Mascara, marketing and management are the three Ms to live by when it comes to the L'Oreal e-Strat Challenge 2004.
Concerned with more than fresh faces, the cosmetics company is currently sponsoring an international interactive competition in partnership with StratX and "Business Week" to find talented students who are as dexterous with business problems as they are with blush and bronzer.
The e-Strat Challenge has become a new method of recruitment for L'Oreal and a way for students to prepare for real world business scenarios. The game provides "an opportunity to meet and interview the best students globally" according to L'Oreal spokesperson Jenna Shelton.
Among the participants in this year's competition were two teams, Darden and Darden GCG from the University's Darden School. Members of team Darden included first-year Darden students Jake Rothman, Neal Hoffman and Fawaz Khalil, and team Darden GCG was comprised of first-year Darden students Sayuri Ganepola, Shirley Chiang and Maria Goodman.
According to L'Oreal, the competition is played through the Internet in a simulated world created by StratX. Each team acts as the general manager of a fictitious cosmetics company, PRIMA, and must effectively meet the challenges dealt by four virtually simulated competing companies.
When the competition began in 2001, 420 teams participated. Since then, more than 800 universities and colleges around the world have entered teams in the competition.
One reason why the competition has become so popular, despite being conceived only four years ago, is that L'Oreal has increased its promotional campaign to target more countries around the world and college campuses in the United States. According to Shelton, the e-Strat Challenge gives students an "insider's perspective" of what it is like to work for one of the world's largest cosmetics companies.
While L'Oreal still recruits potential students through more traditional means such as job fairs and their company Web site, the competition allows L'Oreal to meet a large field of eager students already interested in the company and the field. The e-Strat Challenge has become a win-win experience for L'Oreal and students. Since the conception of the e-Strat competition, L'Oreal has recruited 70 participants to become employees.
Students who have entered the competition are not restricted to business and commerce alone. There is a diverse range of majors including law, fashion and retailing. According to Shelton "there are no limits" to who can enter the competition. In fact, the GCG team consisted of a former consultant strategist, wealth manager and managing editor of a fashion magazine.
The challenges facing the teams range from finance to management to product development. Lasting eight weeks, this year's competition began with 1,000 teams and 30,540 students. The three player teams compete at either the MBA level or the undergraduate level. According to L'Oreal, 55 percent of the teams this year will hail from an MBA programs while the other 45 percent are undergraduates.
Each team initially competed in six preliminary rounds within its region before moving onto the semi-finals. There are seven regions worldwide, and the Darden teams play in the North America region.
At one point during the preliminary rounds, the Darden team consisting of Jake Rothman, Neal Hoffman and Fawaz Khalil ranked second out of the 1,000 competing globally.
"Being on top raised our excitement level," Rothman said. "We are all competitive and this let us match our skills with other people around the world. The first thing we wanted to check was our performance but then where we stood globally."
While the e-Strat Challenge requires competitors to manage a cosmetics company, the skills and talent required to win involve more than a preemptive understanding of woman's needs.
"As three men who have never worked in the cosmetics industry, we had virtually no industry knowledge, which was a bit of a handicap," Rothman said. "To make our decisions we drew upon our knowledge of business, financial and market share reports from the simulation, and our learning from the Darden MBA program."
However, the team did have the advantage of having a member who had experience working in marketing with Proctor and Gamble -- Hoffman. Ultimately, it came down to experience, and the all female GCG team found that sex was not a factor during the preliminary rounds: "Being female didn't matter at all," Chiang said.
Last year's winners from the North American region hailed from Harvard Business School and NYU's Stern School of Business. From the field of 1,000 teams, only the top 250 finishers in the world have been invited to the semifinals. The top semifinal scorers in the MBA and undergraduate level from each region will then head to the finals to be held in Paris in April.
But before the Darden teams could even think about preliminaries, semifinals or finals, they had to qualify for the challenge by taking a team quiz.
"The quiz weeds out people who do not have a background in business and who are not ready for the rigor of the challenge," GCG team member Shirley Chiang said. "Since it is a long term competition, the quiz tested our level of knowledge and commitment."
While what they learned in the classroom helped teams pass the quiz and provided ample tools for the competition, the challenge also required a dedicated team.
"We spent anywhere from an hour and a half to six hours each round," Chiang said. "On average we probably spent four hours each week."
Although the e-Strat Challenge was time consuming, Rothman said the simulation was helpful because feedback was returned after each round.
Despite benefits of the challenge, ultimately, the competition came at an inconvenient time for the top-ranked Darden team. The team withdrew before the semifinals.
"They wanted a 10-page business plan and it being around exams, we didn't think it was worth the effort," Rothman said.
After the six preliminary rounds of competitive play in the e-Strat challenge, both teams from Darden walked away from the game with real life experience and an eagerness to try their luck and use their business skills in next year's competition.
"I really liked it," Chiang said. "It was a good education in what a real brand manager does on a daily basis. I'll use the experience in job interviews to show my interest in marketing."
Although the grand prize of the competition -- a week long vacation to any destination in the world -- is an enticing reward for competitors, the students said the possibility of meeting and interacting with top ranking executives is also a major lure.
But the competition is fierce and, in the world where beauty reigns supreme, business prima donnas in training are gearing up for more than just a cat fight. The finalists for the international round will be announced in Paris on March 15.
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