3 MBA Internship Tips

MBA internships are advanced professional internships. They include a lot of opportunities for significant career advancement and valuable practical experience. We've got a few tips for people looking at MBA internships and trying to decide how to approach them.

1. Finding MBA internships

Because this is a particularly important step in your career, an intending MBA intern should carefully evaluate internships in terms of career progression. An MBA internship needs to be considered primarily as the beginning of your future career. It's possible to find MBA internships which relate directly to your primary goals, so shopping around and making comparisons is very important.

Some MBA internships will not be entirely suitable for your purposes. They may cover basic areas of interest, but omit others. Some may be specialist situations which are too narrow for your career goals. It's advisable to evaluate any internship on a checklist basis, setting some basic criteria for the right internship.

The best way of investigating an internship is by direct contact with the employer. This allows you to ask questions, clarify issues relating to the internship and get extra information, and to check out the work environment for yourself. Direct contact can also be very reassuring, removing doubts and helping you orient yourself to the internship process and the employer.

2. The MBA internship interview

Its important to note that this is a very competitive employment market. Employers can select from a range of highly qualified applicants, all of whom can contribute significant value to the employer during their internships. Interview performance and presentation are important factors in successful applications.

MBA internship interviews are essentially based on the employer's needs for the position. This is going to be an executive level job interview, usually a hybrid behavioral interview with elements of stress interview techniques if relevant to the position.

Interview subjects will be task-specific, related to your experience. The internship role is a good guideline to areas which must be covered by interview questions. You can consider these as essential job criteria, and prepare your answers based on the functional needs of the internship. (Another good reason for direct contact with the employer is that you can get an excellent overview of the role, in preparation for the interview.)

3. Interview essentials

Interviewers must base their recommendations on the materials presented at the interview. To be an outstanding applicant, you need to focus on your interview content and its presentation as primary concerns:

Information quality: Each question requires strong quality control in your answer. You need to provide value-based answers with good levels of information which prove advanced skills. This gives the interviewers extra material for their recommendation, and makes your interview performance more competitive.

Presentation: Consider each question exactly as you would on the job. To prove expertise, you need to give practical, considered answers with clear objectivity and showing a good appreciation of the issues in each question. 

Important: Ask questions, to get a clear picture of any interview questions which are ambiguous or might put you in a position of giving an inadequate answer.