Students compete in consulting
By Jennifer Lin
May 15, 2008 10:19 p.m.
Fifteen student teams hoping to win a valuable networking dinner with recruiters from the consulting field will take part in the second annual Strategy and Operations Case Competition on Saturday.
The event, hosted by Bruin Consulting, features competitors chosen from more than 30 applicant teams through a preliminary round that took place May 2.
The remaining teams will then analyze a company’s information and present solutions for problems faced by that company. The competition aims to simulate realistic consulting conditions to give participants an experience similar to working in the business world.
The teams received their cases at 8 p.m. on Thursday and have until 7 a.m. on Saturday to come up with a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation discussing their proposed solutions.
The teams will also have to go through a five-minute question-and-answer session regarding the details of their proposed solution.
Jacqueline Laird, Bruin Consulting’s president, said last year’s case competitions were entirely planned and sponsored by the consulting firm Deloitte. As members of last year’s winning team, Laird and co-project leader Gabriel Mizrahi decided to take a more active role in putting on this year’s competition.
“I had such a rewarding experience last year that I wanted to do the same for this year’s competitors, and I was in a position to do that,” said Mizrahi, now a UCLA alumnus. “We wanted to design an event that would provide the most intense growing opportunity for competitors.”
Laird and Mizrahi solicited a wider variety of sponsoring firms this year, inviting a judging panel of 11 business leaders. They also asked speakers to present at a conference that will take place at the same time as the morning case presentations, which are closed to the public.
Judges then choose finalists to present again in the afternoon, where they will have to go through another 15-minute question-and-answer session. The afternoon presentations are open to the public.
Awards for first, second and third places will be presented, with the overall winners receiving gift bags, plaques and the prized dinner with the judges.
“It would have been much cheaper to do a cash prize, but we just find it really valuable for students to network with these firms,” Laird said.
Mizrahi said businesses that send judges and recruiters benefit from the event as well because they can look for potential interns and employees. Mizrahi himself now works for one of the firms that attended the competition last year.
Justin Wang, a third-year psychobiology student who will be competing on Saturday, said the competition is a rare resource for UCLA students who want to go into business because UCLA lacks a business or finance undergraduate major.
“This is a great opportunity to really see if this is the kind of stuff I want to do. There’s no other way to know if you want to do something other than to just do it,” Wang said.
