Five students from the Department of Human Resource Management's PGDip/MSc in Human Resource Management - Sharan Barech, Chidera Dimude, Sofia Petroleka, Hilde Sleveland and Jennifer Purdie - were recent guests at the prestigious HR Network Dinner. The dinner brings together over 700 HR professionals from across Scotland from a range of private, public and voluntary organisations.
The students attended the dinner as a result of winning a competition which the Department had developed in partnership with the Ghost Partnership, a leading-edge consultancy which brings together the experience, expertise, skills and resources of business leaders from complementary disciplines in driving business performance through people.
Bill Mitchell from the Ghost Partnership approached the Department to offer students this unique opportunity to attend the dinner as guests of the organisation. In return, working in groups of five, students had to devise and present an analysis of an internationally operating organisation, particularly focusing on the effectiveness of their approaches to the human capital dimension. The presentations were given in a Dragons' Den-style to Bill and his colleagues, John Nicholson and Alan Crozier. A number of groups entered the competition with the winning team offering an insightful analysis of the major American conglomerate 3M.
Professor Dennis Nickson, head of the Department of Human Resource Management, was extremely grateful to the Ghost Partnership for offering such a unique opportunity to the students and full of praise for the efforts of all of the students who entered the competition. He said, "Opportunities such as these do not come along very often and I was delighted that the Ghost Partnership chose the Department to develop the competition. I was extremely pleased with the commitment shown by the students in engaging with the challenge and also the quality of the presentations, which made the final decision of Bill, John and Alan from the Ghost Partnership very difficult. The efforts of the students reflected very well on the Department and University'"