The Associate: Week One

There’s a saying “all good things must come to an end.” It seems like this phrase was the case for Team R.O.S.E. after a week of The Associate competition taking place. Team R.O.S.E. (Revealing Opportunities with Strategic Excellence) was comprised of Demontray Hawkins, myself, Mark Preston, and Justina Whyte. We all worked together from last Tuesday until this past Sunday on a case for Kane Construction, Inc. It was an extremely involved case as I personally spent many nights awake until 3:00 or 4:00 AM working on and it felt like everything else was pushed aside. Our team worked extremely well with one another as we devised a marketing strategy for the Kane Construction company, using a “separate but equal” approach. One of the assignments was to determine if the three Kane family business should form a “consolidated” approach or a “separate but equal” approach. The other part of our assignment was to determine how the company should increase their market share in the Baltimore region as they are currently based out of their new headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD.

Sunday came around quickly. After many hours of preparing our portfolio to present to the Kane Construction company in addition to finalizing our presentation. Following the presentation all of the Team R.O.S.E. members felt confident, but unfortunately the executives from Kane Construction made the final decision about which team would win and which team would lose. They reviewed their opinions with the Dean of the College of Business and Economics, Dr. Shohreh Kaynama and Laleh Malek, Director of Professional Experience and determined that Team Concord came out on top. Unfortunately, all of the members from Team R.O.S.E knew that this meant that come Tuesday one of the team members would get eliminated.

Tuesday evening all eight members approached the board room to answer questions that were chosen for each individual from Alan Wilson, CEO and President of McCormick and Company, Dean Kaynama, and Provost Welsh. The majority of these questions were directed towards Team R.O.S.E. After coming to a conclusion it was decided that Team Leader, Demontray Hawkins was eliminated from the competition. Both teams were presented with a new case for the next week from Target. This assignment is to look closely at the technology and grocery guest at Target as they are rolling out P-Fresh, a grocery department that will be phased into 40 stores in the Maryland, DC, and Virginia regions. This change is currently being implemented as some stores have already received the P-Fresh additions.

It should be an interesting challenge going into this week one man down, but all candidates went into this competition vying for the same trophy prize of a position with McCormick and Company as it is an elimination based competition. Team R.O.S.E. is planning on making the necessary adjustments to come out on top this time!