What is Competition?

When you're new to DECA, the term 'competition' is often thrown around a lot without you knowing entirely what it is. Don't let that intimidate you - DECA competition is a fun and exciting aspect of the club.

For freshmen or first-time sophomores, your categories will be Principles of Marketing, Principles of Business, Principles of Hospitality and Tourism, and Principles of Finance. These categories are general, starter competitions that will prepare you with the basics so that you can compete in more specialized, advanced categories later on.

Competition is broken up into two parts: tests and role plays. The testing part will be a hundred question comprehensive test on your understanding of the category. Role plays are events where you have ten minutes to prepare and ten minutes to present a situation given to you. For example, your paper might tell you that you are an assistant manager at a five star restaurant given the task of creating a social media campaign, which you must present to your judge, who will act as your manager. Another example might be you are a potential new employee interviewing with the manager of HR at a company. It's like playing a game of pretend with business aspects, either customer service, finance, marketing, or operations oriented, integrated into the act.

Pinnacle DECA hosts Study Skills every Thursday for students who want to practice and improve upon their competition skills, and there are many resources available should you want to contact us for extra outside help.

Stay tuned for more helpful accounts of what competition is like!

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