MBA Specializations !

FINANCE

Broadly encompassing corporate finance and the capital markets, finance provides insight into financial policies and investor behavior, examines how policies, individuals, and organizations interact within market environments, and applies financial instruments and quantitative methods to address problems and opportunities in finance. MBA programs typically teach everything from international finance to market microstructure, corporate financial management and investments. Students who focus on corporate financial management possess the skills to accomplish both rudimentary financial analysis such as financial forecasting, budgeting, and the analysis of capital investment projects, and higher level financial decisions, such as capital structure decisions, dividend policy decisions, mergers and acquisitions, and risk management. Students who focus on  investment track are trained to analyze both individual securities and to manage portfolios.

Some of the Job Titles - Financial Analysis Manager, Treasury Analyst, Finance Consultant Associate, Cost Analyst, Senior Financial Analyst and Project Manager.

MARKETING

Marketing is primarily concerned with satisfying customer needs and wants at a profit. A marketing strategy typically starts with target customers and a unique selling proposition. These decisions help guide the marketing mix, which covers the product, distribution, promotion, and price. Various marketing issues are covered in elective courses that span overall strategy development, market research, new product development, industrial marketing, international marketing, and electronic commerce.

There are four areas in marketing: industrial marketing, consumer marketing, marketing research, and consulting. Students who focus on the marketing option in the industrial (or business-to-business) marketing track have the skills to conduct market analysis of customers, competitors, and markets characterized by business to business exchanges. In the same vein, those pursuing the consumer marketing track have such skills for business to end consumer markets. Students who follow the marketing research track are trained to analyze markets using modern research methods for addressing key management decisions. The marketing consulting track is appropriate for those students seeking careers in consulting that have a marketing focus. 

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

The central goal of strategic management is to understand how organizations might achieve advantage relative to competitors.  It is of interest to individuals who act as integrators – that is, they might make decisions that cut across the functional and product boundaries of a firm.  Such decisions include:

• What type of advantage (e.g., low cost or differentiation) does the firm aim to deliver?
  
• What is the scope (geographic, market) over which the advantage is targeted?
  
• What are the activities throughout the value chain that deliver the intended advantage, and how do they interact?
  
• What range of businesses is appropriate within a single firm and how should they be organized?
  

One type aspires to jump immediately into a general manager role with an established company (e.g., product manager, business unit manager, country manager, member of top management team), as a consultant, or as part of an entrepreneurial team. 

A second type of student might plan upon graduation to take a functional position (e.g., finance, marketing, accounting, human resources, MIS, operations) but will likely report to a manager who has general management responsibilities.  These individuals may find it helpful in their careers to better understand the issues to which their superiors are concerned.  These students may also hope to eventually aspire to general management responsibilities.  For this type of student, combining the strategic management option with another functional option is a lethal combination. Strategy equips students with the framework, concepts, and tools required to think strategically about the total enterprise. This entails analyzing the firm's industry and position, as well as crafting strategies that will create future economic value. The course examines industry structure, sources of competitive advantage, the role of functional strategies in guiding and sustaining this advantage, diversification, and internal corporate venturing.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The crucial aspect under entrepreneurship is the process of identifying, valuing and capturing opportunity. These activities, crucial in any organization, require using business disciplines in a highly integrative way. The second is an emphasis on individual initiative in the context of uncertainty and tight resources. While these concepts are distinguishing features of entrepreneurial opportunity, virtually all business students will encounter these challenges in some form, whether as entrepreneurs, consultants, financiers or managers of firms. 

CONSULTING

The skills required of a consultant mirror those required of high-level organizational leaders. Building on a the foundation in the functional areas of business, our consulting focus advances these critical abilities: a strategic perspective on all of an organization's functional areas and the interplay among them; an understanding of how an organization interacts within its competitive environment; the creation and clear communication of logical arguments, and the combination of analysis and synthesis that brings order to unstructured environments.

OTHERS

1. Accounting

2. Management information system

3. Global Supply Chain

4. Manufacturing and Technology management

5. Social Enterprise

6.  Leadership / Organizational Behaviour / HR

7. Management Communication

8. Decision Sciences / Quantitative Analysis

How to play the 'Diversity' card !

Every person is unique in his own special way. Through the essays the Adcom wants to know how your uniqueness will contribute to the campus. Most people applying to the school are academically qualified to finish the program successfully. So saying that you are a hard worker with excellent acads will not make you different and special. To cut through your competitions you must possess a very clear and sharp image that is readily noticed, understood and valued. 

