Friday the 25th of March saw 60 of the best students at the UK’s top Universities descend on Cass Business School for the Grand Final of Universities’ Brightest Business Brain, with a view to fighting it out to be crowned overall champion.
Created by TARGETevents the competition was run in partnership with Clifford Chance who as a firm of exceptional lawyers attracts people from wide range of backgrounds. ”There is no one ‘type’ of person we look to recruit. Instead, we want to attract people who can help give our clients a competitive edge in challenging situations and having graduates join us that not only have great academics but also business acumen and commercial awareness is one of these advantages. For this reason as well as the high profile the competition has had across the UK’s top campuses is why we decided to get involved in the competition” says Jackie Trench, Graduate Recruitment Specialist at the firm.
Officially launched in January, more than 3,000 students registered to take 4 online exercises which were designed by cut-e to identify the kind of competencies, traits and aptitudes associated with successful businesspeople. Having taken the exercises via the competitions website www.unisbrightestbrain.com students were immediately given a score which was posted on to the competition’s Leaderboard showing them their position and highlighting if they had made it through to the Grand Final!
The top 60 from the Leaderboard were invited to the final in London to demonstrate further their abilities and commercial awareness through 6 face to face assessment exercises created by all the competitions sponsors including Towers Watson, CIMA and Cass Business School.
The exercises reflected important competencies each of the sponsors look for in students as well as giving the Grand Final participants a feel for who the sponsors are and what they do. Exercises included an ethics debate around the topic of “Should prisoners have the right to vote?”, a team working exercise called ‘The Great Egg Drop’, a communications exercise called ‘Farmers Exercise’ and a business case study based on a fictitious company called Mackintosh Grant.
With students attending from as far away as St.Andrews and Durham University the competition throughout the day was intense yet friendly as everyone knew they were in with a chance of winning the £1000 first prize. In the end though there could be only one overall winner!
1st prize went to Ciaran Singh from the University of Warwick with a score of 25.5 out of a possible 30. 2nd place and £500 went to Surajit Chakraverti also from the University of Warwick with 3rd place and £200 going to Thomas Milne of City University. The day finished with drinks, food and networking as well as excitement around next years competition.
About TARGETevents
TARGETevents are part of Group GTI, the world’s largest recruitment specialists. They assist graduate recruiters to innovatively engage and attracting high calibre students from the UK’s top Universities via events. Other events that TARGETevents run and have created include the 8 Task Challenge and City Law for ethnic minorities.
