ARECORD 350 teams from the National College of Ireland and Ireland's 15 Institutes of Technology entered this year's Newstalk/ Irish TimesStudent Enterprise Competition. The competition is designed to test students' ability to work as a team while tackling real business issues. The 1,400 students involved have already completed the preliminary rounds of the competition, which is now at its semi-final stage.

Jim Sheehan was a judge at last year’s semi-final and a case study on his company, Surecom Network Solutions, provided the material for the competition final. Sheehan set up his Tipperary-based company, Surecom Network Solutions, in 2005. The company operates at the upper end of the telecommunications industry and provides services to companies such as O2, Telefonica and Ericsson.

“I was impressed by the calibre of the teams in both the semi-final and the final,” Sheehan says. “They showed competence in extracting the relevant information from the material provided and they came up with good ideas that showed they had grasped the fundamental issues.

“From what I could see the students got a lot out of the competition. It made fairly tough demands on them but gave them good experience of being highly focused both as individuals and as a team. I wish this type of competition had been around when I was a student.”

To get off on the right foot Sheehan advises teams to look the part. “I’m not saying they have to wear suits – smart casual would be fine – but they need to look professional,” he says. I’d suggest they all dress more or less in the same style and that they are colour co-ordinated in muted colours so there is nothing to distract from their presentation.”

His next tip for teams is not to rely too heavily on visual material such as PowerPoint. “Some teams were too focused on the content of their visuals and as a result they didn’t give enough depth in their response,” Sheehan says. “By all means use visuals to make a point but then expand on it by explaining the thought behind it more thoroughly. It’s not enough to read the material off the slide and then move on. I know this can be a question of confidence so teams need to practise speaking in front of an audience.”

Sheehan says he also noticed that some teams tended to let their more able public speakers carry more of the presentation burden. “It’s more balanced if everyone has an input and it shows more of a team effort. Again, this is a question of building confidence. This is an opportunity for all the team members to get experience of presenting in public,” he says.

The teams who “delivered their material in a clear and well-argued way that showed the reasoning behind their views” made the best impressions on Sheehan. I think it is important for teams to be able to offer quite in-depth explanations for why they are arguing a certain point and for them to be able to communicate this in a logical, informed way.”

Sheehan says he got a lot out of listening to the students’ views on his own company. “The students might be young and lacking in work experience but you could see the ones that had a natural feel for business and how well they were able to identify the key issues.

“We took on a young graduate recently and I thought he looked familiar,” Sheehan says. “Turns out he was one of the strongest members of one of the teams in last year’s competition.”

The final of the competition will take place in March and the winning team will spend a study week in the Caribbean shadowing senior executives in the Digicel Group.