The University eSports League was something ridiculous that I was proud to help bring to life with GradConnection and was Australia’s first nationwide eSports tournament just for university students. The main goal was to provide a new, genuine and fun way for graduate employers and students to connect and have fun together.
The Problem – Graduate employers struggled to connect with tech students.
Many graduate employers struggled to connect with the next generation of IT talent. Mainly because every company needs IT expertise and there are only so many students graduating, but also because
eSports as a solution
Whilst running a nationwide gaming tournament with live studio finals would seem to be a stretch, it turned out to be a perfect fit as many students studying IT had their interest in technology cultivated by computer gaming.
With the rise of eSports, the timing was perfect to help the world of graduate recruitment collide with professional gaming.
If you want more details you can check out:
The UEL
3 Games:
- Overwatch
- Hearthstone
- League of Legends
Online Elimination Cups
Players would battle it out over 4 weeks based on a loose matchmaking process based on an ELO rating honour system
Live Studio Finals
The two teams for each game that made it to the final, no matter where they were in Australia, were flown in and put up in hotels.
Future UELs
The workload at GradConnection got absolutely crazy, and our partners who took over from 2018 took over the UEL efforts going forward.
Huge thanks to UTS careers who supported a number of crazy things we do – I never thought we would be able to run something like this in the UTS great hall of all spaces – really admire the lengths they went to to provide new and meaningful experiences to the industry
Huge thanks to everyone who made it happen
I’m sure i’ve forgotten a heap of people but the UEL wouldn’t have happened with out some key people.
Partners & People:
- IAG & John Rogan, Michael
- PwC Grad team
- Telstra Grad team
- Wisetech Global Grad team
- Alienware
- Redbull
- UTS Careers Team
- Elison and PJ from Blizzard
- ESL Australia
- Hive Gaming
- GC team with special shout out to Resh and Rita
