Q1. Monish you have a very interesting professional career and are doing extremely well for yourself. So why don’t you just talk a little bit about that?

• I pursued a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and then moved to the US in 2016 to pursue a graduate degree in the same field focusing on renewable energy technologies.
• Over the past 6 years, I’ve been working in the oil and gas trading industry. I started off in a leadership development program right out of grad school and since then I’ve been on the trading floor over here in Houston.
• I’ve gained a lot of individual contributor skills in my time at Pilot, but at this point I felt the urge to make the transition into more of a leadership role and maybe climb the corporate ladder.

Q2. Typically what happens is a lot of people through their MBA are trying to fast track their career or change their industry or function, but I think in your case you already had a very solid career, so would the cost-benefit analysis really work for a MBA? Are there any other factors that you had in mind because you already were in a leadership program which is pretty standard for a post-MBA career to aspire for?

• Yeah, there were multiple factors that factored into my decision making before I went down the path even considering an MBA program
• Having a strong engineering background but not as strong a business background was one of the key factors. Getting a professional business degree would help round out my skill set to make me more of an agile professional in the workspace
• From a knowledge perspective I wanted to know how to become more multi-faceted in the way that I think and I think the MBA, if not more of a value-add today will be a value-add for me going forward in the future both from a monetary side and also from an intrinsic growth side.

Q3. Understood, now that’s helpful to know because every time we are working with candidates they just tend to have that ROI perspective – wherein they are like okay this is x amount of money I’m putting in and this is the payback period, but I think that surely doesn’t work right? Because an MBA is more of a long-term investment that you’re doing in your career and upskilling yourself so I think it’s important for people to know that an MBA is not a two-year sort of an undertaking it’s more of a 35-40 year career you know career upskilling opportunity and it just doesn’t stop there I mean you have a career post that also.

• I agree and to add to that the networking opportunities are not just limited to recruiting out of your MBA program, your networking reaches out to all corners of the world and all corners of the professional circuit. 
• So doors will always open for you once you complete your program.

Q4. A lot of people tend to get stuck up with the entire application journey. So why don’t you talk a little bit about your experience and what your application journey was like?

• I think the first thing that I had to isolate was a geographic region where I wanted to apply. Having been in the U.S. for the past eight years, I already had a strong brand on my resume.
• I figured that both from a diversity of life perspective as well as a diversity of educational brand perspective to maybe pursue something in Europe. Further, since I was looking primarily for 1 year programs, Europe made a lot more sense.
• The second thing that I wanted was a smaller more intimate program versus the larger scale programs that tend to admit a lot of students. I just found that I get more value where there’s a smaller cohort where I can learn more about each individual person
• For me I believe an MBA program is half the program half the networking and then the whole experience is what you learn from your peers so that’s something that I had to take into mind while making my decision

Q5. The school shortlisting is just the start, post that, there’s a three to four months investment in terms of your time and commitment to just get your application out to the program, so if you could briefly just talk about your application journey as well.

• I found it quite helpful to network with alumni and current students of the schools that I was interested in additionally I also set up some webinars and one-on-one sessions with school representatives which gave me a broader understanding of each school
• Working with you Abhinav really helped me narrow down my cluttered mindset and made it more focused on what I wanted to do and also what I should be focusing on. So that helped a lot from you know a consolidation effort as well.

Q6. Understood and how did you go about your essays and recommendations? Any tips on those?

• Yeah of course I guess that was more of a two-way process between the two of us and it really helped that I was able to brainstorm with you even before giving you an initial draft. During our brainstorm I would throw out a bunch of ideas to get your understanding and perspective of what would be impactful from my experience.
• Once we got the thoughts in place then I would just throw a brief blob at you and we went back and forth with multiple iterations of each one of those drafts. We honed in on what would make a compelling story and you know make it grammatically correct and also get it to a point where it tells the story through the structure of the essay. 
• I also had to reach out to my managers, direct managers, past managers to get people who really knew me from both a professional and a personal level for the recommendations.
• Finding somebody who can truly speak about your strengths and weaknesses is more important than finding somebody who you just know praises you all the time or speaks your plaudits all the time.

