Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
LEHI, Utah — One of the biggest challenges for a college student is choosing a major that will launch a career. One area is growing in a huge way, and Adobe is trying to fill that need.
Since 2009, Adobe has worked to attract college students to the field of big data with a contest that offers a big prize.
"We give them money," said Bill Ingram, Adobe Digital Analytics vice president. "We want to make it exciting for them."
The Adobe Analytics Competition aims to interest college students around the country in big data analytics, a career sector that's skyrocketing and needs qualified employees.
"The demand is phenomenal, particularly for people who understand data driven marketing and data science," Ingram said. "It's becoming a very hard skill set to hire for."
Companies worldwide want to better serve customers on websites and mobile devices by knowing where people spend their money. Adobe tracks that information and holds the contest — 14, so far — to encourage students to enter the field.
"[We] get them interested, get the curriculum changes done at universities and help them create the next generation of leaders that marketing organizations will require in the world's top brands," Ingram said.
One of seven judges in today's final, Nate Smith, was on a team that won the contest several years ago, and Adobe quickly hired him. He said the competition gets better every year.
Marc Weaver/KSL-TV
"This is a contest to really help ferret out great talent, and Adobe has hired over 20 individuals from this competition," Smith said. "And that's bringing great young talent right here into Utah."
Teams of college students from all over the country made final pitches to a panel of judges Friday about how to improve the mobile app experience for a major hotel chain.
The winning team was a group of Brigham Young University MBA students, including Hoon Song, Robert Haws and Jacob Honsvik, who said they have had little sleep after making it to the finals.
"We kind of felt like we were banging our heads against the wall for the first few days," Haws said. "And it really wasn't until the day before the presentations were due that we felt our idea was starting to gel and come together."
The team beat other teams from BYU, Northwestern University, Michigan and UCLA to win the first place prize of $15,000.
"It's a really great opportunity to build talent in the market and provide skills in this very, very hot and up and coming field," Smith said.
