哈佛商学院面试内幕


能够走到哈佛商学院面试官的面前可以算是一只脚踏进了哈佛，但也有不少人倒在了哈佛的门槛上。哈佛的面试到底怎么进行？面试官都会问那些问题？怎么回答才会加分？穿什么衣服？住在哪里？这些问题的答案可能都会影响到最终的面试结果。现在，哈佛校报给出了内部的参考答案。

哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School，简称HBS）的MBA招生面试前整整两周，亚历克斯•克莱纳每天晚上睡觉前都反复琢磨着一份可能被问到的问题清单。周日，和HBS招生官员约好的面试前一天晚上，他从康涅狄格州的父母那里驱车来到波士顿。     次日早上，那天刚过完感恩节，克莱纳穿上了深蓝色西装、蓝色衬衫、保守的领带以及黑皮鞋。他回忆说：“穿着上没有特别浮华的东西。”接着他到狄伦楼的一个小房间报道，屋内有两位女士坐在他对面。一位负责提问，另一位奋笔疾书，做着记录。     接下来的30分钟里，所有的问题中只有一个是他完全没有准备的：“你在大学里最自豪的时刻是什么时候？”     “这个问题让我措手不及，因为在这之前的所有问题我都有所准备，”克莱纳回忆说。     毕竟，那时距离卡莱纳从耶鲁大学（Yale University）毕业，拿到历史学学士学位，已经有将近4年的时间了。毕业后，他在纽约的美林证券（Merrill Lynch）从事了两年的投资银行业务，然后去旧金山的私募股票公司Vector Capital工作了两年。     他对HBS的招生人员讲述了当年身为大学冰上曲棍球队的主席和队长的一段经历，那时他帮助组织了一场对阵约翰霍金斯大学（Hopkins University）的比赛，以纪念第一场大学间冰球比赛。     “转眼间我的面试就结束了，”克莱纳回忆说。“走出去的时候我觉得才过了几秒钟，但我认为我表现不错，很好地表达了我的观点。这实际上挺令人欣慰的。两位面试官都挺友好，善于接受观点，在我们的对话中也很投入。第二位面试官虽然没有说话，但她通过点头以及面部表情向我表示，她在仔细听我的回答。”     克莱纳很快成为哈佛大学2014届的一名学生。现在，作为MBA校刊The Harbus的主编，他带领一组同学刊登了最新版的《哈佛商学院面试非正式指南》（Unofficial Harvard Business School Interview Guide）。     最新版的指南在以前的基础上做了本质的修订和更新——篇幅长达68页（去年的版本只有40页），是The Harbus史上出版的最长的面试指南。之前面试中最让克莱纳惊讶的问题，以及怎样回答这个问题的建议，正是指南所刊登的96个问题之一。所有这些问题都是由成功通过HBS招生过程的学生提供的真题。克莱纳还说：“我们在分析中深度剖析招生委员会提出的每个问题的目的。”     除了这些最常见的以及完全无法预测的问题，这本售价65美元的指南还增加了一个章节，介绍了成功通过面试的HBS申请人给出的最佳面试心得。（这本指南的所有收入用于支持The Harbus的刊发基金。）克莱纳和他的MBA同学还开了一个时间安排章节，敦促申请者至少用两个月时间准备研究生管理专业入学考试（GMAT），三个月时间单独完成HBS申请。

