MHRM Internal Case Competition
I recently participated in the MHRM Internal Case Competition here at Fisher. Before going into this experience I had no idea what to expect. The competition started early Friday morning and the entire class was presented with a "real world" HR problem from the judges (The judges are current HR professionals from companies around the region). We were then assigned break-out rooms with our group, and given 24 hours to come up with a solution and form a presentation for the judges for the following day.
I was on a team of all first-years and none of us had any previous HR work experience. My team worked really well together, though, because we were able to communicate effectively and collaborate as a group. Once we got to our break-out rooms, we spent a lot of time brainstorming ideas, organizing our thoughts, and figuring out which ideas we wanted to focus on. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to focus in great detail on a few of your ideas or solutions, but don't try to tackle everything. There's simply not enough time to address everything. My group ended up staying at school pretty late into the evening (or should I say, morning) because we had so much content to fit into our short, 15-minute presentation.
We arrived back at school early Saturday morning to finish up printing our materials and slides, but actually ended up cutting it so close that we didn't have any time to practice our presentation before we went in to present to the judges. Our presentation went really well, though, for having not ever rehearsed, and in fact, one of our group members, Erin, won an award for best speaker overall. Looking back on this experience, I am really proud of my group for jumping in with no expectations and working really hard to produce an overall great presentation. It was definitely a memorable two days and I look forward next year's competition.