It’s officially association competition season! To best prepare you for association competitions, we should look through what goes into each type of competition and review some helpful advice.
Remember, these competitions will decide if you can compete and attend the Collegiate DECA International Career Development Conference, also known as CICDC, so take it seriously and do your best. CICDC isn’t solely about competition; it also offers many professional development and networking opportunities for all attendees.
Prepared Business Presentation
- Each event has guidelines on the website that you should review as you prepare for competition.
- For each event, members should come with their prepared presentation. Each event has a 15-minute time limit, including the time for your judge to ask questions.
- Digital Marketing Strategies and Professional Sales are the only two prepared business presentations that don’t require a paper to be submitted before competition. The other events require a 15-page paper to be submitted before you arrive at the competitive event site for pre-judging.
Case Studies
- Each event has guidelines on the website that you should review as you prepare for competition.
- You’re able to use technology to create a well-put-together presentation.
- There will be a 100-question, multiple-choice test in one of the competitive event career clusters. You can find the career cluster test for your competitive event online here.
- For individual case studies, there is a 30-minute prep period followed by a 15-minute interview.
- For team case studies, there is a 60-minute prep session followed by a 15-minute interview.
Advice
- Practice! For prepared business presentations, you can practice presenting your presentation to a group of friends or your advisor to get the hang of it. For case studies, you can find practice case studies for your event online to run through, similar to a real competition.
- Review common terms for the industry to use, impress your judge and showcase your knowledge of the industry.
- Review performance indicators online to prepare for potential questions.
- For case studies, prepare a couple of presentations as templates you can easily adapt to the topic.
- Leave time for the judge to ask questions after you present.
- Be proud of yourself. No matter the outcomes, you at least tried and did your best.
Questions?
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