In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts delve into the evolving role of video essays in MBA admissions. As AI technologies like ChatGPT begin to influence traditional application essays, top business schools are increasingly turning to video responses to gauge the real-time communication skills and spontaneous thinking abilities of their candidates. From INSEAD to Kellogg to London Business School, discover how these institutions utilize platforms like Kira Talent to see beyond the polished essays to the authentic person behind the application.

The co-hosts share strategies for excelling in video essays, from perfecting your on-camera presence to preparing succinct, impactful responses that demonstrate your leadership and problem-solving skills. This episode is a must-listen, providing the tools to turn video essay challenges into opportunities to shine.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.370] – John

Well, hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. As I’ve often noted before, Maria is the founder of Application Lab, and Caroline is the co-founder of Fortuna Admissions and former Managing Director of Admissions at INSEAD. We want to talk today about those video questions that admissions officers are increasingly asking applicants to do. Years ago, the first major school to introduce video questions for admissions was the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, in part because the firm that pioneered this, Kira Talent, was based in Canada. Yale and Kellogg followed. Now, there’s a wealth of schools with video questions. We think they’ve assumed even greater importance in the era of AI because admissions officials, while they still require written essays, may be discounting them to some degree because they fear that ChatGPT is becoming a drafter of these documents that are then massage by candidates who submit the answers. But what’s interesting is different schools use these videos. Some give you a fair amount of time to prepare, even offering up clues as to what the questions are or the actual questions themselves.

[00:01:40.970] – John

Others give you a very short period of time. We want to go over what the different schools are requiring and how you can best prepare for them. Caroline, you’ve done a deep dive in researching what’s out there. What have you found?

[00:01:55.010] – Caroline

Yeah. So definitely there has been a gradual increase in the number of schools number of top business schools that are requiring these video questions. And as you said, I think it’s a great way for schools to get a sense for how someone actually communicates live in a format that, for the time being, is, I think, It’s really impossible to fake. So it’s a great way for schools to cross-check people’s communication skills and how they think on their feet. And if they have a really strong written application, but they really fumble the video questions, then that can definitely raise a flag. And as you said, there are different ways that schools are using this. Many of the schools are using the Kira Talent platform, and the schools can customize that. So in some cases, schools have a fixed question plus some random questions. Some schools just give candidates random questions. So for example, at INSEAD and ESA, you will get randomly assigned questions from a database of thousands of questions, right? So you can’t predict what you’re going to be asked. Some schools do a mix. So some schools have a fixed question plus a random question.

[00:03:08.590] – Caroline

So that’s the case for London Business School and for Kellogg. I think also for Oxford. Some schools require you to do the video assessment when you submit your written application, and then other schools use this process at the interview stage. So it’s not required of people who get dinged pre-interview, but it’s in addition to the interview stage. So LBS is in that category. And also, some schools are using this platform, the Kira Talent platform, to have candidates do a live written exercise. So that’s the case for Rotman and for Oxford. And I think the INSEAD is introducing that as well. So it’s a timed written response to a randomly generated prompt. And also actually, Ross, I think, has that as as well. And they will be candidates are required to write a question or write an email on a topic that they might need to address if they were a student at the school. So I think that, again, that is a response to AI and concerns that students or candidates may be using AI to generate their applications, but you can’t use AI when you’re under these time conditions using the Kira Talent platform.

[00:04:25.820] – Caroline

So it’s a way for schools to assess your ability to perform in a unscripted and unprepared environment.

[00:04:34.350] – John

So, Caroline, you’ve done some research that shows some schools have given people quite a bit of time to prepare to answer a question. Other schools want it within 15 seconds. Which are those?

[00:04:46.750] – John

Yeah, that’s right. They give you 60 seconds to prepare and 90 seconds to respond. Other schools, for example, INSEAD, you get 45 seconds to prepare and then 60 seconds to respond. MIT is also introducing another video question. So they already had a question asking you to introduce yourself to your future classmates. So a sex subject where you do a 60 second video. But they’re also introducing this year a second question, which will be a randomly generated question from their database of questions. And for that one, they say that you’ll get 10 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to respond. So that’s a much shorter time frame. And I guess they’re looking to imitate more closely the experience of actually being in a live interview and having to respond to a live question immediately.

[00:05:36.530] – John

Now, what does an admissions official really get here by requiring video answers to questions?

