Navigating through MBA – [4/8] Winning Case Study Competitions – Tips from 100%iler, IITD, IIMA Alum

Hello everyone welcome to my channel for everyone who is new i’m chavi gupta i’m an iit delhi and i am imdavad alam and i was also the cat 2017 100 dialer i have worked as a consultant for a while and right now i’m working as a product manager this particular video is in a series of videos in which i am basically telling.

People how to navigate through their mba life how to navigate through different aspects how to basically excel while doing an mba so let’s just get started so today’s video is about winning case competitions and also learning from them so i’ve got a lot of questions asking about what are case competitions how do we tackle them how do we take part in.

Them and what do we really get from them so this video will answer all of your questions regarding the same basically as i was talking about this video series is part of talking about all the different key aspects of an mba life so previously i have done an introduction adjusting an mba environment excelling in your studies.

And your placements and this is the fourth video in this particular series after this i’ll talk about a little advanced videos in which you will i’ll talk about time management having fun learning and networking in mba so in case you have not seen the videos previously posted please have a look at them you will find in the see them in.

The same playlist well the mantra that i think forced me to create these with this video series or was behind me in creating this video series was that mba is more than a degree and it is sort of an experience that you should cherish and i have seen a lot of people getting overwhelmed by mba colleges.

Just handling the bare necessities getting very very stressed and that is not something that should happen and hence that is the motivation behind creating this video series and i hope that you find it useful so talking specifically about case study competitions these are some quick facts about the same.

When do case competitions happen they generally happen in your term two or second year term five and that is majorly between august and november what do they really ask so there are a lot of different type of case study competitions and it can be something like simulation it can be marketing ideas to even some logical reasoning.

Quests and rounds and which companies organize them a lot of different companies organize different type of case competitions mostly marketing firms do the marketing ideas and simulations but there are a lot of strategy firms also strat also which hold strategy competitions just thinking or logical.

Reasoning the companies that i can recall are for example amazon hul png uh aditya billah and there might be a few more uh these are the ones that i can recall at the moment so now i will basically answer the major questions i have got about case.

Competitions again and again the first one is are case competitions really worth it well the short answer is yes totally worth it and you should take part in as many of them as possible but always keep in mind that you do not overburden yourself you do not take part in.

Say five to ten case comparisons at a time and you are just running behind case competition deadline after deadline right that is not what you should ever do if you have some other priority task that just comes up out of the blue take the competition lightly if you have some tasks related to studies related to.

Placements etc that you have to give time to it’s okay to just let the competition you know just go lightly also while you’re taking part in competitions you should experiment with different teams and see what works for you i’ll talk about it in detail next but do not just get stuck to the very.

First team that you are working with and feel free to explore a lot the second question is should i take part why should i take part in case competitions well the but obvious thing is you will get cv points you will get awards but there’s a lot more you will practice skills that you are.

Not good in i mean it could be something like giving presentations doing number crunching creating a financial model and that is why you should take part in very very different types of case competitions so you will figure out what are your strengths what are your weaknesses and you can start working on them because case competitions sort of.

Ask a lot of soft skills and hard skills that are used in real life and hence improving them at this particular time is the best possible thing that you can do after that you will also find people that you can complement well with and this is why i was talking about working in different teams because when you work.

In different teams you will realize okay these are the people my strengths really align well with and these are the people who can pick up whatever weakness i have and make me learn from it as well and that is why it would be great if you can find people who you can complement well with and in general have great experiences so.

In my png case competition um obviously i won a lot of awards got tv points etc but i got to travel to mumbai to south africa to dubai and i think that overall experience was more than amazing by the way in case you want to know more about my experience check out my ima two year journey video and it basically.

Gives a lot of photos and videos regarding my experience there the next question is what to keep in mind while participating so if you are participating in a case competition what are the things that you should know for sure first of all in any business case study you have to think holistically now what.

Does holistically mean is that you have to think from all different angles for example if you are changing a product okay what are the different stakeholders that this particular change can affect these are the things that you have to think you have to think from all the stakeholders perspective so based on.

Your new proposal how will things change for the customers for the final sellers for distributors for your finance team maybe for your marketing team and a lot more okay so you have to keep this always in mind but always keep customer at the top of your priority list to think about so keep customer as the most important stakeholder but definitely.

Think about how will things change for the rest of them okay in general you will get a real life problem that the company might be solving themselves or might have solved in the past so really take it to the very ground level stakeholders really think through the problem that what if.

You were facing this particular problem how would you handle it and because the company is facing that problem or has faced that problem what you will realize is that they have thought about the basic solutions they have already done the basic obvious solutions okay they might have implemented them as well so it’s.

Your job to think outside of the balls think out of the box think about some crazy ideas and give them really good solutions but ensure that your ideas however unique are also feasible even if you don’t know if it can be really really done you should be at least 50 sure that it can be done okay and then give you a solution.

Well what are the skills that are needed for case competitions this is a good question and the skills would depend on the type of competition so as i told there are different competitions and hence different skills are what is required for them so for marketing case studies your uniqueness the feasibility of the idea.

Uh how out of box idea is essentially your presentation and also probably your documentation skills is what will be needed if there are simulation case studies it is up to you that you know thoroughly what the rules are uh you know what are the potential solutions for your particular company and you analyze the data very well as.

Well okay other case studies are for example uh they give you logical reasoning questions they give you situation analysis and these are basically the skills you will need so now overall talking about what you will essentially learn in short with your case competitions and how you.

Should go about them is that you will win some but you will lose many okay if you feel that you know you are just losing after losing just know that it is completely fine i took part in around 10 and i won one into college and one png case study so you will lose a lot of competitions and that is completely fine.

So there are so many of case competitions to take part in aim for winning them but don’t get demotivated by the way if your college doesn’t organize a lot of case competitions you can just go to websites like dare to compete etc and they also have running case competitions almost all the time the second aspect is do not compare now.

Because you will lose many you will feel like other people are winning a lot and there will be a particular team or someone who will win all possible case competitions but just comparing with them and getting demotivated because of it will have no positive effect on you so just see ask them what the solution is how did.

They go about it maybe if you are interested but apart from that just avoid comparison at all costs and that is because your goal is to learn and enjoy and that’s it so just learn with every incoming case competition what are the things you can have done better what are the skills that you personally can improve and just.

Have a lot of fun and enjoy a lot okay you can learn so many soft skills and hard skills just by case competitions and that is all that your focus should be at okay so that was mostly it what essentially i like to say about case competitions is that they are one of those activities in mba colleges that are not compulsory but.

They provide so much learning that it is good to prioritize them so whenever you have time and you feel that you can spare some time it’s really good to take part in case competitions you will learn a lot and you might as well win right and this will be really fun for you so that was it about case competitions just telling about the channel in.

Particular and this video series every wednesday 7 pm you should see a new video launch turn on the notifications of the channel to get notified about the videos and when i launch them essentially i have not been able to do this since last two weeks because i’m on a vacation but you should expect videos at wednesday 7 pm.

In general so turn on your notifications to know when the next video is out and talking about the road map of this particular series um i have already done adjusting an mba environment excelling in studies figuring out placements and now case study competitions next would be managing time.

Time management is one of the key key skills that you have to learn in an mba college otherwise it will become so overwhelming and so difficult to prioritize so that is what i’ll talk about next so stay tuned for that particular video and that’s it from me in case you really like this video please subscribe like.

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So please do share around the videos do let me know what you feel about this particular video in comments below and i guess i’ll see you soon every sunday i have live q a sessions which also i want to pause right now but i’ll again begin them soon and also you can connect with me on different social media channels all of the links are in description.

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