Wayne State business students invited to pitch themselves in elevator RenCen competition
Students in Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business will have the opportunity to give their best “elevator pitch” to local human resources professionals for a chance to win $1,750 in scholarship money on April 8. Students will, literally, enter an elevator at the Renaissance Center with representatives from major Detroit companies and give their best shot during the 90-second ride up to Coach Insignia restaurant on the 72nd floor. “The idea came out of Dean (Robert) Forsythe; he did something similar when he was at the University of South Florida,” said Steve Townsend, the business school's director of marketing and communications. “When he took a ride up to Coach Insignia, he said ‘This would be a great spot to bring this to Detroit.’ ” Hiring managers from the local offices of Quicken Loans Inc., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP will participate in this event. Students will get a chance to pitch one professional on the way up and another on the way down. The top five students after the elevator rounds will pitch all judges in a boardroom setting. Forsythe said all undergraduate students in Wayne State's school of business are welcome to participate in the event, which is part of a larger plan to get more students involved in school-sponsored workshops and get more experience in their anticipated fields. “The encouragement is to get students to come to one of these workshops to work on this thing,” Forsythe said. “We want to work on the little things for the students whose background in business isn’t that strong. These are skills you have to have; you must be able to sell yourself in a short amount of time.” Forsythe said he hopes students see this as more than just an opportunity to win scholarship dollars. “Students may look at the prize money, but the real prize is if they’ve potentially walked out of the elevator with a business card from a hiring manager who wants to follow up with them,” Forsythe said.
