This Wednesday we kick off the annual Deloitte Case Competition on the UCLA Anderson campus. It’s an opportunity for Anderson students to test their analytical and presentation skills in front of professional consultants and potential employers.
But what IS a Case Competition? What is a Case?
For those that are unfamiliar, cases are business problems that generally have been faced by real companies. The case attempts to recreate the scenario in which the business faced the challenge and we, as students, have to come up with the best possible way solve it. But these are not straightforward cases. I’d liken it to one of those crazy mazes you got as a kid. You know, the ones where they zig zag all over the place, have branches, dead ends, and at least five places to start from. Cases are no different. You’re presented with tons of information that is meant to confuse, confound, and misguide you, but there are gems to be found, which will help guide you to a solution.
Case competitions take a case and put it in a competitive setting where you and your team of 4-5 have to solve, or ‘crack,’ the case AND present it in a well thought out, structured, and articulate way. Oh yeah, and it doesn’t hurt if you’re a PowerPoint wiz.
Case competitions are stressful, exciting, panic inducing, and thrilling all at the same time. After you’ve solved the case and put together the presentation you then have to present it to a panel of judges which will tell you every you reason why you’re wrong and tear your solution to shreds. But it’s okay, they do that to everyone.
I had the opportunity to participate in the Reaching Out Case Competition a month into school, and found it to be a great learning experience and eye opening. If I had three takeaways it would be:
- Relevancy – Make sure your supporting evidence is as relevant as possible. This is where my team and others could have improved our presentation. Some of our examples weren’t as relevant as those that had the strongest cases. The fact is, we didn’t do enough digging, and a lot of our supporting evidence didn’t tie close enough to the case.
- Simplicity – Make everything simple. Pretend you’re presenting to a 5 year old. Don’t dumb it down, but no one wants to look at a slide with 50 data points and an essay on the bottom explaining the date. Don’t make people work to understand your data. Your main point should pop out and you should do the rest.
- Presentation, Presentation, Presentation - How you present your case probably matters more than anything else. You have to be clear, articulate, know your material, and comfortable in front of an audience. You can have the best analysis in the world, but if you can’t clearly present it in a way that grabs your audience, then you don’t stand a chance.
Regardless of where you go to get your MBA, I would highly recommend you take the opportunity to take part in case competitions. They will challenge you, make you uncomfortable, and be difficult, but will teach you valuable lessons that will help you significantly no matter what career path you choose.
-Matt