Over the past few months, I have been helping my classmates Daniel Yokomizo '16, Chase Gharrity '16, Britney Sussman '16, and Lauren Yang '17 organize the 2016 T-Mobile Case Tech and People Strategy Case Competition. The planning and organization of this case competition was a team effort through and through- it was co-sponsored by Anderson's HTBA (High Tech Business Assocation), MCA (Management Consulting Association), and SOMA (Strategy and Operations Management Association). It was also facilitated by the Human Resources Round table (HARRT) at UCLA, which is a network of human resources executives from some of the top companies in Southern California. HARRT at UCLA played a significant role in helping connect T-Mobile with Anderson.
This was the first human capital case competition held at Anderson- our goal was to bring human capital topics to the general Anderson student population, and emphasize how linked human resources is to overall business strategy. I'll be interning at Hewlett Packard Enterprise this summer within HR, hopefully focusing on workforce planning, and the case competition was a great way for me to share my enthusiasm and passion for human capital. The best part of the day was not only seeing teams collaborate, compete, and genuinely enjoy spending time with each other, but also listening to all the fresh new perspectives and ideas that were generated from their presentations.
The case prompt revolved around quantifying metrics around T-Mobile's quality of hire to ensure that it had the proper workforce, talent pool, and skills inventory to deliver the products and innovations that its customers had come to expect from the "Uncarrier". 13 teams and over 55 students ultimately participated in the competition, with a wide variety of participants coming from both the full-time and fully-employed (FEMBA) programs.
Our very own Class of 2017 team of Zoe Cai, Lizeth Chiprez, Lucia Ehimika, Ahmar Reza, and Lucerna Huayanay (pictured to the left with T-Mobile judges) took home 1st place with their creative idea for "MOJO" metrics relating to an employee's cultural fit, alignment to business objectives, and overall performance. They got a nice little check of $2,500, first-round interviews for summer internships, and an invitation to join HARRT at their Day of Learning, where they'll get to present their ideas in front of an audience of senior HR executives.
One thing I would want to emphasize is the tremendous support we've gotten from our own student body to make this happen- all the Anderson club leaders as well as the Parker Career Management Center happily distributed our fliers and spread the word about signups, and several of our classmates volunteered with logistics, social media, etc. on the day of the event. We also have tremendous 2nd years within human capital / HR- they've really led the way in terms of turning something that was a pipe dream into a reality. It has made want to pay it forward next year as an ACT coach, given how much they have helped me every step along the way here at Anderson.
I do have one regret from the event- not competing with a team of my own. The quality of presentations was extremely high, and sitting there listening to them definitely got my competitive juices flowing! If you're reading and passionate about human capital and winning, I'm looking for teammates for the 2017 T-Mobile Case Competition!
