SAF Competitions

On Episode 4 of SAF Ready the Podcast, our competitions coordinator Keidon joins Sam as they dive into the world of competitions at SAF. Discover the advantages of joining student competitions supported by SAF, the application process, and how participating can equip you with invaluable skills and opportunities for the real world.

Transcript

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All righty. Hi, everyone, and welcome to SAF Ready the Podcast here at the University of Waterloo. On this podcast will have a variety of guests students, faculty and staff to let you in on all that the School of Accounting Finance has to offer. I'm Sam, and I'll be your host. We want to ensure that you're hearing everything that you want to know about the School of Accounting Finance. So after listening to episodes, feel free to DM us on our variety of social chains, as well as emailing us at saf@uwaterloo.ca with any more questions, topics, or people that you want to hear from today and soon for our next episode on Buzzsprout, Spotify and Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Honestly, any platform offering a podcast you can most likely find us. Today we have Keidon on our competitions coordinator at SAF. Thanks so much for coming on Keidon. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. We're just going to dive right in. So basically, what is your role at the School of Accounting Finance with being a competition coordinator? Yes. So the official title is Competition's Coordinator. Yeah. And what I do is I oversee the registration process and also the promotion process of all internal and external SAF competitions. So the promotion process can be from good luck posts on social media or congratulations posts after the results or a blog about the students experiences during the competition. And we'll promote that on our website and on social media. so that's kind of the process in terms of promotion. For internal competitions, I actually set up the events as well, so. Okay. Yeah, because I've seen you and your like here at, like opening up like, like day events. He's here like 7 a.m. guys and I don't wake up before 9 a.m.. So like, okay, that’s not true but through because my start time is 830. Just kidding. no. Only a couple of times. It's not too bad, I know, but I'm like, I applaud you every time. I'm like, that's so impressive because that it takes some work ethic. So ten out of ten to you. So that's just the competition side. Yeah, I also do administration for the Student Investment Fund, Student Venture Fund and another course here in AFM. Oh yeah? And also the FLC, which is the financial literacy competition. It is a competition across all of Canada. Oh wow. We usually have over a thousand students every May and December. So that is that's used to help promote SAF to high school students, maybe get them into financial literacy and then maybe one day they come to SAF, maybe and definitely a financial literacy conference or competition or something because. Yeah, I yeah. Anyway, and I'll leave it at that. I'll leave it at that. 10/10 we love to hear that. But yeah, that's really cool. Actually. I'll probably dive into more stuff after that, but yeah. So why do you think that students should be a part of competitions? I feel like we kind of hear about it a lot, especially like because a lot of students here participate in like students and like, I feel like you always hear like the classic, like, like an engineering competition. So like what's like a SAF competition and why would kids be interested in be a part of it? Well, for the most part, most of the competitions are stock pitch competitions. So what the students do is they're assigned a certain stock. Sometimes it can be different for each student group in the competition, and then they pitch to investors or just a group of judges why they should invest in that stock or not. Oh okay. And that's a huge process. It's not that simple. Yeah, I can imagine it's probably a little more extensive, but so it's a great experience for the real world, world. Also, you're getting out of your comfort zone. Yeah. You're forcing yourself to do something that's not just sitting in the classroom and listening to a professor talk to you. And you're under pressure in these competitions. And sometimes in the real world, you can be under pressure as well. So it's great for preparation. Yes. I just kept thinking, under pressure, but, yeah, no, that's so true. I feel like we like it. Like there's only so much we can learn from and like, how we're going to be, like, in the real world, in the classroom. Like, I feel like we're just like, so used to like the sitting, listening, doing work when it becomes like a time where you have to be in your own hands. It's kind of nice that we have things like this to like, push us to discuss like that, which is pretty cool. Yes, but yeah, so basically, how do they go about like joining competitions? Like, is it kind of like an application process? Like, yeah, so on the competition's web page, which is probably where you're watching, link in the description, check it out. Yes, there is a competition subsidy application form so these students can apply through their pick which competitions they're interested in. And we have info on each competition on our competitions web page. Yeah. So they can, you know, check them out and see which ones that they're interested in. See which one is catching your eye. And you know, they can pick like five different ones say, Hey, I want to be a part of these five and then maybe we'll pick them for one or two. Yeah, and put them on a team. And usually you guys make the teams. Yes. Oh that's nice. Now, sometimes students go outside of us and make their own teams, which is fine, but they might not always be subsidized if they didn't get permission ahead of time. Oh okay gotcha. So they can do that and go through the application form or a lot of times, well, not a lot, but sometimes faculty's. The faculty members just pick the students and they go up to them and ask, Hey, do you want to be a part of this competition? Because, when you have a faculty