You could pick three reasons from the following: 
• Your range of work demands you to deal with the lowest as well as highest hierarchy in your profession. 
• Depth of your understanding in a particular industry e.g. there may not be many candidates working in the aviation industry so your vast experience in this field may add to your abilities.
• Your unique profession e.g. commercial photographer.
• Being fluent speaker of three to four languages.
• Coming from a very different cultural background e.g. north east India has very different culture and many Indians are not exposed to / aware of their culture. 
• Your sly sense of humour.( support this with example)
• You could be in the IT industry and on weekends be part of a band playing at the local cafeteria.
• You could be an engineer having won awards in an adventurous reality show.
• Being a finance person you could be a part of the theatre group in your city or a biker.
• Having worked with the locals of some remote place gives you a different perspective of looking at life.
• You could have worked as a social worker in the slums/lepers colony, blood camps, rehabilitation centers etc. where you will come across a much diversified group. Interacting with them will enhance your diversity.
• You could possess unusual outside interests like publishing your own book of poetries/ short stories, reading about astronomy, spirituality etc.
• You could contribute to your company’s community service by marketing handicrafts of the artisans from nearby villages.
• You could be a regional / national level player.
• You could have worked in places all over the globe which provides you with an enriching experience and knowledge about a variety of population.
• You could be extremely carrier oriented but at the same time you always make it a point to spend some quality time with your family/children/old parents to bring balance in life.
• Coming from a family of freedom fighters you could be trained in creative discipline which will equip you to find unexpected ways to solve problems rather than being limited to obvious answers.

Strengths and weakness

STRENGTHS:

Mention at the most 3 prominent strengths. 
• Strengths professional could be: efficient time management / people skills / leadership skills / communication / marketing skills, high resilience skills / eye for detail. Professional strengths could be: Quick learner, Technically talented in your field of excellence, talented business mindedness etc.., 
• Strengths personally could be high ethical values / strong willpower / human aspect to your personality / down to earth attitude/ positive approach / etc… 

WEAKNESS:

Mention atleast 2 weaknesses.
Although the essay asks for weaknesses, one should mention them as areas of improvement. 
Suggested not to mention weaknesses that would influence the applicants admit chances negatively.
Weaknesses should be strictly relevant to the professional environment.
Mention whether you have been working on your weaknesses.
• If you are working hard and you are not able to market your skill sets that is a high risk weakness, best avoided/ people management etc…. should not be preferably highlighted…
• At a personal level, you could mention – Management skills like time management/ (not being able to balance time between your professional and personal life wherein your personal life suffers due to busy schedules) / Inability to refuse or say ‘NO’ / Inability to multi task (for a person with relatively less experience say – <4 yrs) / eye for detail / temperament etc…
Mention clear pointers, instances or experiences that molded you into the person that you are today.

Certain precautions while writing essays

1. Whenever you mention a quality (leadership skills etc) make sure you back it up with a recent instance from professional life where you demonstrated that quality. Anything older like in school or college or childhood is fatal.

2. Avoid using pointers. They have you for an essay not a powerpoint presentation. Make sure the essay flows naturally. Give connecting lines between paragraphs to give a good transition

3. Use plain formal English. No slangs / expressions / exclamations / dramatisations !

4. Avoid quantity. Just to fill upto the word limit dont fill in words without relevance. Concentrate on quality.

5. Weakness should not be pointing towards "inter-personal skills", "integrity"

6. If you are talking about any 'project' at work make sure you mention the end result in terms of benefit to the company and benefit to you. (Quantify it)

7. If talking about team skills talk about what were the problems and how you resolved them, how you took up the responsibility, faced challenges, ensured your teams focus on a common goal. Try to bring out your involvement with the team

8. If you are speaking of a professional/personal setback make sure you tell them on what you learnt from the experience and how later you used that experience to keep you in good stead.

9. Do not make any controversial statements. Also avoid statements with political / regional overtones.

Interview questions to ask yourself !

Why do you want to do an MBA? If you are in it purely for the money then sorry mate .. try a placement agency then ! If you look at it as a long term investment then the following steps are for you:

Step 1: Firstly you have to ask yourself whats your ultimate goal ? 

• Want to lead a manufacturing company OR 
• Start your own enterprise etc
  

Step 2: What skills do you require to reach your ultimate goal?  

• Academic: Deep understanding of Finance, Operations management, Managerial tools etc
• Experience: What kind of ? General Management, I-Banker etc

Step 3: Can you not gain Step 2 skills on the job in the current job?

• Yes. Then MBA is not for you
• No. Then go to Step 4.

Step 4: What immediately after MBA i.e. your short term goal?

• Industry: What sort of industry experience will propel me towards the ultimate goal? 
• Role: Which role will give me a good base to build on for my ultimate goal?

As you see these 4 steps more or less cover the general questions that you might face in a interview. The quality of your answer depends on how well you figure out Step 1 and Step 2.

Pagalguy

This is a useful forum to get the answers to most of your ISB-related queries.

1. You have the official thread where your queries are answered by the ISB Adcom on a very regular basis. All clarifications issued are on behalf of ISB so there is no room for speculation or rumours. Dont try and get your profile checked by them. Even if you did they would not entertain your request.

2. You have a second thread run by fellow aspirants where junta will be posting their apping experience, interview experiences and other useful informations. Some current ISB students also try and assist you in every possible way they can. This thread is useful in the sense you stay abreast with the latest happenings in the Admission process. This especially useful at the time of results as you'll know if the results have started coming in. Otherwise the wait can be dreadful. But every information has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Thats because
a) Junta will speculate and engineer rumours
b) Junta will try and overanalyze the admission process and come up with weird theories.

So you can love it, hate it but if you ignore it you might be losing on some cool stuff here.