[00:05:43.830] – Caroline

Well, so from what I’ve heard from the schools, they find these very useful as a way of getting a sense for people’s communication skills, whether the way they communicate cross-check with how they present themselves in their written applications. They’re also looking to see how well you think on your feet, which you will definitely need to do in the classroom. So it’s a way for seeing if you get thrown a random question in a challenging business school context, are you going to be able to hold your own? They’re short, right? So often you will be doing three or four responses of 60 seconds each. So if you think of the amount of time that adds to the file readers work, it’s only three or four minutes. But in that time, I think they can observe quite a lot, and they can learn quite a lot about the candidates. Also, many of these schools aren’t necessarily observing the candidate directly themselves, right? So a lot of these schools are using alumni or students for interviews, and so the admissions commission community never gets a chance to actually meet the candidate in person. And so the interview reports, while they’re very useful, it’s not from someone who’s a member of the admissions team.

[00:06:55.660] – Caroline

And so this is a way for the admissions team to actually observe the candidate directly. I think that they find that short recording and the ability to observe someone live in an unscripted environment, get a sense for the authentic candidate, they find that a really useful complement to the written application.

[00:07:15.480] – John

Yeah, and I will say, I have sat in admissions committee meetings at a few schools, including Rotman, and I’ve watched some of these videos. I can tell you that, boy, you can tell a lot a candidate when you see them in person speaking as opposed to reading something that they’ve written or looking at a standardized test. You can tell immediately if they have any professional presence. You can tell how awkward they are. To your point, you can tell how communicative they are, how articulate they are in expressing a point of view, which is super important in a business school class. Now, Maria, there’s got to be a way to prepare for this, What advice do you have for people who know they have to overcome, I’ll use overcome as a word because I think it’s more challenging, overcome a video hurdle to get into a highly selective school? What advice should you provide here?

[00:08:17.420] – Maria

As you might imagine, I have a lot of advice, but I think some of the key points I bring up here are, first of all, practice, even if you don’t have access to the Kira Talent platform, even just putting on your webcam and practicing saying anything. It doesn’t even have to be the sample questions because it is a very unnatural sensation to stare into your camera, first of all, when you’re talking, instead of looking down at yourself or looking down at the interviewer’s face on the screen. In order to make eye contact with the video, you’re going to want to be trying to train yourself to look at the video camera. It’s not comfortable necessarily to have exactly 90 seconds to give an answer. Just getting into the of practicing a few times, what does it feel like to give an answer in only 90 seconds? Do I only talk for 10 seconds? Maybe that’s not enough. You can just record yourself. Again, there’s no shortage of free webcam browser-based types of services out there where you can just record it or even just use your phone even to record yourself and time yourself and practice that.

[00:09:24.280] – Maria

Just getting comfortable with the idea of doing it is the first thing. Then the second big tip that I have I advise people to have, especially for the schools where you think you might get some a behavioral interview around your leadership style or teamwork or a time that a client was difficult or whatever it might be. I call them Swiss Army knife stories. These are good for any interview, but they’re especially good for these very quick ones where you’re not going to get a follow-up question. You’re not going to be able to clarify yourself. You’re not going to be able to look at the person’s face and say, They just missed that. I need to… Hold up. Let me back up and re-explain that because I can tell that I missed the mark. In situations like this, it’s really useful to have Swiss army knife stories that you can pick and choose and pull and twist into different shapes depending on which question you get asked. If you have some key questions where you’re like, Well, if I get asked a teamwork question or a leadership question or a persuasion question, I can pick and choose the different elements of the story and be ready to go regardless of which flavor of question I get.

[00:10:22.500] – Maria

Now, all of this having been said, don’t overly prepare, because if the entire point of these videos is to try to get a sense of your communication presence and your style and all those good things that Caroline just brought up, if all of a sudden the camera clicks on and you are like, Thank you so much for asking me about why I want to come to your school. The three reasons I want to come to your school are as follows. Obviously, you’re defeating the purpose. Also, if you prepare too much for a specific type of answer, what if you get a variation of that question and you answer the wrong question?

[00:10:55.170] – John

You need to come off this colloquially casual, to the point, relax, relaxed, comfortable, right?

[00:11:01.940] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. Because I’m trying to get a sense of who are you going to be on my campus? Would I want to sit next to you in a classroom? Also, what are my corporate recruiters going to think of you? If they come to my campus and they hire out my Career Services office and set up all the little cubicles for the interview, am I going to be embarrassed by you? Or are you someone that the recruiters are going to say, Hey, you know what? I had a really good time coming to your school meeting your students. They’re all great. We loved them.

[00:11:32.490] – John

One of the things I think that can disadvantage a person is, let’s face it, if you’re an introvert and you’re uncomfortable in front of a camera, you are immediately at a disadvantage. If we can argue that one of the reasons why business schools are so effective is because they take people who have a lot of rough edges, stand them down, and get them prepared for the professional world. Our videos are disadvantage for candidates who don’t feel awkward in front of a camera? Let’s face it, there’s so many people who you take a picture of them and they have to see it before anyone would post it on social media because they want to make sure they’re looking their best. You know exactly what I’m talking about here, I bet. Am I right?

