Symbiosis Institute of Operations Management (SIOM) is affiliated with Symbiosis International University (SIU). It is the only educational institute in India to be solely dedicated to the field of operations management. Counted among the reputable B-schools, SIOM offers two full-time MBA programmes, including MBA (Operations Management) and MBA (Agri-Operations Management). In the first stage, the candidates are shortlisted as per their score in SNAP. The final admission is decided on the basis of the candidate’s performance in further selection rounds.
Selection Process
The admission procedure for MBA ‘22 at SIOM followed the given sequence:
- Shortlisting (based on SNAP score)
- Written Assessment Test (WAT)
- Group Exercise (GE)
- Personal Interview
WAT Topics
In this round, the candidates were given a general or situational topic and asked to write on it within 15 minutes. For instance, some candidates were given the following topic for WAT:
- Mention one of your hobbies. How would you use your operations management skills to practise your hobby in a better way?
GE Topics
Group exercise was basically a discussion round. In this, the candidates were grouped into several teams, and each group was given a topic. Every candidate was required to speak on the topic for a few minutes, after which an open discussion was conducted for almost 10 minutes and, then concluded. Given below are some of the topics given for group exercise:
- Changes are hard at first but often profitable from a business perspective
- Agility is the key to unforeseen situations in marketing challenges and opportunities.
Interview Experiences
A panel of two interviewers evaluated the candidates as per their personality traits, goals, experiences, interests, etc. Some candidates were also asked about their family background and hometown. The average duration of interviews was 15-20 minutes per candidate. Here are the actual experiences shared by candidates interviewed for MBA ‘22:
Interview 1:
Background:Worked in Accenture
Questions:
- Tell me about your journey post Manipal.
- How are areas served as per the logistics?
- How are third parties hired? What is the criterion? How does the business come for them?
- How was your experience with NL market?
- How do you differentiate with the Indian market from the European one?
- What all tools and technologies have you worked on?
- Why Operations?
- Tell me the recent trends in the inbound process.
- How does a SAP module work?
- Why did you quit your job?
- What other calls do you have? So, if you get selected at both IMT and SIOM, which one would you choose?
- Explain to me about the freelancing that you did.
- What if you don’t get placed after SIOM? How do you think you will have an edge over others if the rest of them are engineers? What makes you confident?
The candidate was also asked questions about his hometown.
Interview 2:
Background:Work Ex of 36 months, including at Amazon
SNAP Percentile:79
Questions:
- Tell us about your journey from 2016till now.
- Tell us about your work experience from the joining day to the last day.
- What are your strengths and weakness?
- Tell us about your family background and your father.
- Do you have any siblings?
- Tell us about your job responsibilities.
- Amazon is blamed for being a competition to local businesses and for corruption activities. What are your views on it?
- What is your plan for the next 5-10 years?
- Why didn't you speak much in GD?
- If you are selected, will you be okay with relocating?