mentor, they want to win. That's fair, but they want to help the students grow as well. So they they pick sometimes handpicked really good students. that's kind of cool. So that's you then? You know, you're pretty good. Yeah. You're being spotted, you're being scouted. It's like being picked for, I don't know, varsity sports. I just. I was on my brain in the moment, but. So, yeah. What kind of support does SAF provide students who are participating in these competitions? So you kind of mentioned like faculty mentorships, obviously. Yes. And like kind of like do you have to pay for things like fees and stuff that, so we'll start with the faculty mentors. It depends what avenue the, the competition's and maybe it's accounting, finance, business, sustainability that will depend who the faculty members and they will help you help guide you along the way. A lot of these faculty members have done this before with many competition teams, so and many students. So yeah, that's one support area. And then another is the fees. So students won't have to pay for anything that's travel, food, hotels. Oh wow. Registration fee. That's all subsidized by us. Oh wow. I didn't know that. That's really all we ask for is just to be able to promote them and for them to share their story after in a blog or a story. Okay, that's okay. That's a really good deal. Okay. It's pretty good. Yeah. It's for free. Like, I don't know why students wouldn't do it. It's a great opportunity. They could totally just do, like, go to those, like, get ready with me, Get ready with me while I do a competition for SAF? Yeah and go for free and go for free. Maybe you were going to ask this later on, but they're going to Montreal. Toronto, Vancouver, Manhattan, Harvard, which is Cambridge. So seriously, they go all over. So it's a great opportunity to travel as well, depending and a lot of these comps are in Toronto, but even that's cool. So yeah, I did not know this. Is there a prize money involved with competitions? Like honestly, you talk about how it's free but also so that's it. So yeah, so well it's free to go to basically and a great experience, a learning experience. But also you can win some money too. So I've seen prize pools up to ten grand. I've seen five grand for grand. It's usually a few thousand. So split between the four students or depending how big the competition team is, which is usually three or four students. Yeah, just pay for your co-op fee, done. You can go for free and then get paid for it too. So why not? that's literally like the best of both worlds. Like I just do is a little bit of work to make sure you win. Just a little bit. Just a little bit, Yeah. so, yeah. What kind of skill sets do you do students gain by competing? Is it like, do they gain like, not just skills within, like the actual competition itself? Is it kind of like it just a variety of different things? Like what would you kind of say would be like a big appeal for students who are trying to like, build on their skill set when they're moving to these competitions? And networking is definitely I think I wouldn't put it number one, but it's definitely up there. It's a great chance to not only meet people in the industry now, but students across other universities, because a lot of these competitions are students from not only all around Canada but around North America around the world. So, I mean, you meet someone from Cambridge, you would have never met them before. Maybe they're doing something you're interested in. You collaborate. So yeah, you never know. So networking is up there, but in my opinion, it's the experience. It's the experience collaborating with your teammates I think is huge, especially when they have to juggle their own work from school. Maybe they're on co-op. Yeah, so it's a lot because this is on top of their schooling. It's not, it's not a part of it. So I would say those are are things that you can learn and grow. Yeah. I also think like the networking opportunity to like because I always am like in the back of my head whenever you like, meet somebody, especially in a business situation, like you're like you never know who you're going to be working for, working with, working under. So you'll see again or who you see again. Exactly. So it's like meeting other students as well as like the business professionals. It's just like, it's like the cherry on top. Like you're never really going to be in a bad situation for like, making these connections from the start. Like, yeah, you want to win it, but you also want to make buddy buddy with everybody that's there. No like seriously, I mean, winning, it's cool and all, but, you know, two years after that, one year after that, the next day, it doesn't really, really matter too much. It's about what you gain from it. Yeah. And like I've heard like students who like network at these competitions and like meet like business professionals and they can like lead to like co-op jobs and they connect on LinkedIn and you never know that stuff. So yeah, I know I feel like this huge, like an entire course. On how to navigate LinkedIn. Yeah, I feel like you always hear like, message me on LinkedIn, add me on LinkedIn, and I'm like, we actually we actually do have that at SAF. It's called kidding me. Yeah, it's called Co-op Ready. But we can talk about that a different time. What the heck! When like we got some of the bases covered, maybe not all of them. That's awesome. Okay, so you kind of dove a little bit into specifics of the competitions. Do you want to talk about like ones that can be specifically, especially for like our students who are in SFM? Yeah, yeah. Like specific competitions. I would really kind of orient with them. I know there was like an ESG one a little while ago. Yeah. So to that, we subsidizes that John Molson sustainability case competition, which is in Montreal. So that's one. And then yeah, so great opportunity for students. And then another one is the A for S case competition which is related to sustainability. Okay. And we have sustainability profs that help mentor students for that one. Yeah. And we've competed in it before, so that's pretty cool. Okay, awesome. Yeah. In