Examining the employability benefits of international case competitions

Purpose Case competitions are growing in popularity, in part because they are believed to build the skills and employment opportunities that higher education institutions are struggling to provide. We add to the nascent research on case competitions and answer calls for more exploration of career-related aspects of case competitions by exploring their employability benefits and opportunities. Design/methodology/approach We use extant research and experiential learning theory to identify four key benefits and their interrelationships. These are tested using survey data of 212 international case competition students. Findings We confirm four dominant benefits of learning through feedback, broadened horizons, the development of skills and enhanced employment opportunities, and confirm the interrelationship between them. Importantly, we demonstrate the critical role that feedback plays in the development of skills and broadened horizons. Practical implications The findings confirm that HIEs should encourage students to participate in extracurriculars, and in particular, case competitions. The implications provide guidance on how to structure extracurricular and case competition activities to maximize skill development and employment opportunities. Insights are also relevant to coach training. Originality/value Prior work has focused on individual benefits and largely ignored the critical role of feedback. We build and test hypotheses on benefit interrelationships and validate the impact of feedback. We thereby extend experiential learning and research on the employability benefits of case competitions and extracurricular activities in general. Our insights are relevant to maximizing the value of extracurriculars and maximizing the value of case training and competitions, in particular to achieve employability advantages.