Q7. Okay and then after that I think in terms of your interview you have interviewed with two schools right? Those were the only two schools in fact you ended up applying to, so do shed some light on that experience as well?

• For clarity I applied to Imperial College in London and I applied to IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• Imperial was more I guess run-of-the-mill out-of-the-box kind of interviewing process where I just had a couple of interviews with alumni and adcom members mostly running through my motivation some of my background running through my resume some behavioral type questions before leaving some time for me to ask them questions as well a pretty cookie cutter in terms of just general recruiting even in the workspace.
• IMD was different and quite unique from my experience. They had a full day of assessment where they had multiple rounds where they would gauge your leadership potential. They would also gauge how you interact with other candidates and how you would react in pressure situations and stress stressful situations.
• The takeaway from that was I don’t think there’s really a right answer to a lot of things but what they were trying to do is challenge your critical thinking as well as see how you know how you perform in a leadership situation in a group setting or when you’re really under the pump.

Q8. Both Imperial in the UK and then IMD in Switzerland are solid options, both of them one the top schools in Europe and both of them are really good 1 year programs, so which one have you shortlisted? What was the reason behind shortlisting that particular school?

• I’m quite keen to pursue an MBA degree at IMD in Lausanne. I think what set it apart is first of all its reputation and its alumni network stands their own in terms of prestige. 
• What really stood out to me was how intimate the environment was and how intimately connected the professors were to students. Further, the faculty to student ratio is very low. I think it’s like two is to one even and that that kind of personalized attention is something that I was quite interested in.
• On top of that IMD is very leadership focused in terms of how they structure their program. While other schools have other strengths, the drive to perhaps hone my leadership skills in me is what pushed me more down the IMD track in my decision making
• Lastly, the prospect of living in Switzerland for a year was a cherry on the cake. 

Q9. Understood so I think this has been a pretty interesting journey overall so what are your post IMD MBA plans?

• Post MBA, I think I will build on my energy background but build in a different way and make an impact in a different way. I alluded to the fact that I’m interested in the sustainability angle and the green energy angle so what I want to get out of the MBA is first of all develop my business skill set and then maybe move into more of a corporate role where I can make an impact in sustainable energy transition.
• I think it’s important to understand both sides of the energy equation which is brown energy and green energy. I want to draw off of my experience in the past and then build off of my sustainability driven educational background and make an impact either in you know a high level consulting or maybe even move into one of the energy giants who are pumping a lot of money into energy solutions of tomorrow.

Q10. So Monish from your entire experience any key takeaways or any advice that you’d have for potential applicants who are looking to pursue their MBA?

• Yeah I think really focus on what you want to get out of your program because that will dictate your choices in terms of geographic location on where you go.
• I think I am a little bit uniquely placed, maybe compared to other candidates where I already have a US degree and I also already have US work experience. 
• So I think really understanding what your priorities are in terms of career aspirations in terms of what the country can give you in terms of stability you know career opportunities, work visa situations that will really dictate what you want out of a program.
• And also then what I’ve understood through the process is each application is quite unique to the school so it takes a lot of time to craft each application and also takes a lot of time to personalize each application to make the most impact.
• Focusing and narrowing on a smaller set of schools rather than just applying to 10 or 15 would be better for your overall success I suppose.

Well that’s helpful to know, pretty much everyone I talk to just has a ranking methodology. I want to get into the top five, top seven, top 20 schools, but I think that’s not the right approach. There’s a lot of nuances and every individual’s journey is very different right from where they’re coming and where they want to go and that’s why I think the set of schools and what they can deliver will be very different you know in terms of the overall experience and in terms of the overall career outcome. Obviously some people may be having focus towards getting the highest paying job but other people may want to like you, may want to make a lot more impact and you know sort of derive a lot more, a lot more satisfaction out of that. So I think there’s no right or wrong answer, it’s just a matter of you know figuring out what you want to do and what sort of program probably would make the best sense.

So yeah I think thank you so much for your time it was really a great experience of you know just connecting with you learning about your overall journey and as I said at the start it has been a very unique journey because you started off from India you did your master’s in the US and spent some time there built a good corporate track record and then you know suddenly and then decided to maybe you know diversify your experience by sort of you know kick-starting your career in a different geography.