regards to sustainability, I know it's a new program, but there are competitions related and you don't have to just go on to a sustainable or a sustainability related competition. Oh yeah, they can go into a business one as well. Absolutely. Or accounting. But in terms of sustainability, we do have options. Okay. So yeah, and so kind of more into like just general competitions. So they're like our accounting competitions versus like finance and business ones. Yeah, it varies. Yes. Okay. So like, what are the ones that are kind of coming up in the next like little bit, well, I can tell you ones that we just had was the Investment Research Challenge. I did see that. I saw people walking around the school in suits and I was like, I'm wearing my business casual clothes. I feel very underdressed. Yes. And that one was actually they had to evaluate a Tesla Tesla stock. Interesting. cool. That's awesome. Well, ten out of ten and then you said they're prepping for the literacy conference, which is coming up in the winter, financial literacy competition. I had it almost, but I didn’t have it in that we can. We can go into that. Yeah. Do you want to go for it? Sure. Yeah. Every December and May is the financial literacy competition. If I know if I were a high school student, I'd want to be a part of that. And the reason I say that is not because I work here. It's it's because I don't feel like I was taught much about financial literacy in high school. I don't know about you, Sam. No, I know Emma actually goes whatever I'm can't even do it. So that's because that's about it. Yeah. So no, so no. Yeah. So it's just a because we're not being provide it, provided it in high school you kind of got to go outside and this is a chance and with the financial literacy competition it's up to the teachers to register. Okay so students can bring it up to their teachers, but it is up to them to register their class and they just do the test online in their own high school classrooms. with their teacher supervising. Oh nice. And yeah, there's a junior and senior test. So you have the chance to win either or. And what you win is if you are a senior or a junior and you come first place, which is extremely hard to do because there's like a over 1000 students. Yeah, you get$750 towards your retirement savings. Oh that's so cool. And you get well, it is a financial literacy that's so smart. That's so smart. You get, I think, $75 on top of that for being on the honor roll, which all top ten students in each grade get. cool. Yeah, that's really cool. There's a lot going on. There's so much. You are busy oh my goodness. I didn't get into the whole world, but part of it. yeah. And can students also compete within it SAF also compete in competitions that are not necessarily specific to accounting finance. Like, I know I kind of brought it up earlier, but like there's competitions that are like more oriented, like the entire university. The short answer is no, because we they can compete for sure, but they won't be subsidized by us. So we're only going to subsidize the competitions that relate to the School of Accounting and Finance. So accounting, finance, business, sustainability related. Okay. So they can go and compete for sure, you just won't be paid for it by us. Wouldn't be reimbursed. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Cool. But they can still compete and win money and getting reimbursed that way. Yeah, reimbursed that way. Yeah, I know. Because I remember seeing one of our I think it's on Instagram saying one of our students was like a part of like a it was a like a architectural competition. I think it was like, yeah. And like they were the team of finance a part of that, I think the financial analysts on that particular team. Yes. So it was like an engineering student and there's like a business which involved, like an economics student or that there's different people. Yeah. So that's a good segue way into if students want to compete in competitions that aren't necessarily a part of our list that we say or subsidize, yeah, they can find those competitions on their own, notify us and we can determine if rules subsidize the competition or not if it relates to SAF. Okay, cool. So like, if like what they're doing is like, closely enough, like, not necessarily promoted by us, but like, close enough that you're like, I think this is like, worth the pitch. Yeah. I mean, there's so many competitions we don't have them all on our competition list, on the web, on the website. So students are allowed to go and sign their own. Yeah, just we have to give approval that will subsidize it. Yeah, that's fair. It's related to SAF. Well, it's nice. You can't do like a sport competition and then ask us to subsidize it was right. What are you talking about? It was a ring toss. I was going to win, but yeah. No, they still won't subsidized. No. Yeah. That, that, that makes, that makes a lot actually kind of cool too. Like the you guys are like, still supporting the students of, like, experiencing other competitions to get like, you're not just, like, limiting them, not to limit them because they sound pretty cool. No, we're not limiting them at all. Yeah, which is really awesome. And then they get to like kind of explore other areas of like business, especially if they're like if they're doing the business side of stuff for particular students, then they can like, you know, I feel like it's kind of cool to like, meet other people in their faculties and work with them as well. Yeah, because you never know where you're going to again. You never know who you're going to work with in life. You never know. Yeah. So what kind of success rates have our students had in the past couple with competitions? I know this is a cheesy answer, but from reading their blogs and their stories, I'd say 100% because they've all taken out something positive from every experience. It's not always about the end result. Like I said earlier, you know, the result doesn't matter the next day. It's what you took out of it. Exactly. So from reading their blogs and the positive experience they've had and skills that they've gained, I