For two full weeks before his MBA admissions interview at Harvard Business School, Alex Kleiner would mull over a list of potential questions every night before going to bed. He drove up to Boston on a Sunday from his parents home in Connecticut the night before his scheduled session with an HBS admissions official.     On the Monday morning just after the Thanksgiving Day holiday, Kleiner slipped on a dark navy suit, a blue shirt, conservative tie, and black shoes. "Nothing too flashy," he recalls. And then he reported to a small room at Dillon House where two women sat opposite him. One asked the questions, and one feverishly scribbled notes.     Over the next 30 minutes, he received only one question for which he wasn't completely ready for: "What was your proudest moment in college?"     "It caught me off guard because all the questions I had received until then I had prepared for," recalls Kleiner.     After all, it had been nearly four years since Kleiner graduated from Yale University with an undergraduate degree in history. Since then, he had worked for two years as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch in New York and for two more years in private equity at Vector Capital in San Francisco.     He told the HBS admissions staffers how, as president and captain of the university's club ice hockey team, he helped to organize a match against Johns Hopkins University to commemorate the first collegiate ice hockey game ever played.     "It went by in the blink of an eye," recalls Kleiner. "I walked out thinking it had only begun a couple of seconds earlier. But I felt I had done a good job getting my points across. It was actually pretty comforting. Both people were kind and receptive and engaged in our conversation. The second person didn't speak but she would nod and make facial expressions to let me know she was listening to my answers."     Soon enough, Kleiner would be offered a seat in Harvard's class of 2014. Now, as editor-in-chief of The Harbus, the MBA student newspaper, the 28-year-old has found himself leading a team of students who have just published the latest "Unofficial Harvard Business School Interview Guide."     The newest edition of the guide has been substantively revised and updated -- and, at 68 pages long, (up from just 40 pages last year) is the largest ever published by The Harbus. The question that surprised Kleiner -- along with advice on how to approach an answer -- is among 96 questions revealed in the guide. All of those questions come from current students who successfully navigated the HBS admissions process. "We try in our analysis to give insight to what the admissions committee is after for each question," adds Kleiner.     In addition to the questions, which range from the most obvious to the highly unpredictable, the $65 guide contains a new section offering the best general admissions advice from successful HBS applicants. (The money made from the guide goes to support the foundation that publishes The Harbus newspaper). Kleiner and his MBA colleagues, for example, tossed in a section on timing, urging applicants to give themselves at least two months to study for the GMAT and three months to complete the HBS application alone.

这些问题，或者至少是指南里所列出的近100个问题，涵盖了大范围的话题和经历，轻易就能绊倒候选人。比如：“你这周所有的对话中最有趣的是哪个？”或是“跟我讲一个你目前在跟进并且非常感兴趣的新闻。”正是根据后一个问题，这份指南建议申请者从计划招生面试的那天开始实行一个新的每日晨间安排：“浏览所有主流商业新闻网站的头条，阅读看上去相当重要的所有报道，然后确保看过所有报道你所在行业，特别是你所在公司的网站（在面试时你不该表现得太空泛！）。”     对克莱纳而言，他的招生面试是逆序进行的。“面试官先问我现在的工作做了多久，喜欢它的哪些方面。接着，她问我在这之前的投行工作经历。她问我为什么从银行转到私募股权公司。对这个问题我有所准备，然后我们接着往前谈。我们聊了许多关于耶鲁和我在耶鲁的经历，包括我为什么学习历史专业以及我是否从中得到了预期的收获。”     对他而言，最有挑战性的问题是那些让你“稍微自夸一下或者自省一下。要坐在面试官面前，对他们侃侃而谈这些问题并不容易。整个面试是30分钟，问题一个一个接踵而至。由于面试官想提尽可能多的问题，所以你没太多时间去考虑自己的答案。这对许多人来说都很艰难，尤其是对那些两三年里没有换过工作的人，他们最近一次面试还是在获得那份工作的时候。     关于领导力的问题通常也是面试的一大部分。“他们绝对会问你许多关于领导力的问题，”克莱纳说。“你是什么类型的领导？你对领导的定义是怎样的，而你自己该怎样去达到这个定义的要求？在你的上一份工作中，是否跟真正非凡的领导共事过？请说出为什么你觉得他们很出色？”     今年的指南里最无法预测的问题是哪个？克莱纳有几个答案，包括“假设我是一个8岁的小孩，请向我解释一件事，能让我听懂。”     “这个有趣的问题经常被问到，”他说。“问题的关键在于看你是否准备好去接受HBS的案例分析法。你自己的想法，无论多复杂，可能都要解释给一个班90个学生。有些人是某个领域的专家，其他人却可能还是新手。所以他们用这个非常简单的方法去测试学生的这一能力。学会这个技能非常有用。”     另一个常见的问题是：“跟我说一件你想开始着手做的事，再说一件你想做得更多的事，以及一件你希望少做点的事。”     “教授也经常让学生提供类似的反馈，”克莱纳说。“这对你来说是一次机会，你可以站出来，诚实地评估自己。比起典型的优缺点问题，它要求你表达得更具体。”

