Do you want to showcase your skills, impress potential employers or get funding for a business idea or research project? Entering one of the many competitions open to postgrad students could be the answer.
Sites such as studentcompetitions.com, which list up-to-date global opportunities searchable by category, are a good place to start, although your own department should be able to help you with any university-specific competitions, as well as those being conducted by companies or organisations in your sector, which tend to have a wider pool of candidates.
Some departments actively encourage students to enter competitions. At the University of Sheffield, third-year entrepreneurship and regional development PhD student Cristian Gherhes and his team, mentored by Prof Tim Vorley and Dr Robert Wapshott, came second at the International Graduate Competition. Hosted by HEC Montréal Business School in Canada, the competition sees 12 teams from internationally renowned business schools given 48 hours to collaborate and compete on a live business case.
Gherhes says the experience has helped him see beyond academia. “Having gone from an undergraduate degree straight into a PhD, I wanted to gain skills that are relevant and critical in any scenario, including successful idea pitching and negotiation skills.
“Those skills – as well as the friends I made and the fun we all had – made it one of the best experiences. I would strongly encourage anyone to take part in a postgraduate competition.”
Kostas Galanakis, programme leader at Nottingham Trent University’s entrepreneurship MSc, on which students undertake challenges throughout and compete for seed capital, agrees. “It’s not just about providing an idea and a good product; you need to present yourself, make networks, collaborate and negotiate. It’s not easy to do these things with a lecture. You have to feel them and experience them.”
Harriet Gliddon, now a postdoctoral research associate at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, won Imperial College’s 2015-16 Institute of Global Health Innovation Student Challenges competition when she was in the final year of her medical PhD there. Her presentation proposed a new way of testing for tuberculosis (TB) that would enable earlier treatment.
“I entered the competition to challenge myself to answer some of the questions that my PhD on TB testing posed, but that my research wasn’t answering,” she says. “The funding that came from the competition has been really useful in developing my work further, particularly in the more risky areas not covered by my PhD.”
The competition, open to all UK-based students, provides a forum for the next generation of global health innovators to showcase their ideas.
“Entering anything like this in the first place is the biggest step – I found it really scary,” says Gliddon. “But once you get stuck in, it’s pretty satisfying. I would recommend it as a totally different way of looking at your work.”
Tips for entering competitions
- Have a good team around you and a supportive supervisor. When you’re choosing where to do a PhD, try to identify supervisors who will encourage you to explore the opportunities that competitions present outside the immediate academic environment.
- Competitions aren’t just about winning – they’re also a great way to meet like-minded people operating in your sector. Use their associated events to look for networking opportunities and build relationships.
- Know exactly what’s expected of you. Some competitions will ask for pre-prepared presentations, for example, while others will involve working on unseen projects.
- Entering a competition is a lot of effort, so don’t take a scattergun approach. Instead, pick the ones that will fulfil your specific objectives. You may decide to choose a competition that’s held overseas, so you can gain experience operating in an international environment.
- Challenge yourself. Competitions are a great way to get out of the academic comfort zone and expose yourself to different techniques and thinking. So if you dread public speaking, for example, you could use a competition as a chance to get better at it.
- Have fun! The right competition will get you delving deeper into something you love, so make the most of it.
