Vaughan MBA students Advance in National Competition

In Announcements, by Ellen Batrouny, on December 18th, 2020

MBA Students from Niagara University in Vaughan joined students from the University of Toronto to participate in a national competition – The Canada Comeback Challenge hosted by BHER (Business + Higher Education Roundtable). The Canada Comeback Challenge is a skill-building competition designed for students to connect with mentors and employers, build their network, add valuable experience to their resumes while contributing to Canada’s COVID-19 recovery.

https://studentchallenge.bher.ca

The team chose to pursue the Business Council of Canada’s challenge. The task, for the first round of competition, was to address the following dilemma and offer the potential solution: If companies were to take on a larger role in education, skills development, and training, how should they do it? For example, what could they do to be responsive to the needs of their new hires and current employees who, more than ever, require new skills and training throughout their careers?

To address the problem, the team proposed developing and implementing a digital platform that assesses and track the skills of an organization’s employees that will identify training opportunities and provide a quantitative metric for analyzing training program effectiveness. In conjunction with academic partners, this data can also be utilized to develop specialized training programs. Overall, the proposed system will be designed to identify and remedy the growing mismatch between employees’ skills and the needs of employers to support a thriving Canadian economy.

The proposal was successful and identified as promising by the organizers. The team is now invited to progress to the second round of the competition.