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ICEAW BASE Competition 2018 - A Student Review

The annual ICEAW Base Competition is an exciting and innovative challenge offering sixth form students from all around the country to compete against each other in a task designed to develop key employability skills and to offer an insight into the business world as a whole, as well as potential careers in finance and accounting. This year, myself and a team of 4 others entered and were successful at getting through to the final stage in Birmingham. It was a great opportunity for my teammates and I to develop new practical skills that cannot be taught in a classroom.

On the day, each team was presented with a number of sources on a business case that we had studied in previous rounds of the competition. This included market information, financial statements and potential new ventures. From this, we had just short of three hours to come up with a future business strategy that we then presented to a panel of judges. The way the day was structured meant that as a team, we could pull on each others individual strengths in order to create a compelling and justified presentation. For example, some took the lead in developing our ideas whilst others focussed on the presentation itself. The game was unlike anything I had taken part in before, it meant my team and I had to work collaboratively under strict time pressures and pitch our ideas to a room full of strangers, as would be expected of you in the business world. This was a daunting yet valuable task from which we all took something different away.

For me, the experience was extremely insightful; it allowed me to demonstrate my problem solving skills, data interpretation and time management as well as fuelling my enthusiasm for a career in business and finance.

Abi Taylor, Year 12