I had an opportunity to attend CA$H 2012. CA$H is organized by ICAO. It’s an annual competition where student’s soft skills are put to the test which are vital in becoming a Chartered Accountant.
Usually, teams are picked by university’s accounting society. Depending on the school, 1 to 3 teams can represent their respective university. The team of three people must include one 1st year student, one 2nd year student.
This year, my university was given the opportunity to send 2 teams. I was part of one them. Additionally I was honoured to be chosen as leader of our team by my teammates.
We all gathered around 11:00 am in front of the ICAO headquarters at Bloor and Yonge.
Doors were opened with ICAO staff greeting and welcoming everyone inside.
After quick registration, everybody is taking team pictures.
Afterwards we proceed to lunch provided by the generous ICAO staff. Here we had the opportunity to meet and network with accounting students from other universities across the province.
At 12:00 pm, everyone is gathered into a large meeting room where the explanation of this year’s challenge took place.
The Challenge
I will provide a brief description to give you an idea of what the competition entitled:
Most of the time CA$H is based on some kind of market game with different terms every year.
This year, we embarked on the CHALLENGE OF EXCELLERON!
Each team was given a tribe name and a little leather pouch.
Inside the leather pouch, we found several currencies and some gem stones. The pouch also included pieces of paper with information on them also known as “Tips.” In addition, each team started with capital consisting of some cash credits.
In order to win a team must have passed 2 requirements.
I. Reach a certain amount of credits, in this case 650 credits was the goal
II. Acquire 85% positive feedback from other teams.
All the currencies and gem stones have different values at certain stages of the game; in addition, teams will receive bonus points at the end of the game for currencies specific to their team.
Here comes the tricky part: details in regards to bonuses, penalties, and currency value were written on the “Tips” given to each team in the beginning of the game. Each team had different “Tips” so the difficult part was to negotiate with other teams to acquire the information that the other teams had in their possession.
Each team would have only 3 tips at the beginning of the game.
These tips were crucial for any team to be successful. For example, one of the “Tips” stated that Gems are worth 10 points at the end of the game. We needed to use this information to negotiate with other teams and trade currencies in order to benefit our own team and at the same time, help other teams by trading them the items that they might need.
So for most of the competition, teams would be playing blind until they acquired any sort of “Tips” from other teams. That’s where the soft skill set comes in handy. This challenge targeted communication, leadership and team building skills, as well as integrity in order to acquire these tips.
Once our team began acquiring these “Tips”, we began to have an idea of what things were worth and what we should sell.
Overall, It was a great experience trading with other teams, building alliances, and negotiating prices on information that have very short-term value.
After 1 hour the game was done, and inventory of your credits, currencies was written down, and the special bonuses were revealed.
Afterwards, all of the teams were required to fill out a feedback survey about other teams. It was hard to judge teams that you haven’t come in contact with. Some teams were difficult to negotiate with and talk to which implied lack of communication within the environment.
Unfortunately, we did not manage to learn a crucial tip due to which we lost substantial amount of points. We were left with a surprise and with points below the minimum mark.
After the competition
While the scores were being calculated, students had a chance to mingle and share their thoughts with each other.
When the time came to announce the winners, it was a little bit of shock.
The only team that had fulfilled both requirements of the competition was the ICAO’s “ghost” team. Since one of the universities had to resign from the competition a couple days before, ICAO made a team in order to have a balanced number of teams. This team consisted of 3 Chartered Accountants. To make the competition fair, ICAO did not tell the ghost team the rules. The ghost team learned the rules of the competition at the same time as the rest of the competitors did.
Unfortunately, no one else had passed the benchmark of 85% positive feedback.
After some deliberation, the council came to a decision to revise the 2 criteria.
First, they would pick the teams that had pass the minimum points benchmark. Out of those teams, the winner would be the one with the highest positive feedback.
This surprised some of the students, with comments like “I thought this was the CASH competition”.
The morale was presented by a graph that illustrated a good balance between communication and productivity.
If I am not mistaken, it should have looked something like this:
So the square that your team would fall on the graph, would indicate the optimal strategy for your team to utilize in the future.
Let’s say a team scored 700 points, but only 50% positive feedback. They would fall into red square. Which means productivity is good, but lack of communication, therefore they need to SOCIALIZE. If you they good with communication skills, but lack productivity, then they need to CAPITALIZE. If they are good at everything, then just need to MAXIMIZEinputs and outputs. However if everything is bad, just CLOSE YOUR EYES, and start over.
If I would have to summarize the point of this competition, I believe that this graph would do very good job at it.
Finally, the winners were announced.
1st Place – The University of Waterloo, represented by Faizan Siddiqui, Onisifor Prisecaru and Roshin Mathew, who win the CA$H Cup plus $3,000 and an additional $1,500 for their school’s accounting club
2nd place – Ryerson University – Jedidiah Andres, Olivia Giammarioli and David Luque
3rd place – The University of Windsor – Robert Cancian, Brandon Ouellette and Vedant Pandey
4th place – The Schulich School of Business – Vito Giovannetti, Tina Lao and Hassan Valiji
5th place – McMaster University – DeGroote School of Business – Pallavi Balakrishnan, Rachel Mak and Lindsey Schneider
6th place – The University of Toronto-Mississauga – Rishi Damle, Hibbah Khan and Urja Mehta
Shortly after, students had the opportunity to network and mingle with recruiters from the Big 4 accounting firms, as well as BDO, Grant Thornton and Bell.
In my perspective, this was a very memorable, entertaining, and educating event, which offered an opportunity to show yourself, form new friendships and expand your network.
For a lot of students, CA$H is a stepping stone into the world of extracurricular achievements. Also, I think it is amazing that this event is accessible for 1st and 2nd year students. Getting involved early, will definitely pave the road to success!
Written By: Elvin Aghayev, 3rd Year Accounting Student, York University
Visit Elvin's Blog at: http://elvinaghayev.com/
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