SHRM Student case Competition

2016

NYIT Students Represent NYIT Well in SHRM Student Case competition

By Professor William Ninehan

A team of five MS-HRMLR students successfully participated in SHRM’s 2016 Student Case Competition and Career Summit in Atlanta, Georgia on March 4 and 5. The team, which included Dhwani Amin, Tiffanie Carman, Aashka Shah, Melissa Shaver (team leader), and Reshma Shivdasani, placed sixth in a field of 12 graduate teams from HRM and MBA programs throughout SHRM’s Eastern Region.

The team members went through a rigorous process to prepare for the competition. The team worked with me since November on a number of practice cases, and they made a number of mock presentations to different audiences including other NYIT students, members of the faculty, and HR professionals from the Center for HR Studies Advisory Board. The process of making mock presentations was challenging, but the team members found the feedback from all of the mock presentations to be very helpful in preparing to tackle this year’s competition case.

The team received the competition case from SHRM on Friday, February 12, and they had only a few days to analyze the case and prepare an executive summary and full Powerpoint presentation and return it to SHRM by the February 17 deadline. Under SHRM rules for the competition, the team must work on the competition case without any help from faculty, HR professionals, or anyone else. After their work was submitted to SHRM, it was evaluated and scored by three judges chosen by SHRM. The team then traveled to Atlanta for their presentation on March 4^th.

The team’s hard work over three months really paid off in the presentation, which was delivered to four judges who are practicing HR professionals. All five members of the team presented a highly professional and well thought-out 15-minute presentation that analyzed the problems presented in the case, the causes of those problems, and their proposed solutions. During the question and answer period, when asked for implementation details, the team really impressed the judges with the depth of their research regarding implementation costs and relevant legal issues.

The feedback from the judges was very enthusiastic. The team was complemented for their professionalism and preparation, as well as “impressive” coordination as a team and “very comprehensive plan.” All five team members actively participated in the presentation and question-and-answer session, and they did so confidently and while maintaining excellent eye contact and rapport with the judges.

The conference also provided students with the opportunity to have one-on-one career sessions with HR professionals, to participate in a networking event with HR professionals and students from other colleges, and to hear keynote talks by Jim Link, CHRO of Randstad and Coretha Rushing, CHRO of Equifax, and to hear from a panel of four young HR professionals on their career paths.