The questions, or at least the nearly 100 shared in the guide, cover a fairly vast range of issues and experiences that could easily trip up a candidate. Consider: "What is the most interesting conversation you have had this week?" or "Tell me a piece of news that you are currently following and very interested in?" The latter question is the motivation for the advice to begin a new morning routine on the day you schedule your admissions interview. "Browse all the headlines of all the major business news sites, read any stories that seem particularly pertinent, and be sure to hit up any sites that cover your industry and employer in particular (you don't want to get broadsided during your interview!)."     For Kleiner, the admissions interview worked backwards. "I was asked about my time at my current job and what I liked about it. Then, I was asked about my experience in investment banking before that. She asked why I switched to private equity from banking. I had prepared for that and gave my answer and then we kept going backwards. We started talking a lot about Yale and my experiences there, including why I majored in history and whether I got out of it what I wanted."     As far as he is concerned, the most challenging questions are those that ask you "to brag a little bit or to be introspective. It's not always easy to sit in front of an interviewer and say that to them. The whole interview is crammed into 30 minutes and it is really rapid fire. You don't get much of a reaction to your answers because they're trying to fit in as many questions as possible. It can be very tough for a lot of people, especially those who haven't interviewed for two or three years since they went through the process to get their last job."     Questions on leadership often absorb a good chunk of the interview time. "They definitely ask you a lot of questions on leadership," says Kleiner. "What kind of leader are you? What is your definition of a leader and how might you fit that description? Have you worked with any truly exceptional leaders in your last job and tell me why you thought they were great?"     The most unpredictable question in the guide this year? Kleiner has a few favorites that fit that description, including, "Explain something to me as if I were an eight-year-old."     "It's a funny one that comes up commonly," he says. "The point of this question is to see if you are ready to participate in the case method at HBS. Your own thoughts, however complicated, may have to be explained to 90 people in a classroom, some of whom may be experts in a field and others who may be novices. So they are testing all of that in a very simple question. It's a really good skill to have."     Another common question: "Tell me something you want to start doing, something you want to do more of, and something you want to do less of."     "Professors often ask for similar feedback from their students," says Kleiner. "It's a chance for you to step out and give an honest appraisal of who you are. It forces you to be more concrete than a more typical strength and weakness question."

这本指南把问题分成6个部分：经历型、当前事件型、领导力、情景问题、事业以及课程。同时，指南还提供了一些章节，可以让你的波士顿之行更有成效：去哪里、到哪里吃东西，在哪购物和住在哪的清单。     当然，对穿着的建议也不可或缺：女士着装，指南建议颜色为西装颜色，款式建议简洁经典。“裙子的高度至少要及膝，”编辑们建议说。“鞋子应是高跟的包鞋，鞋跟高度为1至3英尺。”男士建议穿绅士款式的西装：“确保套装合身。向裁缝或你母亲咨询一下……正式面试时穿着的颜色应为：黑、灰或海军蓝。你可以选择单色或（有品的）条纹色。虽然一套好的西装能确保万无一失，备用的运动外套也是可以的。”     克莱纳说，他的面试准备大量依赖于指南。“我从面试指南入手，列出了一个问题清单。然后根据我自己的申请和简历，加入了更具体的问题。在几周的过程里，我每天睡觉前都会思考这些问题以及我的答案。     所以当坐下来面试的时候，他觉得准备已经很充足了。“直到快结束的时候，我还没有机会问问题，”他回忆到。“不过她们的最后一个问题是‘在面试结束前，你还有什么想补充的？请说其中一件事。’我说：‘我真的很想到哈佛学习。这里是我的第一选择，我能在这儿看到未来。’”确实如此。（财富中文网）     译者：默默

