Anna Farrus, Director of MBA Recruitment and Admissions at IMD, shares her impressions of the new global approach to our Assessment Days:
“Assessment Days are designed to get to know our candidates better, and for candidates to get to know IMD better. Besides the admissions interview, candidates are asked to participate in a number of individual and group activities. It is an intense day, for both candidates and Admissions! It also allows candidates to start developing their network. They spend the whole day with other candidates, and many of them already create friendships during the event.
For the first time, the MBA Recruitment and Admissions team have travelled all over the world to carry out our famous assessment days. We have visited Dubai, Sao Paulo, Mexico DF, New Delhi and Singapore, and assessed more than 40 candidates during these international assessment days.
I personally travelled to three of those cities, and it was a great experience. And yet, not very different from the assessment days in Lausanne. Everyone is nervous, with a look of anticipation in their faces. Most of the candidates meet before the event, and so there is always a sense of camaraderie amongst them.
While the groups that we met at the international events were less diverse, we were still able to see some of the same behaviours: the candidate(s) who would try to take the lead, the candidate who tried to involve everyone in the discussion, the one who remained quiet for most of the time yet had great insights,… Discussions were lively and interesting and, in some cases, quite loud!!
By the end of the day, we were all exhausted but happy. For us, the difficult part started a few days later, when the Admissions Committee had to make some difficult decisions!
For more insights into these days, read the posts later this week from Tyler, who took part in an Assessment day in Lausanne, and Ruchi, who did hers in New Delhi.
