A Students Look at 2013 Illinois State HR Games

Today post is by Ashley Tague a University of Illinois at Springfield student. She recently attended the Illinois State HR games. We thank her for this post as she shares some thoughts here.

On February 23, 2013, Eastern Illinois University hosted the 2013 Illinois State HR Games.  This competition occurred in three parts:

       1. A case study      2. An individual competition       3. A Jeopardy-style trivia game.

 (L to R) Karla Leahr  AshleyTague   Mehr Chaudhry

The competition served as a great learning experience, not only for me personally, but for our school, University of Illinois Springfield.  UIS has only taken part in this competition twice, and this year, the team we took was new to all aspects of the competition.  I was astonished by the schools there who practice diligently for the competition each year, and it was fun getting to interact with the various students there as well.

I personally would encourage anyone who is interested in the field of HR to put themselves out there and compete.  I was extremely nervous because I have not had my internship in HR yet, I have never competed in this competition before, and I am currently taking my first HR class ever this semester.  Despite being extremely nervous, I guess I put my nerves aside when it came to the individual competition.  The individual competition consisted of a quiz with any topic from training and development to unions and everything in between.
 
During the awards ceremony, ISU took home 1st place in the individual competition, and I took home 2nd place on behalf of UIS.  Northern Illinois University placed first in Jeopardy, and ISU came in second.  As far as the case study is concerned, Northern Illinois University won 1st in that as well.  This was a great end to a really wonderful day, and I would like to tell everyone who competed congrats!

The caliber of the students was very impressive.  I would also like to give a big thanks to Eastern Illinois University Student SHRM Chapter and Dr. Heather Jia for such a well ran event as well as all the time and dedication taken.  Additionally, I would like to thank Donna Rogers and Dr. Ben Walsh for preparing our team and Dr. Walsh for taking time to take us to the event.  This competition allowed me to look forward to my own growth in HR as well as become inspired to open up a SHRM student chapter on the UIS campus.  I cannot wait to participate next year!