The guide divides questions into six categories: experience, current events, leadership, situational, career, and curriculum. There also are sections to make your visit to Boston productive: lists of where to go and where to eat, where to shop and where to stay.     And, of course, there is the requisite advice on what to wear: For women, the guide recommends a suit color and style that is simple and classic. "Skirt lengths need to be at least knee length," the editors counsel. "Wear closed toed pumps and a heel height of one-to-three inches." For men, the guidance is Esquire-esque: "Make sure the suit fits properly. Ask a tailor (or your mom).... Suit color palate for the formal interview: black, gray, or navy blue. You may choose plain or (sensible) pinstripes. Reserved sport coat also works, though a good suit is fail-safe."     Kleiner says he relied heavily on the guide to help him prepare for the interview. "I formulated a list of questions, using the interview guide as a starting point. Then, I added more specific questions based on my application and resume. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I would think about them and what my answers would be before I went to bed every night."     So when it came to the sit down for his session, he felt prepared. "As it came to the end, I didn't get an opportunity to ask questions," he recalls. "But they gave me the last word. 'What is one thing you want to convey as your interview comes to an end?' I said that 'I really want to come to Harvard. This is my first choice. This is where I see myself.'" Indeed.

哈佛商学院招生主管详解面试内幕


怎样才能如愿进入哈佛商学院学习？GMAT高分自然不用说，但除此之外呢？我们不妨听哈佛商学院招生主管利奥波德谈谈她认为申请者还应该具备哪些软素质。

迪•利奥波德，哈佛商学院招生主管

你是否曾经思考过，成功申请哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）需要满足哪些条件？GMAT高分是毫无疑问的。哈佛每年招生900人，收到的申请数量却超过9,000份，而且申请者的GMAT平均分都在700分以上。     那么，申请者怎么才能脱颖而出？迪•利奥波德1980年获得哈佛MBA学位，已在哈佛商学院工作多年，近六年来一直担任招生主管。我们不妨听听她高见。     利奥波德总有办法让紧张的申请者在最后一关、也就是面试中放松下来。她告诉他们，比如她到时候会查收一下电子邮件，因此请他们写下3、4个问题，面试结束后她可以问他们这些问题。有一次，遇到一个特别紧张的面试者，利奥波德提了一个自认很容易回答的问题：“假设今天是新年前夜，你有很多新年计划，你希望在新的一年能在哪些方面取得进步……”     结果，这一招居然不管用。可怜的家伙还是坐在那儿，如坐针毡。最后，他说：“我希望能做事更有条理一些。”     “好，”利奥波德说，当时她想：“接下来我该说什么呢”于是，她让他举个例子。     “我本以为这趟行程该带的东西都带了，”他说。“但昨晚我到了波士顿，住进酒店的时候已经晚了。时间已经是周日晚上的10点。我打开行李，这时，我发现居然没有准备衬衫，而第二天一早9点我就得去哈佛商学院面试。”     利奥波德开始有了兴趣。他当时正穿着一件衬衫，干净雪白，熨得平平整整。“你怎么办？”     “我穿上了我的大学生联谊会T恤，”他说。“然后做了一块广告牌挂在身上：‘我愿意拿T恤交换一件正装衬衫’。然后，我走到了街头。”     录取！“这就是我们希望在现实生活中看到的，”利奥波德解释称。“也就是能想出办法的人。不抱怨，不装腔作势，就是这么简单。”     那位申请者的年龄不到20岁。他参加的是哈佛商学院的“2+2计划”，即在每届MBA招生中为大三学生留出约100个名额，这些人会保留学籍，完成本科学业并工作两年后在进入哈佛就读。

Have you thought about what it takes to get into Harvard Business School these days? Stratospheric board scores, that goes without saying. Harvard receives over 9,000 applications for 900 spots, and the average score on the GMAT for the applicant pool -- the applicant pool -- is over 700.     So how does one stand out? Dee Leopold, who earned her Harvard MBA in 1980 and has been working at the B-school for many years, the last six as director of admissions, offers some clues.     Leopold has tricks she uses to put nervous applicants at ease during their final hurdle, the mandatory interview. She'll tell them, for instance, that she's going to check her email, and invite them to jot down three or four questions she can ask them when she's finished. Once, when faced with a particularly anxious interviewee, she tossed him what she thought was a softball question: "Let's pretend it's New Year's Eve and you're making a list of resolutions of what you're going to be better at this year…."     It didn't help. The poor guy sat there, miserable. Finally, he said, "I'd really like to be more organized."     "Okay," Leopold says she was thinking, "Where am I going to go with this?" She asked him for an example.     "I thought I'd packed really well for this trip," he began. "But I got to my hotel late last night, 10:00 on a Sunday night in Boston. I unpacked, and I realized I have a 9:00 Monday morning interview at Harvard Business School and I don't have a shirt."     Leopold perked up. He was wearing a shirt now. Clean and white and neatly pressed. "What did you do?"     "I put on my fraternity tee-shirt," he said, "made a sandwich board that said 'Will barter for dress shirt,' and went out on the street."     Accept! "That's exactly what you want in real life," Leopold explains. "Somebody who's going to figure it out. No fuss, no fanfare, that's it."     That applicant was barely 20 years old. He came in through Harvard's "2+2 Program," which sets aside about 100 slots in every class for college juniors who agree to postpone their enrollment until they've finished school and worked for two years.

