ISB & IIM Spot Essay Writing Guide

You’re invited to interview at ISB or IIM. You’re ushered into a room , handed over a little chit with a topic and given twenty minutes to write two spot essays.

Personally, I don’t believe that the spot essay adds or deducts from your profile. But opinion on this is varied. Some experts believe the spot essays are a way to test your critical thinking and communication skills while others believe it’s a spam filter that allows the college to identify consultant-written and AI-written essays.

The critical thinking argument makes zero sense to me since your GMAT score more accurately represents your critical thinking across a wider range of questions than two spot essays.

But I’m also disinclined to fully trust the AI filter explanation. I doubt a human does a better job at detecting AI writing since ChatGPT can emulate writing styles quite well with the right prompts.

Regardless, it’s always a good idea to reduce the amount of thinking you do to come up with an answer in 10-20 minutes. This article aims to give you a framework that lets you practice for the spot essays and come up with answers in less than a minute.

What You SHOULDN’t Worry About

How many words, how good should my grammar be, how should I connect between paragraphs, how should I begin and conclude my essays, how many minutes should I take to think and how many minutes to write, is there a wrong answer, and so on.

These questions are useless to think about when the seconds are ticking away. Focus only on getting straight to the point. Forget about sounding good, and reserve your energy and brains for your interview. Follow the framework in the next section to vomit what I call a “safe answer” in response to your essay prompts.

Spot Interview Questions

Here are a few sample questions from the 2024-2025 intake. While the topics aren’t publicly available, some websites and forums have collated questions from candidates who attended the interviews.

1. Someone is being late and taking time off. How would you handle this situation?
2. Your manager is giving you high value gifts. Some of your coworkers have accepted the gift already. What would you do?
3. A teammate writes inefficient code that may delay delivery. How would you handle the situation while maintaining team morale?
4. A supplier consistently delays shipments, causing bottlenecks. How would you address this while maintaining a good relationship?
5. Your marketing campaign is criticized on social media for insensitivity. How would you manage the backlash?

The common trend among these questions is conflict. There is a moral, ethical or relational conflict that requires you to delicately navigate the maze of corporate mores and human interactions. And they can all be answered by following the framework I lay out in the next section.

The Safe Answer Framework

Keep one or more of the essay prompts in the previous questions in mind as you go through the steps to defuse and resolve the conflict. Memorise the structure to your answers.

1. Do a root cause analysis:
   The conflict is the end result of a chain of events. Don’t jump to blame the first person or cause. Instead, learn to ask 3 levels of questions for each problem statement. You don’t even need to mention the actual answers, but your thinking process will impress the admissions team.
   
   Level 1 questions
   – Why is the teammate late?
   – Why is their code ineffective?
   – Why is the supplier delayed?
   
   Level 2 questions
   – Does the teammate know the timings?
   – Did they get special permission to be late?
   – Has project scope and code output been communicated to the teammate?
   – Is the supplier aware of the delivery timelines?
   
   Level 3 questions
   – Why the teammate/supplier unaware?
   – Why did the delivery timelines get miscommunicated?
   – How do we ensure the mistake doesn’t happen in the future?
   
2. Leverage people and policies
   Who doesn’t love a self-starting, independent employee? The HR department! There’s a reason you’re forced to do a dozen training videos and exams before your onboarding is complete. Companies have dealt with the same problems time and again. So don’t reinvent the wheel. Ask HR, your boss, the legal team and the finance team for advice and documents that can help you with the issue at hand. This also shows your willingness to collaborate with multiple departments to solve organizational problems.
   
   “I will refer to the company’s supplier relationship policy to figure out what avenues are available to me in case of non-performance by the supplier.”
   
3. Create and present an action plan
   Don’t just talk your findings and ideas. Get the relevant stakeholders to come together and agree on a plan of action. This can mean jotting down your plan on an excel sheet and getting the people you need to add their ideas and sign off on it.
   
   “I will work with the product, tech and program teams so to create a single tracking sheet with access controls so that anyone that makes a scope or deliverable change automatically informs the others.“
   
4. Report the plan to your boss
   Loop your boss into your efforts and seek their feedback on your plan. Agree on how much time and resources you might need to commit to the solution. Agree on a timeline to implement the solution and the issues you might expect to arise.
   
   “I will ask the supplier to automate shipment updates two weeks before the scheduled delivery so that we can predict and del with delays right when they start. I will revisit the plan and rate the effectiveness of the solution around week 4 of implementation.”
   
5. If the problem persists, escalate
   Sometimes, your best efforts aren’t enough because one or more stakeholders don’t follow the plan or refuse to cooperate. And you don’t have the authority to make them cooperate. Escalate the issue to your boss or seek their help saying you’ve exhausted all the avenues available to you.

Sample Answer

Your manager is giving you high value gifts. Some of your coworkers have accepted the gift already. What would you do?

If my manager were giving high-value gifts, and I noticed that some coworkers had already accepted them, I would begin by pausing to analyze the situation rather than reacting impulsively. At face value, this seems like a potential ethical conflict—but as with any organizational issue, it’s important to go beyond surface assumptions and ask deeper questions.

Level 1: Why is the manager giving gifts? Is this a gesture of appreciation? An incentive? Could it be culturally normal in this workplace?
Level 2: Are there company guidelines around gift acceptance? Are coworkers aware of any policy violations? Was the gift part of an officially recognized program?
Level 3: If there’s ambiguity, why does it exist? Has HR communicated the policy clearly? How do we prevent such gray areas in the future?

Once I’ve thought through the root cause and potential motivations, I’d turn to company policy. Instead of assuming or self-interpreting, I’d refer to the employee code of conduct or gift policy—documents that HR or compliance teams usually maintain. If the policy is unclear or outdated, I’d reach out to HR for clarification, reinforcing that I’m trying to uphold the company’s ethical standards.

If the policy prohibits or restricts such gifts, I would gently bring this up with the manager in a private conversation, stating that I prefer to stay within formal guidelines. I would also offer to suggest more inclusive or compliant alternatives to express team appreciation—like a team lunch or public recognition.

I’d then document the discussion and report the plan of action to my boss or HR, depending on who is more appropriate. If the issue continues—say, if coworkers begin feeling pressured—I would escalate it to a higher authority, only after exhausting all collaborative steps. This way, I approach the situation not as a whistleblower, but as a proactive problem-solver aligned with company values.