[00:12:23.220] – Caroline

Well, yes. I mean, you have less control over this, right? I think it’s also important to keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you don’t give the best possible response. Many candidates often think afterwards, Oh, I could have said this, I could have said that, I could have used this example. They know that it’s a difficult exercise. And I’ve heard this from the schools as well, that they’re not looking for perfection. So they understand that, as Maria said, it’s an anxiety-inducing context because you don’t have a human person looking at you who you can engage with. So there’s that barrier that people naturally feel when they’re just talking at a computer screen rather than talking to a real human being. And the candidates know that there’s a lot at stake, and they get a random question. If they get three or four questions, if you fluff one slightly, don’t worry about it. So they’re not looking for you to give absolutely spot on, perfect, perfectly delivered questions in 58 seconds, and it cuts off at 60 seconds. So I think that candidates can keep that in mind. But also, as Mary said, it’s definitely really worth preparing.

[00:13:43.120] – Caroline

And I do see candidates approve if they do record example responses and just get used to the format and also get used to the timing. It’s quite tricky. In a real interview, no one’s going to cut you off at 60 seconds, but the platform will cut you off at that limit. And so it’s a shame if you haven’t wrapped up your response by that question, your response to the question by that point. So just do try to get used to that time frame. That’s why the practice is also useful, just so that you can internalize how quickly that time elapses. And also a mistake that I see candidates make sometimes is that they get a question and then they give an introduction to their response, and their introduction It takes 30, 40 seconds, and then they have 15 seconds to give the subsets of their response. And that can be more difficult for some candidates than others, depending on the cultural background. Some people are more chatty and likely to deliver longer responses than others. So you have to get used to diving straight into your response. You do not have time for an introduction, for a preamble, for repeating the question.

[00:14:57.330] – Caroline

You just have to get straight down to it. So there are some tips like that that can help you. And just the practice does really, I think, give you a better shot at doing well in the actual recording. And I would say as well, just think a little bit about the staging. So people are used to being on Zoom now, and so generally this works just fine. But just be careful that what is behind you, just look professional, dress appropriately, don’t If you don’t have piles of laundry in the background. I advise people to put their computer up a little bit higher because laptop cameras are often around chin level, and that’s not a very flattering angle for most people. So it’s good to put your computer on a pile of books or something. So the camera is also at a more natural level. If you were looking someone in the eye and they were sitting opposite you, it’s going to be more at that level. And make sure the lighting is appropriate, right? That you’re not You’re not in the dark. So just think carefully about your staging and the setup and make sure that you’ve got a good context and also that you are not going to be interrupted.

[00:16:12.650] – Caroline

There’s no background noise. Just make sure that you’re able to do this and focus on the exercise and not worry about what else is going on around you.

[00:16:20.240] – John

Because there is no redo, right? I mean, it’s one shot and you’re over.

[00:16:24.950] – Caroline

It’s one shot and you’re over. I mean, I have heard that if there’s really a disaster, like the fire alarm off, you can contact the school and they will reset it for you. But it’s best to try and avoid that scenario.

[00:16:37.050] – John

Now, we mentioned one MIT question, which is introduce yourself to your classmates. What are the range of questions that people can expect from different schools. Maria, can you give us a sense of how the questions may differ? We do know that mostly they come from a larger bank of questions that are randomly selected by a computer for each in most cases, although that varies from school to school. But what’s the range? What things can people expect to be asked?

[00:17:08.940] – Maria

Sure. There are a couple of predictable buckets that these questions tend to fall into. As you might imagine, It’s only a valuable exercise for the admissions team if you don’t know in advance precisely what question you’re going to get, but they do tend to fall into different categories. Sometimes that category is something along the lines of why do you want to get an MBA? Why is now the right time? Getting your motivation for why you’re applying to this particular school or for this degree. Very many of them are often these behavioral types of questions, trying to get at your leadership style, what’s a failure that you’ve had? What’s a success that you’ve had? How would you describe your leadership style? Give us an example. There are all kinds of questions around that where you would use primarily examples from your work or perhaps community service if you have extensive leadership there. Some of the questions are just simply trying to get to know you. There’s very random icebreaker types questions about what’s your favorite hobby or what’s one of your favorite childhood memories from when you were growing up or things like that. Then Yale actually has an interesting question.

[00:18:08.960] – Maria

For years, they’ve always had within their bucket of questions. Their third question has often been some a debate type of question. What I mean by that is they will give you a position. They will say something like, A strong education requires a basis in the arts. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Or, Leaders need to understand global society. Do you think business is becoming more global or less global? Explain. Anyway, they will give you some a statement where you have to choose a side and then explain your rationale for whatever position you’re taking.

[00:18:41.720] – John

That sounds a lot more challenging.