哈佛和大多数一流商学院一样，多年来一直希望MBA申请者至少应该具备一定的工作经验。从十年前开始，哈佛商学院就已经停止了招收完全没有工作经验的本科毕业生。但利奥波德称，为此哈佛损失了太多优秀的申请者，因为希望早日完成学业的学生们都申请去了法学院、公共政策学院和博士生项目。2+2计划是“走进本科校园，汇聚学生人气”的一种方式。利奥波德称：“然后我们可以谈谈MBA学位，它不只是打开一扇门，而是让很多门都保持开启状态。我们不想让你现在就入学。但不妨从现在就开始考虑考虑？”     哈佛商学院最希望通过2+2计划吸引“科技、工程和数学专业的学生。他们不太懂商业，但最终仍会从商，并且有所建树，因为他们知道如何做事，如何制造，如何思考。”利奥波德称，哈佛可以在这个基础之上传授商业技能，合作技巧和说服艺术。“有点像既会反手，又会正手。”     利奥波德和她的同事们每年到访约60家本科学校，宣讲2+2计划，有些学校传统上并非不是哈佛的生源地。（“我们喜欢位于密歇根州弗林特的凯特林大学（Kettering），”即前通用汽车学院（General Motors Institute），以工程学院和合作项目著称）如果说有什么问题的话，那就是这个项目近年来太成功了，产生了利奥波德称为“松鼠钻进喂鸟器”的现象，也就是喧宾夺主的问题。     被利奥波德比作“松鼠”的是“那些还在娘胎里就知道自己将来希望成为投资银行家的人”，他们把2+2计划视为捷径。倒不是利奥波德对投资银行家有什么看法。（“我有一些最慷慨、最友善的同学就在华尔街工作。因此，我绝不会，你明白的……”）利奥波德说，只是松鼠虽然很可爱，但却具有一定侵略性，它们最终挤走了鸟儿。接着，她讲了另一个故事。     “故事发生在招生办公室的楼下，”利奥波德说。“当时所有人都在楼下集合，个个都很紧张。他们在想，招生办公楼简直比牙医诊所还可怕。我下楼叫一个人，带她上楼面试。远远地，我看到这位年轻姑娘在楼梯半道停住了。她说：‘稍等，我得下楼一趟。’她说，她刚才告诉坐在她旁边的人，到了3点钟就应该自己上楼去面试。“我必须得和他们说一声，不是这么回事，到时候会有人带我们上楼。”     “这些事情真的会触动我，”利奥波德说。“这么年轻，在全力投入一件事的时候还能够想到别人，真的很了不起。”录取！     译者：老榆木