would say 100%. Now that doesn't mean it was a smooth road the whole way. Yeah. And that there weren't things that, you know, they weren't happy with. But I would say they've all taken something out of it. So 100% cool or close to it. And then in terms of like coming first place, we do come first place like a handful of times a year and we usually compete in around 30 competitions. Oh wow. Throughout the year. Cool. And we'll have one to maybe more teams, depending if it's internal, like if it's an internal comp, we had 70 SAF students competing for $4,000. Have any students competed in international competitions? Like, I know you kind of touched on it earlier, but yeah, I mean, I just got an email today about the student team that competed in Manhattan, and they, they filmed a Instagram reel. Yeah, that will be sharing soon about what they did there. And they went to shows and saw downtown, etc., had great food. So good. On top of competing and learning and.... That is so cool. Like, was it like an experience? Was it like kind of like what kind of competition was it? Do you know? Like the specifics? Like, I don't know. Yeah, there are a lot I don't know. I don't know the specifics of all that's especially off the top of my head. I why aren't you naming every single one. I should know exactly what they did exactly exactly what they promoted. Exactly like I don't go to these competitions. I just. I'm overseeing, facilitating and making sure they're a part of them and that they get promoted. Yeah. Yeah. No. Very, very cool. Well, that's still so awesome shows. I want to go on Broadway and like, the classic New York pizza just sounds. Chef's kiss. Yeah. So good. So you said they kind of, did they kind of just take place, like, throughout the year, or is it like specific times of year that they're kind of, like, more inclined to happen? Great, great question. So I would say it dies down in the summer in terms of external competitions, which aren't with the School of Accounting and Finance, but that's where our internal competitions happen. Okay. So Investment Research Challenge, which I brought up was in July and that had 70 students. Yeah, strategy case competition was in June and that had over 50. So that for internal it's during the summer, but in the winter, in the fall and winter terms, that's where the external competitions come in. And you'll go to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver depending where the competition is. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So it's nice that it's kind of like they're not to say that there's a break, but like there is like a kind of like a, like a shorter and like less intense time of year to. Yes. And students would want to register early on in the fall or late in the summer term if they want to compete in the fall or the winter term. Yeah. just so we have time to put the teams together. Yeah, absolutely. Now, in saying that students are allowed to put their own teams together as well and come to us and say, Hey, we want to put this team together. Yeah, big good answer, too. Yeah, dying over here just heaving and I would keep it in kind of like it. This is blow out the mic. Where was I? I focus on your coughing. Yeah, you can form your own teams. Yeah. So students can form their own teams and come to us and say, Hey, I want to. I want to compete with my three friends. I think we do really well together and we want to compete in this competition. Can we get subsidized? And if you get approval, you will get subsidized. Okay. But also, like you don't have to worry about like formulating a team if you don't have one, but you’re interested in the competition. No. If you don't have a team, you just apply as an individual and we can put you on one. Now we only have so much money, so we can't. Not necessarily everyone will do every competition and we may only have one team per competition. So if you asked to be in five, six, seven comps, you might not get it right? Yeah, that's fair. But I also feel like that's just kind of that's the way it is. But also I feel like if the students keep applying, they will they will compete for sure and multiple. And also like I feel like you also like if you're doing six competitions on top of the fact that you're doing schoolwork or like your co-op, you get a little bit because it is a lot of a lot of work. Well, I mean, the Manhattan team. No, I think it was a different team, but they, they put together a 70 page slide, 70 page paper that's literally a book and a sorry 70 page slideshow, but still that is a book, but it's big plus the appendix and they had to present this so not all of them are that big, but it shows you that it can be a lot of work outside of school, but it's worth it because yeah, obviously it is worth it. But so if you're like, I want to be in a bajillion, maybe not a bajillion. No, maybe one try to get into one a term. Yeah. That, that. Yeah. I feel like that's like a good amount of like , yeah, space for that. Yeah. Well my last question is any advice to incoming or prospective students considering SAF and like just in general, like what are you you're kind of like with your knowledge of competitions. Yeah, I would say just go out and do it. It's pretty simple. Once you're there, the nerves will probably go away because you realize, holy crap, I'm here, it's happening. Yeah. So too bad. Too bad. No fear. So just, yeah don't have fear. Exactly. And just do it. The worst that can happen is you get reimbursed and you didn't lose any money. Yeah, you had a good experience. Well, thank you so much for coming today, Keidon. This was seriously awesome. I seriously wish now I could do these competitions, but I can't. But it's fine anyway. But thank you so much for coming and I hope that our students were well. I definitely know that our students were able to get some more insight on what the coolness of the competitions is, but if you guys want any more info, feel free to check out the website which the competitions website because they have all the information there or send Keidon a quick email. Yes. Yeah. krgiles@uwaterloo.ca. Woo and thank you for having me Sam. Absolutely