[00:18:43.580] – Maria

Yeah, but I like it because it really mimics in the business school classroom, you are going to be given random questions and random topics where you are going to have to take aside. To Caroline’s earlier point, if you do get a question like that, whether it is, what’s your favorite childhood memory or what you think is the most important leadership trait that exists or whatever it is, it’s more important to just come up with an answer that you can then come up with a cogent response around as opposed to the best answer. If you get asked a question about, do you think globalization is a good thing or a bad thing, don’t spend 28 seconds of your 30 second thinking time thinking, Is it good? Is it bad? Just pick one and just come up with some a cogent reason for whatever your position is. Then don’t beat yourself up later if you’re like, Oh, I said globalization was bad, but actually it’s good. No, it is more about your presence and your ability to think on the spot and present your ideas clearly more than anything. Pick one as fast as you can and then spend the rest of your time thinking of what other points you’re going to make, what are the points you’re going to make.

[00:19:47.020] – John

Now, Caroline, did you discover any questions that you like the most or you dislike the most that are asked on video?

[00:19:55.820] – Caroline

I like the random questions. I know some schools have fixed questions, but and I suspect that they get quite fixed, rehearsed responses to those questions. So I think that those random questions probably give the schools more insight into the information that they’re looking to gather from the candidate. Kira It also enables you to program a specific category of question as well. So I think that those behavioral questions can be quite revealing. They can also set it so it could be around, so for example, a specific topic. So it could be that you’ll get a question about your leadership skills, or you’ll get a question about your motivation for some question related to your motivation for attending business school, but not a scripted question. So I think that But really, those random questions that are not so scripted are more useful, although, of course, more challenging for the candidates. Candidates like to know ahead of time exactly what they’re going to be asked. But I think that in terms of how useful it is to I suspect it’s the random questions that are more insightful. Something that we haven’t mentioned is also that some schools are using this at the interview stage or a substitute for the interview.

[00:21:14.500] – Caroline

Most of the schools are using this in addition to interviews, and so it’s required as an exercise at the application submission stage. But for example, with HAAS, you can choose to either do the video questions or you can schedule a Zoom interview, but there are limited slots, I believe, for the Zoom interviews. So many candidates will end up responding to the video questions on the Kira Talent platform. So HAAS is using that as a substitute for the interviews. And also at McCombs, I believe there’s an optional interview, but everyone has to respond to the video question. So again, I think that they are using that as a substitute for the interview. So that’s something to keep in mind as well.

[00:22:03.640] – John

Right. Yeah, certainly this can go all over the place, it sounds, depending on which school is deciding to use the video approach. Do we think that we’re going to see more of this in the future, less of it, or pretty much the same? Maria?

[00:22:20.580] – Maria

I not only think we’re going to see more of it in the future, I have long advocated this exact type of question because I do think that it is very valuable to see. As Caroline pointed out, it’s also fast. It probably takes just as much time, perhaps even less time to learn about someone than it would take to read a series of essays from them. It’s more valuable than an essay in so far as you can spend months crafting essays. I think Caroline and I probably had folks who started on their HBS essays at the beginning of this calendar year, only to find out later that they had to start over again or at least re-adapt what they had already written to these new three questions. The essays can be done and massaged and worked on ad nauseam. Sometimes what happens is that the person’s personality or authenticity gets edited out on the proverbial cutting room floor. It gets removed. But these video questions can tell you so much about a person’s, their personality, their communication style, all those good things that we already talked about. So not only do I think that this is going to continue to be around for years to come, I think more and more schools should, in fact, use these as a part of the admissions process.

[00:23:28.220] – John

Caroline, you think we’ll see more of this in the future?

[00:23:30.920] – Caroline

Yeah, we’ve seen more schools popping up with these questions for this new season, and I think that that will likely continue. It may be that schools like Harvard Business School, where it’s actually the admissions team are interviewing candidates, they may not feel the need for it so much. So I wouldn’t be surprised if HBS takes a pass on this, or at least is a very late joiner, if eventually they do jump into these video questions. But I agree with Maria. I think it’s a really useful exercise for the schools. I think we’ve seen a gradual expansion, and I see no reason for that to change.

[00:24:08.260] – John

Right. I think both of you are right. We’ll probably see more of this. I think it’s incredibly valuable for an admissions team to sit in a room and watch these, having done so myself. They reveal a lot about a candidate, including things that a candidate probably wouldn’t want revealed, to be totally honest, because I’ve seen really awkward people do miserable jobs on video because they haven’t followed the advice that we’ve offered here today, including taping yourself beforehand and timing yourself. Because what you don’t want to have happen is you have 90 seconds to answer a question and you only use up 45 seconds of your time like Biden did during the debates. You want to use your full amount of time and you don’t want to go over and get cut off, but you want to use that full-time to your advantage and leverage all of it in a positive way. So folks, good luck on those video interviews, and thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.