Like most top-tier B-schools, Harvard has long preferred that its MBA candidates arrive with at least some job experience. It stopped accepting students straight out of college a decade ago. But according to Leopold, Harvard was losing too many fast-track candidates to law schools, public policy schools, and Ph.D. programs. The 2+2 option was conceived as a way to "get on a college campus and attract a crowd," Leopold says. "We could then talk about this degree that doesn't open one door, it keeps many doors open. We don't want you to come now. But what if you think about it now?"     The students Harvard wants to attract most through 2+2 are "STEM people -- science, technology, engineering and math. People that don't know a lot about business, but they're going to end up in business, and they're going to be really good at it because they know how to do things, make things, think through things." Start with that, Leopold says, add what Harvard can teach -- business know-how, collaborative skills, the art of persuasion --and "it's like having a backhand and a forehand."     Leopold and her colleagues promote 2+2 with visits to about 60 college campuses a year, not all of them traditional Harvard feeder schools. ("We love Kettering in Flint," the former General Motors Institute, known for its engineering school and co-op program) If anything, the program has been too successful in recent years, giving rise to a predicament Leopold describes as "squirrels at the bird feeder."     The squirrels in Leopold's analogy are "people who've known they want to be investment bankers since they were in diapers," and see 2+2 as a shortcut. Not that Leopold has a problem with investment bankers. ("Some of the most generous and kind classmates I have are on Wall Street. Therefore I would never, you know, geez….") It's just that, well, cute as they are, squirrels are aggressive, Leopold says. They crowd out the songbirds. Then she tells one more story.     "It happened downstairs in the admission office," Leopold says. "Everybody congregates down there. They're all nervous. They're all thinking this is worse than the dentist's office. I go down to pick someone up and bring her upstairs for an interview. And this other young woman I was watching from a distance, she stops halfway up the stairs and says, 'Wait, I need to go back downstairs.' She had told the person sitting next to her that she should just go up the stairs at 3:00. She said, 'I have to tell them no, someone will come and get you.'     "Those are the things that really get me," says Leopold. "Wow, when you're so young and self-absorbed and you can already think about somebody else, that's, like, really beautiful." Accept!

求职面试中哪些问题千万问不得


“这份工作是干嘛的？”“你愿意跟我约会吗？”，“我能预支工资吗？”“每天都得上班吗？”面试者提出这些问题时，主考官瞬间就清醒了。

有些人在参加面试之前就想好了一些明智的问题。而有些人则截然相反。最近，猎头公司OfficeTeam对650名人力资源总监和招聘经理进行了调查，要求他们回忆求职者提出的最稀奇古怪或者最令人不快的问题。下面是其中一部分结果：     • “这份工作是干什么的？”     • “我每天都得来上班吗？”     • “你愿意跟我约会吗？”     • “你想不想坐上我的新车出去兜风？”     • “这间办公室用的是什么颜色的涂料？”     • “能让我丈夫替我完成这份测试吗？”     • “这家公司的老板是单身吗？”     • “你们这里有没有适合我爱人的岗位？”     • “在这里工作的女人长什么样儿？”     • “你们允许中午午睡吗？”     • “我需要在工作中投入多少时间？”     • “我能预支工资吗？”     • “我能把我的办公桌搬到自助餐厅旁边吗？”     • “你们能帮我找一间公寓吗？”     • “你能帮我完成雇佣测验吗？”     • “我能在每周二休息吗？”     • “我最快多久可以有第一次休假？”     • “能每个月给我三周假期，让我追求我的音乐事业吗？”     • “我能在生日那天休假吗？”     关于求职者的最后四条要求，OfficeTeam执行董事罗伯特•霍斯金解释道，休假时间是福利的一部分，所以，“最好在雇主真正表现出愿意提供工作机会的意愿之后再讨论”——当然，这种情况不太可能出现。（财富中文网）     译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Some people arrive at job interviews with a well thought out list ofsmart questions. And then there are the other kind. Staffing firm OfficeTeam recently asked 650 human resources executives and hiring managers to recall the oddest or most off-putting queries posed by applicants. A sampling of the results:     • "What job is this for?"     • "Do I have to be at work every day?"     • "Would you go on a date with me?"     • "Do you want to take a ride in my new car?"     • "What color is the paint in this office?"     • "Can my husband finish this test for me?"     • "Is the boss single?"     • "Do you have a job for my partner?"     • "What are the women who work here like?"     • "Do you allow midday naps?"     • "How much time do I have to put in?"     • "Could I get a pay advance?"     • "Can I place my desk near the cafeteria?"     • "Could you help me find an apartment?"     • "Can you help me with the employment test?"     • "Can I get every Tuesday off?"     • "How soon can I take my first vacation?"     • "Can I have three weeks off every three months to pursue my music career?"     • "Can I have my birthday off?"     Regarding those last four, OfficeTeam executive director Robert Hosking notes that vacation time is part of compensation, which "is best discussed after an employer has expressed a serious intent to extend a job offer" -- however unlikely that might be.