. The rest are for making the strong ones sound unrehearsed.

Questions to ask them

Two or three real ones. Not ones you could've answered from the website, and not ones designed to impress.

• What didn't you expect about the programme when you were in it?
• Looking at where I'm trying to go, what would you do in the first term?
• What do the people who get the most out of INSEAD have in common?

The last one tells you what they think a good classmate is, which is the thing they're grading you on.

How to come across

Be real, be honest, be enthusiastic. Sit up straight, smile, stay calm, and try to create a warm atmosphere. Body language matters more than people expect.

And don't be too humble. You don't have to be cocky about what you've done, but you do have to put yourself in the room and say the good things plainly.

At the end of the day, remember they're human too. They've been exactly where you are.

Afterwards

Thank them within a day. And if you get admitted, reach out and thank them again. It costs you nothing and they remember it.

Do this now

Write your sixty-second pitch and say it out loud against a timer. Then pick your strongest story and write down the three follow-up questions you'd least like to be asked.

Answer those out loud. If one of them stumps you, that's your next mock interview.